Walk through time gone by
Helen van Berkel takes to the streets of Phuket
Some days, paddling in Patong’s blood-warm seas and snoozing under its soporific sun just don’t satisfy. There are plenty of things to do in Phuket’s bustling beach town that will leave you feeling a little more cultured and grown-up. Where today you see streets lined with stalls selling sunglasses and T-shirts boasting rude and/or commercial slogans, traders and sailors once strode when Patong was a stopover on the shipping routes between China and India through to the Malay peninsula.
And long before bloated Westerners in Speedos discovered this Andaman Sea bolthole and turned it into a hedonistic paradise, Patong was best known for its tin mines. Workers from Singapore, Penang and China brought their own cuisine, customs and architecture that can still be seen in Phuket Old Town.
The Phra Phitak Chin Pracha, better known as the Blue Elephant, is a stately mansion of round-arched windows and shady verandas set in a casually lush, green garden well back from the road. It’s an architectural style known hereabouts as an “angmor lao”, which translates directly to “the house of the red-hairs”, referring to the original European owners who showed their own importance by building these monumental houses. Around the corner on Dibuk Rd, lived the mine workers in narrow two-storey row houses. Only about a decade ago these homes were dilapidated and derelict, before someone realised the value of the Sino-Portuguese architecture as a tourist drawcard. Most have been beautifully restored and presented in a range of pastel colours. Apparently the Crown Princess of Thailand was gifted a house in this street. She wasn’t in when we passed by. Nor did she have any mail in the letterbox.
Romanee Rd once was, according to our guide, the “fun” street, then clarified: “where men visit”. The red-light district then. There was no sign of any such activity going on in the “shop houses” that line the narrow street. The original owners ran little businesses from the spacious, shaded front rooms and lived upstairs. Some are still shops, others have been converted into cute accommodation.
It’s a fascinating walk through history and I’d recommend calling in to the tourist information centre on Thalang Rd for a brochure and a map. Inside the centre is an old-style water well used by the early householders a century or so ago.