I’ve been writing about my incoming postcards on the “Please, Mr. Postman!” blog for more than a month now but I haven’t mentioned anything about those I’ve been using for outgoing mail from my home here in Phuket, Thailand.

Until fairly recently, the card options around Phuket Town have been fairly limited.  Most shops carry the black-bordered designs by In4 World Media (example above) which largely show the beaches and principal sights in and around the island.  These are geared towards tourists and come in a wide range of sizes which I quite like.   Similar designs are produced by a company called Siamm Millenium – photos surrounded by a dark frame plus the occasional colorful cartoon card such as the popular “My Phuket Tan Plans” shown below.  My biggest gripe with their cards are that the address side is often coated or printed in gray or some other dark color both of which make it difficult to write anything legible.

My favorites of the “standard” Phuket Town postcards are those showing black & white photos taken during the 1950’s and earlier.  They used to be found only at The Books on Phuket Road but I’ve recently seen them in shops along Th. Thalang, including Kopitiam Coffee Shop which also sells larger prints of these photos.  The original post office is pictured in the card below; it’s now the Phuket Philatelic Museum which I really need to blog about someday soon.

For years, these were the only cards available around Phuket Town and while all very nice to use (and collect!), it’s always nice to have a larger range of options.  In the last few years, this situation has changed; the first time I noticed handmade cards in “new” designs was during the Phuket Old Town Festival where they were set on a street-side table in Soi Rommanee.  With the introduction of a weekly walking street along Thalang Road on Sunday evenings called “Lard Yai”, more vendors have been introducing their own postcard designs which seem to be a natural extension to t-shirts as a money-maker.  Many of the shops along the road now carry a wide selection throughout the week if you can’t make it to the market night.

During a recent stroll through Old Town, I stopped into Nonlang T-Shirt Shop at 26 Thalang Road (south side of the street, just west of the intersection with Soi Rommanee).  Specializing in custom-made t-shirt designs and run by Aoy, the shop includes a startling array of original designs most of which are also available on postcards, drink coasters and even magnets.  The cards (and magnets) cost 25 baht each or five for 100 baht.  They all have the save address-side design which I really like.  Can you figure out why?

All of the cards at Nonlang are the 4×6-inch size, as are the majority of the cards available locally.  It doesn’t give you much room to write a long message (which can be a good thing) or, more importantly in my case, it’s hard to affix a variety of nice commemorative stamps!  I have plenty of extra 3- and 5-baht stamps I’d love to use on my Postcrossing cards but I can’t fit enough to make the rate.  Perhaps that is why the 15-baht international postcard-rate stamps issued by Thailand are so darn small.  At any rate, only In4 and Siamm Millennium have larger-sized postcards. 

These are a few of the cards sold at Nonlang which I will be using on my outgoing mail this month:

That last card, with the old-style pillar postbox, is my favorite of this batch but, unfortunately, I didn’t see if there was a t-shirt with this design.  I also purchased a few magnets despite not currently having a refrigerator or anything else magnetic to stick them to.  Perhaps I’ll send them as free gifts to some of my postcard friends…

Have you found any other postcard designs around Phuket?  Please let me know in the Comments.

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