Phuket Services
Laundry and Money Exchange in Phuket
The two practical services a visitor actually needs on Phuket: wash-and-fold laundry by the kilo, and exchange booths that beat the hotel desk.
Two everyday jobs come up on almost every trip to Phuket, and neither is worth an hour of guesswork: getting laundry done and changing money. Both are easy here, and both are noticeably cheaper a street back from the beachfront.
Laundry works by the kilo. Wash-and-fold shops sit on the side streets of every beach town, take a bag in the morning and hand it back the same evening, and most will collect from a hotel or villa. Ironing, express turnaround and dry cleaning cost more. Self-service coin machines have spread along the west coast for anyone who only needs one load.
Money exchange runs on booths rather than banks. Independent exchange counters and the well-known Thai chains post their rates on the window, take cash in the major currencies and pay noticeably better than a hotel desk or an airport arrivals booth. Bring your passport, because the counter is required to record it. Thai ATMs add a fixed fee to every foreign-card withdrawal on top of your own bank's charges, which is why changing cash at a booth is usually the cheaper way to hold baht.
