Most of the visitors we hand keys to learned to drive on the right, and the switch to Phuket’s left-hand traffic isn’t hard — it’s just unfamiliar in a few specific moments. Here’s what those are, and how our team suggests spending your first few minutes on the road.
On Phuket’s straighter stretches — the bypass road, the hill roads between beaches — left-hand driving corrects itself almost immediately; you’re following traffic and the road does the thinking. It’s the smaller island junctions, especially quiet soi exits with no one to follow, where the old instinct to swing into the "home" lane shows up. Slow down more than feels necessary at every junction for your first day on the island.
Right-hand-drive cars have the indicator and wiper stalks swapped from what most visitors are used to. Wiping a dry windshield instead of signalling is close to universal in the first hour — harmless, but it tends to happen exactly when you need the indicator without thinking, like merging off a beach-road roundabout. Test both stalks before you actually pull away from us.
Your blind-spot glance now needs to happen over the opposite shoulder, and the mirror you’d check without thinking is on the other side of the car. It takes very little time to relearn — but not zero, so give lane changes on Phuket’s busier roads, like the Patong bypass, an extra beat until it feels automatic.
Most of the adjustment happens in the first half hour, and that’s usually right after you’ve collected the car, still working out a new route and possibly jet-lagged. If your hotel or villa has a quiet driveway or access road, do a few slow loops there before joining a main road — it makes a real difference, more than anything on this page will.