The Old Building of Ban Singha Tha

Ban Singha Tha is Yasothon’s original town centre, a stretch of late 19th and early 20th-century shophouses along streets including Sri Sunthon Road and Nakhon Thum Road in the provincial capital. There’s no admission fee, and the area functions as an ordinary — if unusually well-preserved — commercial street rather than a fenced museum quarter.

The settlement predates the modern province by generations. Local chronicles trace it to a group fleeing Vientiane under the minister Phra Chao Ratchawongsa (Phra Wor), who settled at a site then called Dong Phi Sing and founded a town at Ban Singha Tha. King Rama II later elevated it to city status as Mueang Yotsunthon; the name shifted again under Rama IV before settling on Yasothon, which became its own province in 1972. Through those changes, the old riverside quarter kept its original name.

Insider Tip: Look at the upper-storey window frames and gable details rather than the ground floor — that’s where the Chinese-French blend shows up most clearly, mixed in among shopfronts that are still functioning businesses.

The architecture reflects Ban Singha Tha’s second life as a trading hub. When French colonial influence spread through the region, merchants who’d grown wealthy on river trade brought in Vietnamese craftsmen to build houses that combined Chinese shophouse proportions with French-influenced facades and ironwork. A number of those buildings still stand along the original streets, in varying states — some restored and occupied, others empty with peeling paint that hasn’t seen a coat in decades. That mix, rather than a uniformly restored streetscape, is what gives the quarter its lived-in feel compared to more polished old towns elsewhere in Thailand.

Walking the quarter takes under an hour at an unhurried pace. It sits close enough to Wat Maha That — home to Phra That Anon, the chedi that gives the province its identity — to combine both into a single morning. Weekday mornings are quietest, before the heat builds and before market traffic picks up along the main road.

Watch out: Several buildings are private residences or working shops, not open-air exhibits. Admire the facades from the street rather than wandering into doorways.