Phang Nga -Sri Phang Nga National Park

The park is in the mountain range parallel to the Andaman seashore and contains some virgin forests for wildlife sanctuaries. The main entrance to the park is near Kuraburi.

From the park originates many streams, which have created waterfalls such as Tamnang (pictured above), Ton Ton Sai and Ton Ton Toei.


What I found especially amusing was the sign indicating the way to Tamnang while stating it was where one can "Swim With Fish".  That sign reminded me of what mobsters would say in cheesy gangster movies ..  as in .. "Aei, Roberto he go swim with da fishes wearing concrete shoes. He ain't never gonna make trouble again"


After you have swum with the fish, you can take the 3 km nature trail to the other two water falls, but I found them less impressive. 

Phang Nga - Koh Kho Khao

Between Takua Pa and Khao Lak is Ban Kem. This village is the location for a large tsunami memorial. To access the location, one has to turn off Highway Route 4 (it’s very easy to miss the sign but it's near the 774 kilometer marker when coming from Bangkok) and drive several kilometers on small roads before reaching the memorial. 

There are so few visitors to the memorial that the food and souvenir stands built nearby were not occupied by sellers until last year. Now a restaurant has opened on the nearby beach, which is good for swimming and offers great views of nearby Koh Kho Khao.

This island is 15 km long and can be reached by long-tail boat or car ferry from Ban Nam Kem. The island had just started dabbling into tourism when the tsunami hit. It took a few years before it had recovered, but the island is now the center of attention with real estate agents trying to sell beach villas. However, judging from the closed souvenir & tailor shops and the boarded up real estate agencies, sales and tourist arrivals are not booming the way it had been hoped for. 

New upscale resorts have sprung up vying for tourists to come up from Phuket and Khao Lak. Their websites are in English and Swedush, but not in Thai. Other upscale resorts focus on Bangkokians and have adjusted their marketing accordingly. 


The island has wonderful and deserted beaches - the above picture shows tracks from a small herd of cows that had taken a morning stroll on the beach. 


The below picture shows Koh Phrathong, which is located a stone's throw north of Koh Kho Khao.

Apart from beaches, Koh Kho Khao has a lot to offer. There is bird watching, kayaking, ancient ruins of the remnants of a trading post, and a public swamp - no kidding.


Koh Kho Khao is still relatively undeveloped and a great place to get away from the crowds. One can walk undisturbed on the beach for kilometers and can - at night obviously - enjoy clear views of moon and stars without any light emitted from cities or large resorts. 

Phang Nga - Thai Muang and Takua Pa

Khao Lak is probably the tourist destination in Phang Nga province with the most overnight stays. However, while I used to like to stay at a small family-owned resort on Pakkarang (Koral) Beach, the tsunami put an end to that. Big money, big hotel chains, and mass tourism moved in after the tsunami literally wiped out most of the small businesses in the area.


However, there are other interesting destinations along the coast of the Andaman Sea. Thai Muang is about 30 km north of the Sarasin Bridge that links Phuket with the mainland and is about 25 km south of Khao Lak. Thai Muang can roughly be translated into "the end of the mine", which indicates that the place was founded for shipping out ore. 


Thai Muang has a golf club and a marina. I have never figured out why a marina was built in this non-touristic location, but there is more than a dozen kilometers of beach with nice white sand.


It is a great beach on which to walk and watch the Andaman while enjoying the peace and quiet of the area. Parts of the beach are protected nesting sites for leatherback turtles. More info on this can be had at a turtle conservation center.


Takua Pa lies north of Khao Lak. That town is one of the oldest on the Andaman Coast and several old buildings can be found around town. It grew big on the back of tin mining and there is a museum giving a positive spin on that part of the town’s history.

Phang Nga - Khao Lak

The Khao Lak area was changed forever by the tsunami. Before then natural disaster struck, there were many small family-run resorts. However, these were literally swept away and most owners faced a situation where loans payments continued to be due while there was no insurance coverage. Big business in the form of large hotel chains swept in as locusts to secure good deals on prime locations.

One example is Pakarang Beach where people used to be able to go for picnic but the beachside road is now lined by five-star resorts. But it seems that one of them ran into rough times and has been taken over by new owners.

I'm glad that carpetbagging doesn't always pay off.

In fact, it was a bit offensive to see how outsiders swarmed like locusts to the Khao Lak area (and up the Andaman coast) in 2005 and 2006 trying to secure good real estate deals, i.e., buying from people unable to pay back banks as they had no insurance covering a tsunami.

Some ended up buying a pig in a poke or rather, buying a piece of paper. For example, some Scandinavians were duped by other Scandinavians (remnants of a Danish motor cycle gang affiliated with Hell's Angels now relocated to Koh Samui) as the title deeds they paid for were fakes. A few brave ones took their cases to the Swedish and Danish police who managed to get the Royal Thai Police to arrest the culprits. But then the case was dropped for unspecified reasons and the culprits returned to Koh Samui where they still today earn a living from racketeering, real estate, and bar beers.

Phattalung

Phattalung is in southern Thailand. It is a province of mountains, forests, a huge lake (Thale Noi), and mediocre beaches.

To me, Phra Phutthanirarokhantarai Chaiyawat Chaturathit or Phra Si Mum Mueang is the symbol of Phattalung.

The Buddha image is an auspicious object of worship. This bronze Buddha image in the posture of meditation is enshrined in a pavilion with four porches on the foreground between the City Hall and Provincial Court of Phatthalung. It is apparently one of four shrines raised in each "corner" of the kingdom.



That being said, to most people, it is Khao Ok Thalu that is the symbol of Phattalung.

Khao Ok Thalu, a limestone, rises 250m above Phattalung just east of the train station. A moderately steep trail with steps leads up to the hole in the mountain. The path is a bit tricky in parts, but the great view makes the climb worthwhile.

Thale Noi Waterbird Sanctuary was on the top of my list of things to do. This sanctuary, 32km north of Phattalung, is one of Thailand's top bird watching spots and is the largest bird park in Thailand. Nearly 200 species live in this marshy swampy area on the northern reaches of Songkhla Lake.

The best time to visit the sanctuary is from October to March, but my trip turned out to be a bit of a disappointment as getting close to birds is inherently difficult when seated in a boat full of chattering tourists from Bangkok.

As the Banthat Range goes through Phattalung, there are plenty of waterfalls. And there is the 700 sq km Khao Pu Khao Ya National Park. It is certainly one of the least visited and the lack of visitors is a shame because there is some impressive scenery, a well preserved forest and helpful park wardens.

Mountain peaks reach 1,000 meters here and are covered with tropical rain forest. Larger mammals no longer exist, but there are still many smaller ones.

Wat Kuhasavan is set at the foot of the forested limestone hill with a couple of caves behind it. The main cave contains a bunch of Buddha images in various poses. A rock at the entrance to the cave has some royal writing on it, carved by a wandering Rama. There's a smaller cave nearby which is home to several hundred bats which fly out at dusk to fill the Phattalung skies. Beside the cave there are steps that lead up the hill to a viewpoint. 

Prachuap Khiri Khan - Hua Hin

Plearnwan retro shopping mall a few kilometers north of the center of Hua Hin has been a huge success. It achieved breakeven in just one year. Built in 2009 for Bt40 million, the retro shopping mall attracts more than 10,000 visitors during weekends, and between 3,000 and 4,000 on weekdays.

The Hua Hin mall is fully occupied with 70 retail tenants offering high—priced souvenirs or food. However, the visitors – mostly Bangkokians on a weekend getaway from the hustle and bustle – are not really going to Plearnwan for shopping. Now, they are going to there to snap photos and plenty of photos because the place is so cute.

Well, it might all be faux but it’s cute that the „mall“ looks a little bit like an old settlement on the banks of a river or canal – never mind that the bridge doesn’t lead over water, but over the parking lot.

After taking pictures, the Bangkokians probably either continue onwards to some fancy restaurant in Hua Hin or to a quiet (i.e., without foreign tourists) five-star resort south of Hua Hin or even down near Pranburi.

Way back when, my first invitation to go to Hua Hin – not my first visit as I had gone alone on a previous occasion – initially puzzled. My friends said we should go to (Sofitel) Hua Hin for lunch.  I asked why we should drive two hours in order to eat. And the answer was simply: Because the seafood at that restaurant is delicious.

I failed to see the logic as Bangkok has plenty of restaurants with delicious food. But I soon came to realize that in Bangkok, it is less about the destination than about the journey. Spending time to reach a destination whether that destination is outside Bangkok or in Bangkok was a given thing (especially before the Skytrain and the Metro) as traffic jams can be true time killers, so the key is to spend that travel time in good company, i.e. with friends.

In other words, in reality, the objective of that Saturday lunch in Hua Hin was not the lunch, but to spend time together with friends. That’s also why milling around shopping malls is such a big pastime among young people from the Bangkokian middle class. They can meet friends in a controlled (safe) and air-conditioned environment with plenty of opportunities for shopping, eating, and having wholesome fun. 

Thai Nicknames

After watching the first episodes on Channel 7 of the remake of the lakorn classic “Tawipop”, I came to wonder about how nicknaming has gone astray in Thailand. In “Gan Kor Gad” (the new movie by and with Joey Boy), the Playboy model most frequently shown bounce her stuff around is named Bowling. The main actress in Tawipop is named Pancake.

http://dirtii-laundry.net/2010/09/08/pancake-fights-on-netizens-attack-saying-shes-not-suitable-for-tawipop/

http://www.sfcinemacity.com/index.php/en/movie-detail/Gan-Kor-Gad

How on earth can anyone, even Thais, think nicknames like Bowling and Pancake are reasonable or even cute names for a pretty young girl?

But then I realized, it is just the top of the iceberg. Other strange Thai nicknames include  Khanom Jeen, (a kind of noodles) Wun Sen (vermicelli), Airbus, Boat, Ball, Golf, Benz, Cola, Beer, Pepsi, Fanta, Seven, and Mint.

Gone are the days when Thai girls are nicknamed after cute, small animals and Thai fruits like Maew (cat), Nok (bird), Noo (mouse), Poo (crab),  Pla (fish), Kwang (deer), Taay or Gadai (rabbit), or Som (orange), Som-O (pomelo), Chompoo (rose apple), or Ple (apple). By the way, the Thai concept of “cute animal nicknames” includes not only animals you can eat but extends further to amphibians, insects and other creatures that you may not want to see on your dinner table (but sometimes do appear on some dinner tables), like Tao (turtle), Kob (frog), Mod (ant), and Jingjok (house lizard).

Satun - Funny Road Signs

I want to show a couple of the funny road signs I came across in Satun.

One sign seems to forbid deer access to a forest. However, the text states that hunting / killing deer is not allowed.

Another sign states that there is an accident ahead. So, supposedly the "accident" has been there for a long time and nobody has any intention of removing the accident. It's better to simply warn people that the accident is there up ahead.

The sign is of course intended to be a warning of a high risk "black spot" where accidents occur frequently. In this case, it was a 90 degree turn, where apparently many motorists got surprised and instead continued straight off the road.

For a foreigner, one positive aspect of driving around Thailand is that many signs are in dual language - even signs that in my view are totally irrelevant for foreigners.

For example: "Weighing Station Ahead: All Trucks Must Stop" - I think there are very few foreigners cruising around Thailand in 10-wheel trucks.