Doug and Kerry Hudson in Songkhla, Thailand, South East Asia

World Trip >> Asia >> Thailand >> Songkhla

It was an epic journey the day we left Ko Pha-Ngan for Songkhla in the Muslim south of Thailand. Three hours on a ferry to the mainland, followed by the baffling experience of being shuttled around Surat Thani in various modes of transport to finally end up in a very cramped mini van for the three-hour drive to Hat Yai. Any longer in that thing, and Doug swears he would have had permanent back injury.

That was the last time we trusted a private bus company. So it was that a public bus took us the rest of the way to Songkhla. It was a big green bus with over 100 local people in it, and very loud. Being crushed in a public bus, unable to budge, with deafeningly loud Thai karaoke songs blaring out, is a most exquisite torture after nine hours of travelling.

We found Songkhla to be a pretty little town. It appeared to be wealthier than a lot of the other towns we had visited in Thailand. This is due in part to the flourishing oil industry here.

We stayed at the Amsterdam Guest House. It was fairly clean, but very noisy. The owner was a Dutch lady who seemed to drink like a fish. Our first night there we were so tired that we decided to eat at the restaurant downstairs. Imagine our surprise when, as we waited for our food to arrive, a large rat scuttled through the restaurant! We were repulsed, but we felt obliged to eat our dinner. Needless to say, we didn’t eat there again! We were distinctly unimpressed with this guesthouse, especially when they tried to charge us for February 29th!!

We were only in Songkhla for a couple of days. We wandered around the city and visited the beach where the Muslim locals swim in their clothes. We also visited two markets here. The first one was a cloth market on the nearby island Ko Yo, where they sell homemade cloth.

More interesting, however, was the local Sunday market in Songkhla. This market left a lasting impression on us. It was extremely popular with the locals, and we didn’t see any other tourists. Once we entered the market, we were caught up in the flow of people and it was impossible to stop.

They were selling everything. Fish, dead or alive, some gutted, some in the process of being gutted, some recognisable, and some not. Some stalls were selling blocks of raw meat, laid out on wooden tables to the delight of the swarming flies. Plucked chickens hung from some stalls, still clad with head and feet. Some had been cut open, revealing the red, shiny entrails hanging out in ropy coils. These were just some of the things that we recognised. The low umbrellas shading everything forced Doug to stoop as he walked. These umbrellas also served to stifle and concentrate the odours that assaulted us from every angle.

We found a couple of quieter backwaters in amongst this chaos, where people were selling fruit, vegetables, clothes and watches. Pairs of jeans were selling for less than a quid! Kerry bought herself a T-shirt and Doug came away very chuffed with a new Ralph Lauren watch for only three quid! Our lasting impression from the market, however, was the overall lack of hygiene. We realised, not for the first time, that this world and the world we grew up in are poles apart...

We left Songkhla on the east coast, with an ambitious plan to make it to the west coast of the Thai peninsular, to the island Koh Lipeh – in a day...

World Trip >> Asia >> Thailand >> Songkhla

Last updated: Sunday August 27, 2006