Wed 12th - Thurs 13th December – Songkhla Thailand

Songkhla appears to be a seaside holiday town for the large town of Hat Yai about 25km away. There are very few western tourists. I have only seen 4 or 5.

I'm staying in a guest house along the road from the Amsterdam Guesthouse. A single room with fan and shared bathroom is 280 baht, around 4 pounds ( 68.3 baht to the pound). It’s clean and the woman who runs it seems friendly. Although the extent of her English is “hello”.

It is much hotter here with sunshine at times but still wet and very humid.

The food here is definitely not as good as Penang. It’s of a similar price but the variety and quality are much poorer. It looks like language will be a problem for me here. All the food stalls have their wares advertised in Thai script, which is impossible for me to read and most of the stall keepers don’t speak any English. It’s back to scratch then, after getting the hang of a little Bahasa in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Somehow I don’t feel the same friendliness and willingness to help that I found in Malaysia. It is probably because of the language barrier. However people generally don’t show the same interest.

Costs are generally a little dearer here as far as I can tell however beer is half the price so that evens things out.
Songhkhla has a large sandy beach about 1km from where I am staying which I visited this morning. It’s nothing special but there were lots of seafood restaurants which I may visit later.

I managed to get some nice food from a Hawkers stall this evening. Pork with Pork Liver, Chilies and rice, cooked while I waited, 30 baht (45p). The guy cooks big batches and people queue up to get it, either carry out or at tables round the stall. I didn’t manage to eat many of the chilies as they were blindingly hot, but the rest of the food was great.

I followed this with egg Roti and coffee at another stall (10 baht each).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roti_canai

So there are good places to eat here if you take the time to find them.

After being at these stalls a couple of times people appear to be much friendlier. It may be that the Thais are naturally reserved and like to get to know people slowly.