Phattalung, Thailand

In 4.5 years of travel, I’ve been a few overhyped places I regret wasting time on. Mostly it’s farflung locales that claim historically important or naturally majestic sites and fall short. Phattalung was that, but also everything else I hate in a place: smoking being tacitly permitted on the train and in the hotel, absolutely no available transport to see the couple things i was hoping to (not grab or bolt or tuktuk or bus or an expensive cab driver or hotel day tour, not even a fucking bicycle!), not a single good restaurant, no interesting architecture. The place did not have a single redeeming feature, and traveling there and away was a waste of 4 or 5 days of my life.

I tried to make the best of it.

The visit reinforced for me that I need not perform a touristic survey of every place I visit, or travel very far to see something unpromising relative to the marvels I’ve already seen- tourist hotspots do become famous for a reason; ‘off the beaten track’ more often than not just means ‘nothing worth seeing’ in 2024, no matter what dumb youtubers say.

It also clarified for me that I am not wrong for demanding basic, decent service- the hospitality culture in SE Asia is more or less ‘yes guests to death and do nothing no matter the complaint, then pretend they’ve been unreasonable and rude when, after asking for basic service for the 5th, 6th, 7th time they finally get upset, then don’t bother even feigning helpfulness, or even evince malice, because by our fucked up circular logic they’ve lost face so we’re not wrong.’ I’ve decided to just announce, every single place I go, immediately, that I am gravely ill, and demand to be kept away from cigarette smoke, and threaten disaster, and not even pretend to be nice about it . . . because otherwise they prioritize the ‘nice middle aged white lady’ after literally every single other type of guest.

Finally, the total lack of food gave me zero distraction or temptation, so it forced me to figure out a daily keto menu solely from 7-11. Feeling pretty sustainable with what I came up with has reassured me that at least while I’m in Thailand for the next 2.5 months, I’ll be able to only eat what’s important to me: either michelin/truly iconic, or cheap keto to lose some weight.

So . . . here are some pictures of the worst place I’ve been so far.

The train station, with Thailand’s kinda famous picturesque? million year old trains. My window shades didn’t even open on the hour and half smoke filled ride so I didn’t see much. I swear to god this place really was the worst.

The completely uninspirational architecture. Even the old wooden shophouses are so blah. The traditional architecture on the minibus ride from Patthalung to Trang was 1000x better than this.

Finally the wat/cave/viewpoint. The wat is supposedly Ayyuthaya period and restored by King Chulalongkorn, but I saw nothing Ayyuthaya anywhere outside, and the buildings were locked at 11 AM on a Wednesday. The cave was not large, the stalactites were not beautiful, the stairwell leads down to a tiny murky pool, and they insist on shoe removal even though the floor is covered with bat shit. The viewpoint is 25 minutes of breezy mosquito free stair climbing (and therefore the best thing in all of Phattalung), but there’s nothing interesting at the top and it’s completely grown over, so there’s no view.

Yup, lesson learned. If I don’t like a place, fuck it, move on STAT.

The City Pillar Shrine | Songkhla, Thailand

The Songkhla City Shrine was built in 1842, during the lifetime of the founder of Songkhla's hereditary ruling family, Phraya Vichian Siri (Tianseng Na Songkhla). Inside, there once was a city pillar made from Javanese cassia wood. Unlike most Thai city pillars, which are large stone or brick and plaster monuments, this city pillar, though no longer wooden, is still small and kept indoors. The first city pillar was given by the Thai King Nangklao in 1842, along with offerings given as alms to Phraya Songkhla (Tianseng) to establish the shrine. 

At that time, the king also selected Phra Udom Pidok as the leader of Buddhist ceremony and Phra Kru Assasachan Phram as the leader of Hindu ceremony, and each was accompanied by eight worshippers in their faith. Phraya Songkhla (Tianseng) built four ceremony halls facing each cardinal direction, and arranged a large parade of Thai and Chinese Buddhists to carry the pillar and the candle to the new shrine. 

At the sacred time (as determined by astrologers), the 10th day of waxing moon in the 4th month, in the year of tiger, 1204th year of Thai minor era at 7.10 a.m. (or 10 March 1842), the Buddhist procession met the awaiting Phraya Songkhla (Tianseng), along with Phra Khru Assadachan and the Hindu priests, who placed the pillar at the center of Songkhla town. After the pillar was erected, a party was held for 5 days and 5 nights. Phraya Songkhla (Tianseng) endowed the temple with 22 monks he personally supported.

At the time, the temple complex included a Khon performing hall, a puppet performing hall, a Chinese opera performing hall, and 4 Norah performing halls.  Later, Phraya Songkhla also built 3 Chinese-style buildings to cover the pillar and a shrine of Chao Sua Muang. 

In 1917, in the era of King Vajiravudh, Prince Yugala Dighambara, the viceroy of southern region, published an announcement that the pillar was rotten by termites. Local people and merchants in Songkhla raised funds to rebuild the pillar out of cement, and consecrated it on 1 March 1917, the 7th day of the waning moon in the 4th month, 22 minutes and 36 seconds before noon. Four astrologers stood at each cardinal direction began by placing soil from the far reaches of the province into the foundation, and workers were done erecting the pillar by 8.41.36 that evening.

Today, the Chinese opera hall is still in use but the others have been turned into school buildings. The temple is at the north end of the main Chinatown strip, so not a bad place to start exploring old town Songkhla (which should only take a day or two max).

An Afternoon in Hat Yai | Hat Yai, Thailand

The closest airport to Songkhla is Hat Yai international, which has a surprising amount of junk food and insufficient places to charge a cell phone. The announcements are truly constant, irrationally repetitive; it’s loud, busy and unbearable. Vietjet wouldn’t let me check my suitcase early, a necessity to get past security and into a business lounge, so instead I paid a nominal amount (I think 30 baht? Maybe 50?) to leave my suitcase in the luggage room and hit Hat Yai town.

Founded in 1928, there’s really nothing of historic importance in Hat Yai. Until perhaps 10 years ago there were only two hotels in town, the cheap Mandarin and the expensive Lee Gardens, which was the site of a car bomb attack in the continuing ant-Thai Muslim terrorism in the area. The town can be seen in an afternoon, so the first place I checked out was the oldest Chinese restaurant in town, Nai Roo, which came highly recommended. I had two of their most famous dishes, black pepper seafood and abalone. Honestly? The black pepper seafood was just OK and the abalone was less than OK. The quality was the same or lower than any cheap Chinese takeout place in New York. I think Hat Yai is small enough that this is the closest thing they have to a foodie/heritage type restaurant, but it’s definitely not worth going out of your way for.

Next, I headed over to picturesque Wat Chue Chang, a very big, very new place. Again, just . . . whatever. It’s fine for a photo I guess, or to get out of the sun. My last couple hours I spent at Lorem Ipsum café, the local LGBT coffee shop. It’s located on one of the two blocks in Hat Yai that actually dates back to the 1930s, so I took some photos of the old fashioned buildings and actually read the entire lorem ipsum passage by Cicero, conveniently printed on the cup. I attempted and failed to engage the staff, who had no idea who Cicero was or what the passage meant or its significnce in graphic design. Exciting times, I tell you!

Hat Yai: not worth visiting but better than sitting in the airport if you can spare the approximately $15 for round trip cab fare (250 baht from the airport to Nai Roo via airport taxi, 160 baht from Lorem Ipsum back to the airport via grab).