So, as I got to the clock tower, I asked a guy about the cost to get to Songkhla and he told me '60 Baht'. I know that this should be cheaper so I sat down under the clock and started to read a book. Another guy came up to me and offered to drive me be private motorbike to Songkhla for 300. I said 'no thanks', so he asked for 200. I said, 'i am not interested'. Then, he told me where to find the cheaper minivan. This was really cool as there was no money in it for him so I gave him a tip and jumped in the van along with about 20 local people. As can be seen from http://youtu.be/xnd3IH4IZZ4 , there were people hanging from the back of the van so space was at a premiun (I am REALLY glad I washed my clothes before going on that trip as they were beginning to stink (again)). I took a few pics from the inside of the public bus...
Leaving the bustling centre of Hat Yai
Goodbye Mr Hat Yai man!
I knew there was a distance of around 28 km between the2 towns but I hadn't a clue where to get off and the entrance to Songkhla seemed to go on forever! I asked one of the guys on the bus for directions and he was more than happy to help me but he didn't really know the way to either of the two hostels. As we reached our final destination, one of the girls on the bus asked me if I knew where I was going (I think I must have the look of a person who is continually lost as people are coming up to me all the time like this!) Anyway, she introduced herself as Kik and she was saying that she goes to uni. here in Songkhla ,so she would try to help me find the hostel.(She is studying marketing but doesn't like the advertising side of it. I was thinking to myself, is the advertising side of marketing an important aspect of marketing. Then, I remembered, I hadn't a clue about marketing! ) Anyway,we walked around for a couple of minutes and ended up in this cafe where the owner came out and told kik where the find 2 of the hostels. So, we headed off to find the ''romantic guest house'. It took us 10 minutes to find the guest house but Unfotunately , it wasn't too romantic anymore as it had closed down due to lack of business a couple of years previously...eep!!! we moved oin to see if we could find 'Yoma guest house'. It took another few minutes but Kik found it and to be honest, i really would not have found this place on my own unless i found an english speaker (which is difficult enough around these parts).Anyway, Kik finished her good samaritan duties and I had a new town to explore! So she went off to the uni and I headed to the beach... I read that there is a mermaid statue that stands by the beach and to quote the book that I was reading ''the local people regard the mermaid as a shrine tying the waist with coloured cloth and rubbing the breasts for good luck', so I headed off in the diection of the beach ,whereupon I bumped into the homeplace of the 16th prime minister of Thailand!
I thought it was the birthplace of the 15th prime minister. I am gutted :-(
You could still see many monuments dottted all over the town with fancy styles
These buildings are built as entrances to various locations. So, I guess they could be seen as nice hall doors!
Intricate roof design seen here
I arrived at the beach and noticed a few statues could be seen ....such as...
A couple of lads hanging around by the beachfront!
Sculpture of a woman looking at the couple of lads from the picture above this one.
The accompanying description describes this monument perfectly....here it is
yes, that's what I thought it was
Sculpture of a man while reading (a book I presume (although it COULD be a pamphlet))
The description ( in english) of this scultpure is the following...
Note: There are always references to people who support the sculpturer
At this point, I could get a nice picture of the small pieces of land jutting out from the mainland and further down the beach I was able to see the mermaid perusing the mainland!
A couple of boats hanging suspiciously in the water close to that island
Should I use Timotei or another product to wash my hair
Yep, She IS a mermaid as she has the tail
I was able to get a pic of the sun breaking through the clouds right beside the mermaids statue.This beach seemed to stretch on for miles although I saw barely any foreigners on it. (A few days later I was told by a guy from Chang Mai that some woman that visited Songkhla was kicked to death by a bunch of rebels as they did not really want any tourists coming to their town. To be honest, I am not sure if that is a true story (at the same time, i have read that Songkhla does teend to scare off a lot lot of foreign tourists) I can only state that I never saw any problems while I visited this town.)
Sun breaking through the clouds on a sweltering day in Songkhla
There many more sculptures to be seen here including the cat and the mouse...
I decided to head n back to the hostel using a different route to the one that I used when walking to the beach. The width of the roads here is pretty wide (which is a good thing as it gives lots of room for motorbikes to pass other motorbikers!)
Mountain View from the ground at Songkhla
As per usual, I ended up bumping into a few monkeys on the way home.I am glad I got that rabies shot which takes care of me if a monkey bites because at this rate, it is only a matter of time before I get bitten by one of those primates!
Trying to open up a bag which was once filled with curry
How many of these critters are floating about the place!
The answer to the question can be seen in the resulting clip http://youtu.be/gcaBWRaf9Mg . There seemed to be lots and lots and lots of monkeys walking everywhere around here!
Looking at the monkeys searching for food made me hungry so I found a place which sold bread (for biting apparently, although I am not sure what else you can do with bread)
hmmmm, bread for licking? bread for chewing (wait a minute, that last one works... If I ever set up a shop, that'll be the name of it)
I had a rest for a while and then it was night market time! Onthe way to the night market I took another photo of (what I assume to be) a Buddha ,but this one looked like a very dodgy clown.
This Buddha scares me (So I guess it has some reverence attached to it which makes it a good statue)
When I got to the market, I saw one guy was making some pancakes and I had not ried a pancake in quite some time (They use condensed mile as a garnish on the pancake to give it a sweet taste. It works really well) The pancake tasted really good and it inly cost 10 Baht (Which I found out to be really cheap compared to touristy place like phi phii where a pancake would set you back between 30-50 baht)
Wok- check, eggs - check.
Let's make a pancake!
Service with a smile...sort of
I grabbed a chicken and rice meal off another vendor for 30 Baht and that was the dinner sorted for the night!
Lovely , except for the cucumbers
As a side note, can somebody introduce a worldwide ban on cucumbers such that they do not appear on every single meal that I seem to buy (from ANYWHERE in the world). All someone needs to say is they are toxic and cancerous... I don't know why but I REALLY don't like cucumbers. When I was in K.L, I told a guy at the burger stall that I did not want cucumbers with my special burger (a special burger is one with a burger AND an omelette). He said 'no problem' and proceeded to leave out the omelette and give me extra cucumber portions...aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!
The next day, I noticed a building at the top of the moutain hidden amongst a load of trees .The seemed like a photo opportunity in waiting!
See the building hidden by the trees? note the hazy sunshine.It's very hot in this part of the world!
From a distance it looks like it's a swanky treehouse!
I found some water features and more mermaids dotted around this area during this mornings walk.
I guess mermaids have no use for bikinis
There are lots of water features to be found here. I am not sure if this would work in Dublin as
1. It's too cold to have water features
2. They would end up full of dirty shopping trolleys and superquinn nags anyway.
3. Drunk people might end up face down in the features so it could be dangerous!
Anyway, I kept seeing all types of sculpture. This place seems like an artists heaven!!
The one below is called 'From Earth To Sky have a look at it and it's description! (I think the government are trying to encourage tourism is this locality and in my opinion, it seems pretty cool to have as many sculptures as possible located round the town as it makes it a more interesting place to visit!)
'
There's no point in me having a caption here (I see the irony in creating a caption just to note that I don't need one.)
I could not see the introduction to this piece so I will christen it 'body of snake'
View of Songkhla as seen though the outline of the body of the snake
This is not really a sculpture as it is more of a derelict bridge which was left to rack and ruin The stream that flowed under this river has been replaced by a lot of weeds
The symbol of life....brought to ....agh....life
Looks like pacman escaped and jumped on a musical note! The reason this thing was built can be seen in the jpeg below.
I hope H.R.H liked pacman
Colours seem to be important when sculpturing..
Are you looking at me (is what the horse would say if he could speak - well, he would probably say, give me some food and take the damn rope off me)
I decided to visit the local aquarium as I hear that you can see people dancing with the fish. cool (but kind of odd also) !
Aquarium in the distance.
Blinding sun in the foreground!
Lots of stuff to do here (although, when I visited the place, the go karting course)seemed pretty derelict
The elephant must like it so I will have to pay the aquarium a visit!
Did one of the fish escape from the fish tank?
Interesting and scary looking fish
Teenage mutant turtle
Crabby the crab
uh oh, the turtle is back and he means business!
fish in a HUGE aquarium starts looking at me. A case of roll reversal (the viewee looking at the viewer)
This was one massive turtle who swam over my head (the aquarium was build such that the viewer can walk under the tank at some points)
"I am going to get you,human bloke!"
kickass aquarium
The diver came out at one point and started dancing with the fish. I took a small video of the result. Note the ear splitting music that accompanies the dance! The clip can e seen on . http://youtu.be/3ABsHsHBAKI
I will put more pics up on my facebook account as it might get a little boring to see a lot of pictures of fish!
Anyway, after the aquarium adventure, i headed back to the beach where i noticed a set of cannons overlooking the sea. I guess this could have been a fortess at some point in time.
Ready and waiting if needs be
Further on down the beach, there is a cool statue of a dragon with water spurting out its mouth into the ocean below.
Do not walk under the part where the water squirts into the sea as it gets very slippery there and somebody might accidentally slip and hurt themselves (which did not happen to me *embarrased*)
Wow, first cannons and now a torpedo. This place means business!
I move on the local history museum but unfortunately it seems to close at 4pm and I arrived to late to go inside, Still I was able to get another photo of another water feature. After this, I went for another quick walk around the town whereupon I walked into a rally taking place for a politician (I think) It seemed serious enough so I kept my distance. While walking back to the hostel, I noticed the monkeys that I had seen the day before were still hanging around the place but perched on peoples roofs now! I wondered if those people cared that their roofs were being taken over and if they did, what could they do about it! By the time I got baack to the hostel, the streets were covered with new shops that had sprung up during my walk (impressive stuff!) I grabbed some stuff in the shops and prepared all my gear as I was planning to move on to Phuket later that day...
Anyway, here are some photos of the outside of the museum and various other places/ things that I observed.
They should create a museum based solely on water features
The writing on the ground (from what I can gather) refers to the stalls that are set uo during the evening time.I took this photo and walked around for an hour . When I got back to this location, it was FULL of shops!
I walked into a political parade at one point. Everybody seemed to be dressed up so I kept my distance as I hadn't a clue what was going on here.It seemed like some sort of rally and from all the material that I have read about Songkhla, i was told to stay well away from all rallies here.
This is the stage at the rally
The monkeys are on the loose and hungry as ever
These stalls appeared from nowhere!
What a sagem terminal looks like in Thailand. (yes, these pictures are thrilling!)
Under pain of death, never buy this beer (in my opinion) .It is possibly the worst drink I have ever tasted EVER and I have tasted many beverages!
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