An internet place, พัทลุง, ราชอาณาจักรไทย

Yesterday reached Thailand in an air-conditioned shuttle bus from Georgetown. The border crossing took an hour since the King of Malaysia had a birthday, and many of his subjects apparently went to Thailand to celebrate it. So had to stand in a line for one hour to obtain the entry stamp. (We already had a 60-day visa that we had received in Georgetown.)

In Hat Yai got off the shuttle bus and took an intercity bus to Phatthalung (พัทลุง), an entry point to the Thale Noi lake that Csilla insisted on seeing. The bus dropped us somewhere at the edge of the town and the driver pointed us to a pickup truck that was just about to leave to Thale Noi. These pickup trucks seem to be the core of the public transportation here. Similar to public transportation in many places of the world, they are overloaded with passengers, some travel outside the passenger compartment hanging somehow to the side railings.

In one hour the truck was in Thale Noi. It's off-season now so most of the aquatic birds that the lake is famous for had flown somewhere else --- the lake that would otherwise be white with egrets was now simply black with mud, with some patches of pink water lilies. The village by the lake is a domestic tourist destination, the only foreigners that we met were a group of geography students from Singapore, sent here to study the tourism potential of the lake. (The best idea would be to get Lonely Planet writing about it, currently Lonely Planet Thailand 2007 doesn't even mention it, so all the international overlanding tourists who arrive from Malaysia will go straight to Phuket.)

As a result of the little international tourism, nobody speaks English and all the signs are only in the Thai script. So we walked along the main road looking for a hotel, probably missing several of them, since the only word we know in Thai is พัทลุง (Phatthalung). Ended up at the other end of the village, about 1km away from the center, where we finally found a hotel. The signs there didn't contain any Latin characters either but a friend? of the owner? enthusiastically dragged us in.

Sunrise over the lake this morning was impressive. We arranged with a local boat man to take us on a tour on a lake (2h for 2per = 400 Baht). One can see quite many birds (egrets, jacanas, kingfishers, cormorants, eagles) but only from a distance because the noise from the engine of the boat scares them away. Was nevertheless quite a pleasant trip.

We have now arrived back to Phattalung and are killing time in an internet place till our overnight train to Krung Thep (i.e. Bangkok).