You will discover here a small part of the southern province of Phatthalung where I have been several times to visit my family in law. This region is mostly inhabited by Muslims since it is close to the Malaysian border and influence. This is also bordering the most southern part of the country where some fighting has been taking place for the last few years. The nature of this violence seems to be both religious as it happens too many times in our world but not only. Another part of the problem is a quest for power and control. You saw that Thailand is the only land route between Malaysia, Singapore and the rest of Asia. So, by taking a brief look at the map, you can easily see that a separation of the south from Thailand would give them a strong control over that very busy point of commerce and transit. This is just a very brief idea of the situation and not a judgment in any case since it is very hard to know who is right and wrong at this stage since the government is not exactly trying to help the situation with very strong armed interventions and total lack of dialogue with the separatists. I will leave it up to you to find out more about the Thai politics should you be interested in it.

So, I will now take you away from all these issues and head out to the small and quiet village of Pak Payun where we go to relax with the family when the need for a break from the life and the rush of Phuket comes.
This is a place where people still take the time to relax and live their lives day by day, a place where many people are at the same time fisherman and rubber plantation workers. Everything is more relaxed there, to the point that even Islam and religions in general are not followed as closely as in other countries.

Even though this village is not directly on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, there is still a fair amount of fishing going on since it is literally meters away from an inland sea called Taley Sap Songkla. This inland sea used to be very rich in marine life despite its shallow waters (not deeper than 6 to 10 meters) and filled with clear waters. Unfortunately, with time and marine currents, the connection with this inland sea and the Gulf of Thailand has been closed by sand bars over time and the water clarity started to drop to become yellowish, loaded with sand particles. With all the run out from the land during the rainy season, these waters even started to loose their usual salt concentration to become something between fresh and saltwater. This is the biggest reason why the fish population has declined in the last decade. However, thanks to a project led by the King of Thailand himself, the channel between the inland sea and the open waters of the Gulf of Thailand has been reopened, giving a great hope to the local populations to see the marine life coming back to repopulate the Taley Sap Songkla sea soon.

The only sea food still well represented and fished in this area are the prawns. Living there for a little while really makes you wonder about the value of things. I have seen poor families telling me that they have to eat seafood everyday because they do not have enough money to eat something else! I’m not sure about you but at first, thinking with a western mind; it took me a minute to think about what I had just heard to understand it… I was a bit more used to hear the opposite from people in financial difficulties. It made me understand how differently a same product can be seen and valued by different people in different parts of the world. So if you like prawns and seafood in general, remember that a kilo of freshly caught prawns costs as little as 60€ cents!

The few pictures below show you a couple fishermen I followed an evening while they were setting out to retrieve their nets. A very nice experience in an area that does not see many foreigners yet.
You can click on the thumbs to enlarge them.

Longtail boat engine	Fisherman house	Fishermen	Setting out
Pushing out	Evening catch	Pulling the net	Back to port
Prawn net	Promjinda family	Family pontoon	Sorting
Sorting	Experienced hands	Preparation