Pakpanang Trip 2018

This was a trip I took alone but anytime you travel alone, you aren't always alone. Travelling alone is a catalyst to meeting new people. If you travel with someone or in a group, you can still meet people but it's less likely because you're enjoying each other's company. The uncle in the first photo is someone I met on the van there. He was very friendly and talking to everybody around him. He eventually poked me and we ended up talking for a good portion of the trip to Pakpanang.

In those days I would usually have a Monday to Friday off work. I liked that a lot. It was just like that for this trip to Pakpanang in Nakhon Si Tammarat province. I left Monday morning and returned on Friday. I stayed with Jerry who was a couchsurfer I had met in Hatyai. He passed by Hatyai a few times and we met up that way. It was now time for me to visit him in his town where he worked as an English teacher. 

Meeting people when travelling solo is a source of happiness as well.

Pakpanang is a town on both sides of a wide and natural canal. The canal opens up to the Gulf of Thailand and is a main waterway for fishing. The town is also littered with bird-houses. These are apartment size concrete buildings made for birds to make their nests in. The nests are then collected twice a year and sold at high prices all over the continent.

The town is small and can be discovered completely by walking. Of course you'll need to take the 1 baht ferry to the other side if you want to fully see both sides.

The art is a nice aspect of the town. Most of it was obviously commissioned by businesses for commercial purposes but it's nice to see murals. I was telling Ying on our trip to this town last weekend that if the town invests more into its art, then tourism will also increase. Check out this post to see photos from our 2020 trip to Pakpanang.

I walked to this temple on the outskirts of town and the walk itself was a very rewarding journey. 

Reaching to the Sky for the Divine

These ferry boats are just one set of boats linking the two sides of town. The other set are found in the market area. These ones in the photo can transport motorcycles across the canal but the ferries in the market take passengers only.

"You can see Nakhon from here," they told me.

The windmills are a characteristic emblem of the Pakpanang area.

A lot of street art is underground but this particular mural is underbridge.

The friendliest monks captured my attention before I captured their photo.

They truly are very kind people just like they seem from their photos.

The 2km walk to this other temple, also on the outskirts of town on the other side of the canal, was just as rewarding. Every couple hundred meters, people sitting in front of their homes would stop me, ask me where I'm going and where I'm from, offer me water, and ask if I had eaten anything yet.