Thailand

South Thailand / The Region

Typical highway town inThailand

To the foreign and Thai visitor, southern Thailand has a lot to offer: lush tropical islands, dazzling palm-fringed beaches, coral reefs teeming with colorful marine life, picturesque fishing villages with distinctive hand-painted boats, steep but not necessarily high hills that could be defined as enormous rocks, often more than 100 meters high spread through plains of rice fields, numerous caves (many of them of religious significance), waterfalls, remote National Parks (16 all in all), scenic wildlife sanctuaries, historic cities and the juxtaposition of Buddhist temples and Islamic mosques.

By far the most famous destination is the island of Phuket, with a well developed touristic infrastructure and its own international airport. For the more hippie type of travelers, Ko Samui has long been a favorite destination. But more and more other destinations, such as Krabi Province, have been discovered in recent years by those visitors to the Kingdom who like places where tourists are not as massed as on Phuket. For visitors from Malaysia and Singapore, Hat Yai is a well established destination though traditionally not for the (non-existent) beauty of the place but rather the nightlife.

Geographically, southern Thailand extends through the Kra Isthmus from Chumphon, 460km south of Bangkok, to the Thai-Malaysian border. To the east is the Gulf of Thailand, to the west the Andaman Sea of the Indian Ocean.