Surat Thani – In Less Than 12 Hours

As we will be flying off to Kuala Lumpur via Surat Thani in a morning flight, we decided to end our Southern Thailand journey here. This will be the final province that we could explore while we were in Thailand. But we keep wondering, what shall we do and where shall we go in less than 12 hours?

As what we observed, Surat Thani normally get treated as a transit town to get to Koh Samui to another province within Thailand where there are offering good connection of intercity public transport such as train station, bus terminal and airport . It’s a small town but we believe there’s always some interesting spot that we can explore within the city area.

The first thing that we did is to secure the accommodation while we were there. We ended up with MyPlace @ Surat Thani as they are getting so much of good and convincing reviews via Trip Advisor, Agoda and etc. With the price of 530 baht (with taxes), we finally agreed to that. How cheap is that?

The welcome board

The detailing at the Hotel Lobby

The room

We need to get our feet on the street to start exploring the town. With a drawn map in hand prepared by the hotel personnel, here we go! FF headed the ‘our own kind of way’ walking tour to the nearest spot of Tapi River. We just managed to discover that Tapi River (or Tapee River) is one of the longest river in Southern Thailand.

The river originates at the Khao Luang, and has a wide estuary into the Gulf of Thailand at Bandon Bay near the town of Surat Thani. It has a length of 230 kilometres (140 mi). The river was named in August 1915, after the river Tapi in India, shortly after the town of Surat Thani was named after the town Surat.

Source: Wikipedia

The afternoon view of Tapi River

Right after that, we explored the Waterfront and this is where the food street located. Late in the afternoon, locals will start setting up their stalls and the first thing that we spotted is definitely some Halal stall! We were a little bit skeptical at first since we couldn’t find any information on Halal food in Surat Thani. So, this is it! Alhamdulillah. As we’re still early, we decided to walk up to the Surat Thani Pillar Shrine.

Fresh fruit stall

As we reached the pillar, we found that the shrine is a center for locals and it is situated in a center of the city. We just stand right in front of the main entrance without any plan to enter the area.

We got more attracted lazying around at the Waterfront to photograph and witness the sunset view of Tapi River with the bridge crossing to Koh Lampoo. While waiting for the sun to fully set, we chit chat talking about our life, our trip and things that we really wanted to do after this. It was such a nice view and a personal moments for both of us. The atmosphere, the feeling and everything is just at the right time.

We then decided to head back to the Food Street area by walking through Namuang Road. Half way, we saw a long queue of locals at one of the shop lots from far and we decided to see what it is all about. It’s a Halal shop selling yellow chicken rice! Oh my! Just in time! Since the last meal that we took of the day is way back in Koh Samui, we decided to get something to eat for dinner. We quickly ordered as the rice in the big pot is running out. It comes with a bbq chicken and this is way different from other set that we’ve tried from other province which come with a spicy fried chicken. We even tried the spicy beef soup as well. Delicious! One of the best clear soup I’ve ever taste. It’s just a small shop run by a family. You can spot the shop as it’s located a few lots away from the Fire Station.

Just to feel the local night market atmosphere here, we then went to the San Jao Market which located a few blocks away from the hotel. You can find many types of foods and desserts with an ancient style which are waiting for visitors to try. The night market is open almost everyday from 4.00pm to 10.00pm. What makes us impressed is that we could see almost 50% of the stall vendors son and daughter ranging from kids to teenagers came with a full school uniform attire just to help their parents around. Amazing! This is the spirit!

The ‘San Jao’ Night Market

One of the convenience store, Sahathai

We wrapped up the day by lazying around at the cozy hotel lobby just to get the free WI-FI connection as we couldn’t get a good connection from our hotel room. It’s time for some social media hooked up.

The cute sofa cushion cover.

We woke up early in the morning as we need to catch the morning flight. It’s very convenience for us as we walked directly to the Airport Link (Run by Phantip Travel located in Taladmai Road) with a distance of only 300m away from the hotel. With just 100 baht, you will then finally reached airport in 45 minutes time.

We do agree that we did not covered Surat Thani in overall since times doesn’t permitted us. Who knows, we might be back one day?

We finally ended our journey this time. As usual, there’s a lots of hard things and hiccups that we endure during our travel journey all the way from KL – Hatyai – Phuket – Koh Samui – Surat Thani – KL in 7 days and 7 nights. But again, we enjoyed and cherished every moments that we had. We were just close and lucky as we’re not involved in any scam just because we look like Thais. Are we? Hehe. Just forget about it. Again, we considered this as MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Simply us,
Zara AB & FF
The Province of Chroma