Day 316b: Tammalang Pier - Trang (ตรัง)

Feb 13 - Struggle off the ferry with the bags and get in the long line at immigration. The entire pier and adjoining town appear to have been built up out of the mangrove swamps. No fuss at immigration, and we head out through the port terminal. There are some touts for minivans to Trang, among many other destinations. I chose one and argue about the price for awhile, finally get it down a ways and agree. He takes me to a desk where a woman writes out a receipt. It is only then that it is clear that we need to ride in the back of a pickup truck to the town of Satun, where the actual bus station is. I don’t like this sort of complexity, which on occasion can turn into a bait-and-switch where you get to the bus station only to find out that your previous payment is not accepted by the bus companies. I let it happen anyway, just getting the feeling that we would probably be OK. We are crammed into the back of the pickup with some other tourists and locals. The road between the pier and Satun is all mangroves.

The Satun bus station is quiet. I produce the receipt and thankfully it gets converted into three bus tickets. It is relatively expensive ($26 for the three of us), which I reckon is about double what it should be in terms of distance. The exchange rate is about 31 Baht/US Dollar. But I knew from beforehand that the system at this Thai entry point is like this, so no surprises there. All the normal buses leave too early to catch the passengers on the 13:00 ferry we were compelled to sail on.

This part of Thailand, a strip of land bordering Malaysia, has always been restive and problematic. From about 1800 onward, the kings of Thailand were constantly in a back-and-forth with Great Britain over provinces between the two powers. The Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 finalized this boundary, in which Siam ceded places like Perlis and Kedah (where Alor Setar is), and took full control over Satun, along with many other towns now just north of the border. However, the inhabitants of these areas on the Thai side who were ethnic Malays didn’t agree with this and as a result, a conflict known as the South Thailand Insurgency has continued to present day. Here, in the area of Satun, there isn’t much of a problem, but over east of here the insurgency has caused endless problems for Thailand, as the insurgency doubles as a drug-trafficking operation.

I realize that many of the forests we are driving through are rubber plantations. The trees are in rows and each scored with diagonal lines, little buckets at the ready to collect the white sap. It occurs to me that I never saw this in Malaysia, even though the country is famous for being a rubber producer back in the day.

Swing into the Trang bus station just as the sun is going down. It is deathly silent there with no car taxis in sight, but we find one tuk-tuk driver sleeping in the back of his transport. He jumps up and takes us to our guesthouse, which is a quiet place in a back alley near downtown.

As we interact with the woman who runs the guesthouse, memories flood back to me of what it is like to travel in Thailand, and how formalized and polite everyone is. Like in Malaysia, people offer and receive money with their right hand, placing their left hand on their right arm. And in Thailand, add to this a slight bow and simultaneously placing both hands together in front of the chest like a prayer when saying thank you or greeting. Its hard to get all of that coordination together when making transactions or holding backpacks. Also, the Thai language resonates very differently than many others, as it possesses tones (like Chinese). There are five: low, medium, high, rising, and falling. It makes the language almost musical.

There is a night market festival on, so we walk through town to get some dinner there.