Into Thailand

We said goodbye to Petani early one morning, ferried out from the beach to rendezvous with the larger boat for the crossing to the mainland. Transferring rucksacks from boat to boat was slightly unnerving since having to send a scuba diver down to recover one would certainly secure one's reputation on the island. We had also packed a change of clothes in plastic bags in case of a downpour, since a day's travel in soaked clothes wasn't a pleasant prospect, but the trip was thankfully dry.

An hour's taxi drive took us to the border and a fairly straightforward and efficient crossing into Thailand. After a few hundred sweaty meters up the main road into the border town on the Thai side we put down our rucksacks, picked up some cash at a cashpoint, and asked directions to the main bus station for public buses to Bangkok. The response was friendly, even though it was in fragmentary English - why not try the minibuses parked 50 meters back down the road instead? These were privately-run air-conditioned Toyotas, perfectly comfortable and efficient. After a somewhat circuitous start as we scooted around town picking up the last few passengers (company motto obviously "No Passenger Left Behind") we set off fully laden on the 4 hour drive to Hat Yai (for anyone following the trip on a map).

The drive was fun and also fascinating in the sudden contrasts with Malaysia. You notice immediately that southern Thailand is much more prosperous than north-eastern Malaysia: the road is a high quality 4-lane semi-motorway; the traffic wasn't very heavy but consisted almost exclusively of brand new-looking Japanese pickup trucks rather than the smaller, and usually slightly decrepit, locally-made Protons on the Malaysian side; and the shops and restaurants in the towns and around the petrol stations were much more often glass-fronted, air conditioned and fitted out to Western levels of quality, many being franchises of Western brands.

Slightly more oddly the whole area seemed more generously proportioned: the farms seemed to be much bigger, with paddy fields stretching to distant lines of palms rather than consisting of small clusters of mixed-use, somewhat patchwork, fields; the houses were similarly much more substantial and set farther apart. It was similar in a way to driving from a poorer rural area of Europe (southern Italy say) into a Holland or Germany. In a strange way the landscape corresponded more closely to my Western cliche of a south-east Asian landscape - bright green expansive paddy fields, distant treelines, water buffalo accompanied by delicate white egrets, white herons patrolling the paddy.

There was however one major negative difference - a very intensive, ominous and "in-your-face" military presence. In Malaysia I can't really remember seeing any weapons - maybe the occasional cop with a pistol. As soon as one crosses the border however the situation changes - in town military uniforms and automatic rifles are visible seemingly at every street corner, and you see plenty of military trucks and Humvees rumbling through the streets.

On the drive to Hat Yai the minibus had to slow down every few miles to around 20 mph to negotiate a slalom-type military checkpoint, the sort where barricades are placed across alternating lanes of the highway forcing all traffic to slow down and weave between them. Our bus wasn't stopped but presumably anything suspicious will be. Not all the checkpoints were manned but most had at least a few soldiers with automatic weapons close to hand, many had additional sandbagged pillboxes. One even had a few flower boxes placed around the barricades - a nice domestic touch I thought.

All in all it seemed like a quasi-occupation. I'd read that the Thai government had been facing what it termed "Islamic terrorism" in the south. Certainly the culture is as obviously Muslim as in Malaysia, and to the casual passerby it seems just as relaxed and non-doctrinaire.

But in particular given that we didn't see any obvious public military presence in Bangkok or on the drive to the Cambodian border it seemed bizarre, and probably counter-productive, that the south is being treated to such a display of force.

Anyway, in the next episode we spend a day in Hat Yai, a nondescript little town, and take the overnight train to Bangkok. Oldies among you might remember Peter Seller's comedy sketch "Balham: Gateway to the South". Hat Yai is about as memorable as Balham.