Feast for the senses

September 19, 2009 by  
Filed under Nakhon Si Thammarat, Related Interests

A riverside community in the South delights with its natural bounty

There’s a host of things to see and do and lots of tasty tidbits to sample during a day’s outing to Pak Phanang, 36 kilometres east of Nakhon Si Thammarat town. During the 19th and early 20th centuries this district was the rice bowl of the far South. Its strategic location near the mouth (pak) of the Phanang River made it convenient for ships from British Malaya and even from as far away as Java to dock and load up with hulled rice from the steam-powered mills that lined a long stretch of the waterway. ”Commercial vessels no longer tie up along here,” said Paisarn Wipoosanapat, a local resident who’d volunteered to be our guide for the day, ”but we’ve preserved the old wooden shophouses and I think the atmosphere is similar to what it must have been like in the past.”

Read more