Around 15 km from the popular commercial hub, Hat Yai, Songkhla has all the making of a sleepy beach town. We drove along the beach and stopped at the end of the road. Lo! we found a economical and a nice hotel and bunked for the night. The sleepy town is only stirred by a line of night clubs with live music or semblance to it. In the night, we walked along the beach had our dinner and a couple of drinks.
The beaches in Songkhla aren’t great but they are far less crowded. Tourism is also localised and you wont see many foreigners. Needless to say, language is a big constraint and even the cuisine is heavily local and menus in most of the restaurants are in Thai. We were lucky to find a waitress who was studying in an University somewhere in Thailand and had come for holidays there and could speak English.
Songkhla is easy to miss and skip while you are touring in contrast to many of its famous cousins, but if you just want to get away, especially if you are in Malaysia, this is not a bad place at all.
We saw a couple of temples in Songkhla & hit the highway the following day around 12-noon.
