Songkhla: After 21 Years in Thailand, I Finally Found a Place That Surprised Me

After 21 years in Thailand, I finally visited Songkhla — and it became my most liked travel post. Dancing shrimps, a surprise ice festival, colonial old town architecture, and the best food scene nobody outside southern Thailand talks about.

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Originally shared on Facebook · September 2025 · 75 reactions (LOVE), 7 comments, 2 shares — my most engaged travel post

After 21 years in Thailand, I thought I had run out of new places to discover.

I was wrong.

Songkhla is one of the few Thai provinces I had never visited. It sits in the deep south, near the Malaysian border, on a narrow peninsula between the Gulf of Thailand and Thailand’s largest inland body of water, Lake Songkhla. Most foreigners have never heard of it. Most Thais from Bangkok treat it as a transit point on the way somewhere else. I went there with no particular expectations and came back with more enthusiasm than I have felt about a Thai destination in years.

How I Got There: Under 800 Baht Round Trip

AirAsia flies from Bangkok to Hat Yai for less than 800 baht round trip if you book ahead and travel light. Hat Yai is the commercial centre of southern Thailand — bigger than you expect, loud, full of markets and Malaysian day-trippers who come specifically to eat. From Hat Yai, Songkhla is 30 minutes by songthaew or taxi.

That combination — cheap flight, easy connection — makes the Songkhla/Hat Yai area one of the most accessible hidden destinations in Thailand. Yet somehow the foreigners looking for beaches and nightlife keep going to Phuket, Pattaya, and Koh Samui. Their loss.

The bronze mermaid statue at Samila Beach, Songkhla, southern Thailand
The Samila Beach mermaid — Songkhla’s most photographed landmark, sitting between the Gulf of Thailand and the old town.

Songkhla Old Town: The Thailand That History Left Behind

Songkhla’s old town is a Sino-Portuguese neighbourhood of extraordinary character. The architecture is colonial but not colonial in the way that feels like a museum piece. People actually live in these buildings. Shophouses from the early 20th century still function as family businesses on the ground floor with living quarters above. The streets are narrow, tiled, and unhurried.

There is street art in the old town — not the tourist-facing kind you see in every “discovered” neighbourhood in Asia, but work that engages with the specific history and culture of the area. Chinese, Malay, and Thai influences blend here in a way that is genuinely distinct from anything in Bangkok or the north.

A Sino-Portuguese building with red shuttered doors and a moon gate in Songkhla Old Town
Songkhla’s old town — Sino-Portuguese shophouses and walled compounds with families still living above the ground-floor shops.

The food reflects that mix perfectly.

Kung Den: Dancing Shrimps

I ate dancing shrimps in Songkhla. Kung den — live freshwater shrimps, still moving, dressed with fish sauce, lime, garlic, chili, and fresh herbs. You eat them whole. They are still very much alive when they arrive at the table.

Is it confronting? Yes. Is it one of the most intensely fresh, texturally interesting things I have eaten in 21 years of eating Thai food? Also yes. The sweetness of the live shrimp against the acid and heat of the dressing is extraordinary. It is the kind of dish that only makes sense in the place where it was born — a fishing culture on a lake that has been doing this for generations.

A wooden fishing pier and stilt house on Lake Songkhla in southern Thailand
Lake Songkhla — the largest inland body of water in Thailand. The fishing culture here is what makes the local food the local food.

The Ice Festival I Did Not Know Existed

One of the unexpected discoveries was finding an ice festival in southern Thailand. Ice sculptures. In the deep south. Near the equator. It sounds absurd, and it is slightly absurd, and it is also genuinely impressive — the kind of local event that happens because a community decided to do something extraordinary in a place that nobody outside the province was paying attention to.

This is what I mean when I say Thailand still has the capacity to surprise me. You find an ice festival in Songkhla, and it recalibrates everything you thought you knew about the country.

Hat Yai: The City That Southern Thailand Actually Runs On

Hat Yai is not a pretty city. It is a working city — commercial, dense, unfussy. But it has one of the most concentrated food scenes I have encountered in Thailand. The markets start early and run late. Malaysian visitors come specifically to eat, which is always a reliable quality indicator. The diversity of the food — halal southern Thai, Chinese, Malay, Indian — reflects a population that has been mixing cultures for centuries.

The floating market and the night bazaar are worth an evening. The coffee shops — southern Thailand has its own coffee culture, distinct from the Bangkok third-wave scene — are good and cheap.

Why Songkhla Matters: The Bigger Point

Foreigners who visit Thailand tend to converge on a small number of destinations. Chiang Mai. Phuket. Pattaya. Koh Samui. Bangkok. These places are popular because they have invested in the infrastructure of tourism and because the travel industry — guidebooks, booking platforms, Instagram — amplifies existing popularity.

But Thailand is a large, complex, and deeply varied country. Songkhla and Hat Yai are Thai cities that exist for Thais and regional visitors, not for a foreign tourist market. That is, in my experience, exactly where the most authentic and interesting experiences are found.

I went back once more to write about the floods — because that same area, so beautiful and alive during my visit, later experienced serious flooding that I had seen personally in other Thai provinces in 2004 and 2011. The beauty and the vulnerability exist in the same place.

Practical Information: Visiting Songkhla and Hat Yai

  • How to get there: AirAsia Bangkok–Hat Yai, from under 800 THB round trip if booked in advance
  • From Hat Yai to Songkhla: Songthaew (shared minivan) or taxi, 30 minutes, around 200–300 THB
  • Where to stay: Songkhla old town for atmosphere; Hat Yai for convenience and access to more restaurants and transport
  • What to eat: Kung den (dancing shrimps), southern Thai curries, Hat Yai fried chicken (kai tod Hat Yai), khao yam (southern herb rice salad)
  • Best time to visit: November to March — dry season in the south, post-monsoon clarity
  • Budget: Accommodation from 500 THB/night in Songkhla old town. Meals from 50–200 THB per dish. Very affordable.

After 21 years in Thailand, Songkhla gave me back something I had quietly started to lose: the feeling of genuine discovery. That feeling is worth more than most things.

Sebastien H. Brousseau is a Canadian lawyer, permanent resident of Thailand since 2014, and founder of ThaiLawOnline.com. He has lived in Thailand continuously since 2006 and writes about travel, culture, and life in Southeast Asia.

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