Living In Trang, Thailand
Well as my blog is about my life in Trang and think it might be useful to give my readers some information about the place. Trang is a city and province located in southern Thailand, from a tourist point of view it is just below Phuket and Koh Samui. It is a large province with coastal access to the Andaman Sea and Islands. The main industries are rubber, palm oil and a small amount of rice. Rubber is probably the most important industry and Trang was in fact the first place in Thailand to grow rubber trees after the Governor brought them from Malay.
Of course being Thailand the weather is tropical, with the hottest time of the year January to April before the monsoon breaks. Trang is not really a tourist destination, although there some 46 islands in the Province, these are generally small and usually only have one or two resorts on them. To me Trang is real Thailand, very few people speak English and as a foreigner if you try to speak Thai it has to very good to be understood, and the tone is the most important. Of course there is also a local dialect which most people speak so even if you can understand classic Thai not many people speak it.
In terms of terrain, is quite hilly with a large number of limestone hills that just seem to stick out of the land, these are very common in this area and make the landscape unique. Of course just about every piece of available land has rubber trees planted on it; that makes me wonder about what it was like before 1899 when rubber came here, was it native jungle or grasslands, it would be interesting to find out. There are also a fair amount of lakes and rivers, the Trang River being the biggest. Some of the lakes look manmade which makes me think that like Phuket, Tin was also mined here at some point.
The province in general has good quality roads, mainly because the highway 4, the main north to south road cuts trough the province. Rather uniquely for the south t also has a railway connection to Bangkok, I have done the trip on the overnight express and it was great fun, much better than flying.
From what I can see the people are generally Buddhist although there are some areas that have large amount of Muslims. A lot of Muslims came here from Malaysia and settled in coastal areas, working as fishermen. For me this makes a good mix because if you go to the Muslim market you can get good quality beef, while the Buddhist people produce good quality pork, and the local sweet roasted pork is excellent.
I live in the area around the small town of Huai Yot, which in all honesty is nothing to write home about, the whole place would benefit from a coat of paint. The people are of course what makes the place and of course as with all Thai people they are very friendly, and are always interested in what you are doing (sometimes too interested).
The whole Province is also famous in Thailand for its cakes, they a government backed scheme called OTOP (One Tambon One Product) and just about every where here that product is cakes, and in the city they have an annual cake festival. Now I am now expert on making cakes, but I have years of experience in eating them, with the waistline to prove it, in my opinion these famous cakes are at best average, certainly by European standards. The climate is against them, everything dries out very quickly and these cakes are all vacuum sealed and then boxed, some of them sitting in non-air conditioned shop weeks before they are sold. So I certainly would not recommend making a special trip to Trang just for the cakes.
So on the whole Trang I a nice friendly province and a fair amount to see and do. The best part of it being the friendly people who have not yet been touched by the greed that high levels of tourism brings. I like it anyway.
