Shadow Puppets & Silver Seas: A Guide to Nakhon Si Thammarat

From Chumphon, we drive south along the Isthmus of Kra.  We cut east across the river flats of Surat Thani, and climb into the coastal mountains of Nakhon Si Thammarat.  The final stretch into Khanom is a rewarding detour: a quiet, well-paved road flanked by karst hills which leads to a secluded coast.  It feels like you are well past the ‘Gateway’ and have fully entered the green, mountainous heart of Southern Thailand.

This is Khanom, a long stretch of beach nestled into the mountain coast.  A short way across the water are the well-traveled islands of Koh Samui, even more popular since The White Lotus.  Here in Khanom, you lose nothing of Koh Samui’s natural beauty. The water is as lovely and the beaches as perfect; you just don’t have to share it with anyone. 

Beyond the beaches, Khanom is most famous for the 50-60 Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins that live in the area.  These “pink dolphins” are an important contributor to the tourist industry.  If you wish to join, you can easily arrange a tour from Laem Prathab Pier.  While this is the kind of adventure we would be completely up for, a French family who had just finished a tour warned us off it.  

They told us that in the eagerness to deliver close-up sightings for the customers, the boats sometimes swarm the dolphins from multiple sides.  Behavior that, they suggested, must surely stress the animals.  If you go, it might just require a few extra questions to ensure you hire a responsible operator.  

In any event, the kids had already found their own pod of pink aquatic animals: a group of German children their ages hanging about the hotel pool.  Other than the friendly family running Tao Daeng Pizzeria in Prachuap, our three hadn’t seen many their own age all week. We took full advantage of this opportunity to resocialize them.  They often report that playing with other kids was the highlight of the day, so we encourage it whenever we can. 

Khanom genuinely has very good beaches.  We stayed at (and highly recommend) Le Petit St Tropez, but there are plenty of great options along the coast.  The same is true for food and drink: fresh pasta at the hotel, or cheap drinks and basic Thai at the local kitchen next door.  You don’t really need more options than that.

With great reluctance, we said goodbye to Khanom.  As often happens at these farewells, it was a clear, perfect morning and the water looked better than ever.  From here, the trip turns slightly inland, and our next destination is the ancient walled city of Nakhon Si Thammarat.

Nakhon Si Thammarat traces its origins to the 2^nd century, when it formed the heart of the Tambralinga Kingdom.  This recently rediscovered kingdom once controlled territory along the Malay Peninsula and extended north to Chumphon.  Though the city eventually came under the control of the Tai Sukhothai kingdom, it maintained distinct customs, culture, and traditions.

One of these, the art of Nang Talung Shadow Puppetry, had brought us here today.  Nakhon Si Thammarat is home to the excellent Suchart Subsin House of Shadow Puppetry.  Shadow play has a long history throughout the region, but Nakhon Si Thammarat has a special legacy: it was a center where master puppeteers, the Nai Nang, resided, trained apprentices, and perfected their craft.

Suchart Subsin was one of Thailand’s most skilled shadow puppet performers and makers.  After he died in 2015, his family continued to run the museum, maintain the collection, create new puppets in the workshop, and conduct the live performances for visitors.

Whether the kids will respond to niche museums like these is always up for debate (whether we’ll go is not). But the expressiveness of the puppets, their variety, and the liveliness of the interpretations and demonstrations ensured this was a success.  Lines like, “use a knife, take off meat and fat, then use acetic acid…,” are a good hook. These guys have hosted audiences aged three to seven before.

Several weeks after we’d returned to Bangkok, Isobel, Henry, and Charlie staged their own shadow puppet show.  Using a fridge magnet from the museum as their model, they sketched, cut out, and painted their puppets.  Their script was more “Punch and Judy” than Ramayana, but we were delighted to see Nang Talung gain three new practitioners.

At a stoplight, two trucks pull up next to each other.  They are similarly armed: a full barrel of water, up to ten combatants wielding water guns, buckets, or just bare hands. The fight begins: a drenching eruption of splash and spray which continues without rest until the light changes and each drives on to the next battle.

This is Songkran, the Buddhist purification festival that has grown into a nationwide water fight.  As we drive south from Nakhon Si Thammarat, we are happily caught in the crossfire.  In every small village, locals line the roadside, eager to soak passing cars.  The only disappointment is when anyone holds back, worried whether it’s ok to splash the foreigners—it always is.

Even the small villages disappear as we drive deeper south towards Phatthalung.  Broad stretches of rice paddies and palm oil plantations pass by.  The GPS urges me off the main road; I ignore it at first, then finally relent and turn off onto a minor road.  The “road” grows ever narrower, crossing a small canal and running along a dike between two newly planted rice fields.  Only when it devolves into a motorbike track do I decide to turn back.  Birdsong and warm evening light flood the car through rolled-down windows as Kat directs my awkward reversal from behind the car. Just outside Phatthalung, we are, literally and figuratively, off the tourist track.

Back on the proper route, we reach Ekachai Bridge just as the sun sets over Songkhla Lake and Thale Noi, the still water catching the day’s last light.  It’s easy to believe this is Thailand’s longest drive over water as you cross the great mirror of the country’s largest lake on this ribbon of concrete.  Herds of half-submerged water buffalo are the most striking features in the landscape.

We arrive at Sripakpra Boutique Resort at dusk and see the hotel takes full advantage of its lakeside location. The rooms are suspended over the water, and from the restaurant and the pool, the giant lifting nets (the Yor Yak) for which the region is famous are reflected in the lake.  The intimate connection to the water makes this an entirely appropriate place to continue our Songkran celebration, but first, to bed early for a pre-dawn wake-up call.

The early morning sun transforms the inland sea into liquid metal; molten silver and gold churn and mix around our bow as we motor straight toward the rising light.  The land lies so low and the water so still that it feels as if we could drive straight into the sun itself, if only we could reach it before it slipped free of the horizon.  

I have never seen morning light work such wonders on water.  The fishing traps, already remarkable machines, become, in this glow, the silhouettes of temples; the fishermen, like monks, performing ritual devotions to a mechanical god.  Even a lone tree, standing against the water, assumes an aspect of the divine. 

As the sun rises further, the supernatural recedes and the physical world reasserts itself.  Buffalo wade through water up to their necks, tearing at great clumps of submerged weed as they pass.  Gulls and shorebirds perch on the fishing cranes, hoping to share in the catch that the fisherman draws from the lake with his ritual, yet entirely secular, labor.  

The boat crosses under the Ekachai Bridge, and we enter Thale Noi proper.  Floating fields of red and pink water lilies are in bloom, and our shallow-draft boat glides easily through them.  Pink and red flowers open to the morning sun pass on either side of us as we gently drift along.  The boat driver picks a few blooms and presents Isobel with a beautiful bouquet of Thale Noi lilies.  A few pink flowers in hand, we leave the fields behind and head back to the dock.