Prachuap Khiri Khan

The bay has been a shelter for fishing boats and coastal traders for centuries, on the narrow neck of land where the Gulf of Thailand comes closest to the Andaman side of the peninsula. The province took its present name and shape in the 19th century, when administrative reform under the Chakri kings brought small coastal districts together, and the town grew where the bay gave anchorage and fresh water below the hills.

Its best-known moment came on 8 December 1941. Japanese forces landing along the Gulf coast came ashore at Ao Manao beside the Thai air force station south of the town, and the garrison and local volunteers fought them for a day and a half until a ceasefire was ordered from Bangkok, after the Thai government agreed to let Japanese troops pass through the country. The battle is commemorated at Ao Manao, and a memorial and small museum on the base record it. The wider war brought the Thailand–Burma Railway and Allied bombing to the region further north.

The southern railway, which reached the town early in the 20th century, and later the main highway made Prachuap a stop rather than a destination. Fishing fleets, coconut and pineapple plantations and a steel industry at Bang Saphan shaped the province, while tourism concentrated at Hua Hin to the north. Proposals for heavy industry and power stations on this coast met sustained local opposition in the 1990s and 2000s, and the town has stayed small, low-rise and dependent on the sea.

This is a working Thai town, and its culture is that of the coast: Buddhist monasteries, Chinese shrines built by merchant families, and a calendar of temple fairs, Songkran and Loi Krathong. The hill temple of Wat Thammikaram is the centre of local religious life, and the climb up Khao Chong Krachok is made by residents as much as by visitors, often with fruit for the macaques that occupy the stair.

The military is part of the town's identity. The air force wing beside Ao Manao was already there before the Second World War, its personnel and families make up a sizeable part of the population, and the annual commemoration of the 1941 landing is a public occasion. Fishing communities keep their own observances, including offerings before the boats go out and shrines at the water's edge.

Manners are those of provincial Thailand: unhurried, indirect and hospitable, with a wai for greeting, modest dress away from the beach, and a strong sense that visitors should behave as guests. Because there are relatively few foreign tourists, English is less widely spoken than in Hua Hin, and a few words of Thai go a long way. The town's own pride is in its seafood and in a bay that has been kept free of the high-rise building found further north.

The town municipality is a small one, home to a few tens of thousands of people in a province of several hundred thousand. It is a provincial capital of offices, schools, a hospital and courts, and much of the steady employment comes from government work, the air force base and the railway.

The sea provides the rest. Squid boats work at night with lights and come in before dawn, and the day's catch is sold at the market, dried on racks along the bay or sent north to Bangkok. Inland the province grows pineapple, coconut and rubber, with processing plants along the highway, and the narrow strip of land between the sea and the Myanmar border supports small farms and plantations. Tourism is a modest addition, mostly Thai families and travellers breaking the journey south.

The rhythm is set by the boats and the heat: markets and exercise on the promenade at first light, business in the morning, a still afternoon, and the seafront busy again in the evening as families gather and the grills are lit. Current issues include the state of fish stocks in the gulf, the future of heavy industry and power generation on this coast, migration across the Myanmar border, and the gradual spread of holiday building along the bays to the south.

Seafood is the whole point. Squid is the town's emblem: grilled fresh over charcoal with a sour-sweet dipping sauce, dried in the sun and toasted, or stuffed and steamed. Crab, prawns, mantis shrimp, mackerel and sea bass come off the same boats, cooked simply — grilled, steamed with lime, chilli and garlic, fried with pepper, or made into tom yum thale, a sour seafood soup. Plaa thuu, the short-bodied mackerel of the gulf, is steamed and sold in small baskets.

The province is known for coconuts and pineapple, and both turn up constantly: coconut water and young coconut flesh sold at the roadside, curries thickened with coconut milk, and pineapple eaten fresh, dried or in savoury stir-fries. Palm sugar from Phetchaburi to the north sweetens local desserts, and coconut puddings and steamed cakes are sold in the morning market.

Everyday eating is central Thai with southern touches: khao tom rice soup for breakfast, curries ladled over rice at the market, khanom jeen with fish curry, and grilled chicken with sticky rice and som tam from Isan kitchens. The night market near the station is the cheapest place to eat, the bayfront restaurants the place for a longer seafood meal, and fresh fruit shakes and cold beer the usual drinks on a hot evening.