Surat Thani

The river mouth of the Tapi has been settled for well over a thousand years. Chaiya, a short way north of the modern city, was a centre of the Srivijaya world, and its stupa and the bronzes found around it place the area among the earliest Buddhist centres in the peninsula. The area later fell under the influence of Nakhon Si Thammarat and then Ayutthaya, while trade continued along the coast and up the river.

The city itself grew as Ban Don, a river port where produce from the interior — coconut, rubber, fruit and timber — was loaded for Bangkok and where Chinese merchants settled and built the shophouses and shrines that still stand along the waterfront. In 1915 King Vajiravudh, Rama VI, gave the town the name Surat Thani, meaning the city of good people, and the province took the same name. The southern railway reached Phunphin to the west and fixed the city's role as a regional hub.

Twentieth-century Surat Thani became the administrative and commercial centre of the largest province in southern Thailand, with an airport, a university and the piers that feed the island trade. Tourism arrived indirectly: as Ko Samui, Ko Pha-ngan and Ko Tao grew from the 1970s onwards, the city became the point where travellers change from train, bus or plane to a boat, and where much of the islands' supplies and workforce still come from. Flooding remains a recurring event along the Tapi, and the river's condition and the growth of the city outwards are continuing local concerns.

Surat Thani is southern Thai and Buddhist, with a long-established Chinese-descended merchant community whose shrines, clan associations and festivals are woven into city life; Chinese New Year and the vegetarian festival are both marked along the riverfront. The southern dialect, fast and clipped, is spoken everywhere, and the city keeps the southern arts of nora dance-drama and nang talung shadow puppetry alive at temple fairs, though their heartland lies further south.

The city's own festival is Chak Phra, held at the end of Buddhist Lent in October, when Buddha images are drawn through the streets on decorated carriages and floated down the Tapi on boats, accompanied by longboat racing and by the gift of sweet rice and coconut. It is the largest gathering of the year and draws people from across the province.

Provincial identity is agricultural. Surat Thani is proud of its rambutans, grown here since the 1920s, its oysters, and its coconut plantations, where pig-tailed macaques have traditionally been trained to pick the nuts, a practice that has become internationally controversial and which several producers have moved away from. Visitors are expected to observe ordinary Thai courtesies; this is a city where people are working rather than hosting tourists, and politeness rather than familiarity is the usual register.

About 132,000 people lived in the city municipality at the 2019 count, with many more in the surrounding districts, making it one of the larger cities of southern Thailand. Life concentrates on the river in the old centre and on the newer commercial spread inland, where the bus terminals, shopping centres, hospitals and university campuses sit among housing estates.

The economy rests on agriculture and trade rather than tourism: rubber and oil palm from the plantations inland, coconuts, rambutans and other fruit, oysters and cockles from the estuaries, and fishing from the Gulf. The city processes, finances and ships all of it, and adds the government offices of a large province and the transport business generated by the islands, whose supplies, staff and visitors pass through here.

The day starts early, with the fresh market working before dawn and coffee shops full by seven, and slows in the afternoon heat before the night markets and the riverside fill again. Motorbikes dominate the streets. The recurring local problems are flooding in the late-year monsoon, traffic on the roads out to the piers and the airport, and the pressure of rubber and palm prices on the rural economy that the city serves.

Surat Thani eats southern Thai food with an estuary's supply of shellfish. Oysters, farmed on stakes in the coastal shallows of what is the country's largest oyster-growing area, are the local speciality, served raw with lime, chilli paste, fried shallots and a bundle of leaves to wrap them in, or fried with egg and flour into a crisp pancake. River prawns, blue swimming crab, squid and sea fish arrive at the fresh market each morning and end up grilled over charcoal in the night markets.

The staple cooking is hot and sour. Kaeng som, a fierce yellow curry of fish with vegetables sharpened with tamarind, kua kling, minced meat dry-fried with turmeric and chilli, and kaeng tai pla, made with fermented fish innards, are eaten with rice and a plate of raw vegetables and bitter sato beans. Khanom jeen, fresh rice noodles served with a choice of curries and a basket of herbs, is the classic breakfast, alongside jok rice porridge and coffee poured through a cloth filter in the old shophouse cafés.

Fruit is a point of provincial pride. Rambutans ripen in the middle of the year and are celebrated with their own fair; mangosteen, longkong and durian follow in season, and coconut appears in curries, sweets and drinks. Salted duck eggs from Chaiya, their yolks firm and orange, are the standard souvenir to take home, and Chaiya is also known across Thailand for them.