Pak Panang - The Lowdown

Pak Panang is a sleepy little town about 30 odd kms from Nakorn Sri Thammarat. I am a teacher here and have been here for a full year already and plan on staying longer. The main reasons for this are because 1) My school is sweet and i am left to do as i please and the facilities in the department are good for an out of the way school 2) I don't like cities at the moment, too much noise and traffic baa hambug and those are the only reasons to be honest but lets move onto the more important issues, what's it all about? The locals are friendly to the point of someone saying hello to you every couple of minutes which increases as more people get to know you - as with everywhere they want to know where you're going? where you've been? why they've not seen your face for ages - what like 2 days?? and of course how much money you earn? are you married? do you like thailand? and fancy a trip to the karaoke?
Pak Panang is split into two parts by a river with either side being aptly named east and west respectively. There is a 7 eleven on either side but in case one of them has a power cut there's a convenient 1 baht boat ride to cross to the other side. For a small town there are an incredible number of karaoke bars, 14 i've counted in total on both sides. Being such a small town entering one as a farang teacher would be rather silly so i cannot tell you about them other than there's beer and girls and rooms, do the maths.
Pak Panang is famous for its vast number of condominiums which are inhabited by birds rather than people. They have varying levels of success in making that birds nest drink stuff. The more famous of them are made by Brand's or Scotch which you can buy in 7 eleven. I've tried it and kept it down but it's not something i would spend my money on as i prefer beer which has its own medicinal qualities.
The beach is 5kms away and is one of the main reasons i came here. However the water is not so clean and i don't go there often although there are nice restaurants along the seafront serving.....well food of course. Reasonably priced too. As rainy season has started Pak Panang gets flooded, the river overflows and so do the drains so if you were ever thinking of moving here check it out in rainy season first because depending on which road your on you could be getting pretty wet every day.
There is also one restaurant on either side of the river worth mentioning. The one on the other side i've never been to. The one on my side, east side baby, is called ran satang, satang being the small coinage you get which is smaller than a baht. The owner is a heavily tatooed nice chap and they serve some delicious food. My favourite being Yum tuna fuu. Which is a salad with kind of deep-fried shredded tuna. Scrumtious. Normally you can order this dish with catfish elsewhere which is also very tasty (yum blatuk fuu) but this is the only restaurant i have encountered that does it with tuna. Even when i tell Thais about it they try to correct me by saying catfish instead of tuna. There's also a pretty young waitress there who sat down with me one evening and asked me to buy her a phone and a cat.......what?
Mmm running out of things, anyway i like it, but it's also good to get up to the city now and again to have a cheeky beer or two and even go to a decent shopping place. There is a Tesco Talad here which is just a mini Tesco and you're struggling to get anything worth mentioning. There are local markets and of course a fish market by the river but i don't really cook unless it's pasta and i'm pretty lazy most of the time because thai food is just a stone throw away.

That's all folks - if you fancy a tour of the restaurant here please feel free to drop me a line.

Sounds like a top place. I don't visit Tha Pak often enough. I think the Yum Tuna Fuu is enough to get me down there.

That's a very nice write-up of PakNang Bhoydy. Thanks very much and one day I might even come over and spend a night there. Might be interesting.

Cheers

Admin wrote:That's a very nice write-up of PakNang Bhoydy. Thanks very much and one day I might even come over and spend a night there. Might be interesting.

Cheers

When are we going there Admin? This weekend?

C-Bert wrote:

Admin wrote:That's a very nice write-up of PakNang Bhoydy. Thanks very much and one day I might even come over and spend a night there. Might be interesting.

Cheers

When are we going there Admin? This weekend?

One day, one day.