I am proud to say that I have now stayed in 60 of Thailand’s 77 provinces, and I celebrated the milestone in complete style with a night out in the town of Trang with my good mate, Charlie Crowson.
Some Garlic?
Trang is an odd place. Located in the muslim southม there were surprisingly few Muslims. Even though quite a small town, everything was very expensive (beers in the disco 120 for a small heini) and even though 898 kilometers apart, Trang has the same tuktuks as Ayuthaya.
from: http://soclaimon.wordpress.com/category/bangkokpost/travel/news/
Lung Ooo Gaopinong, a Trang local, confirmed that Atuthaya and Trang are in fact the only two places in Thailand to have this kind of tuktuk. Apparently they used to be all over the south but after they stopped being maufactured around 20 years ago, they have become fewer and fewer. “There used to be thousands but now they are only a couple of hundred left” said Lung Ooo, speaking like they’re a species becoming extinct, “now they only exist in Trang and Ayuthaya because the Aytuthayans came and bought them from Trang”.
Lung Ooo bought his tuktuk for 16,000 baht about twenty years ago when “there were loads of them everywhere” but now its worth about 200,000, so he tells me. Pretty hard to believe that this clapped out piece of junk could fetch 6,000 USD, you’d be lucky to get 50 quid for it in the UK.
Clapped out all the same, these cute, unique machines certainly add to the charm of this particularly charismatic city in southern Thailand.
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