The journey from Sg. Kolok to Narathiwat took about an hour where we ended up at Narathiwat Bus Terminal.
The town can be considered small in size. I think only a few block of commercial areas so again I was thinking. We may need to consider whether it is convenience for us to move or cover the town area and what kind of stuff we wanna see there. Some says Pattani is better (Masjid Kerisik was one of them), so with little time left, I made decision to continue our journey to Pattani.
The Bus Station Terminal, situated at the very end of main road.
The Bus Terminal is so clean. Same goes to wash room. A convenient store is available next to this terminal.
There was a funny incident during our stop in Narathiwat. In the washroom, a local girl smiled and greeted me in Thai, which I could not comprehend and politely i said in Kelantanese dialect that I could not speak the language.
"Bakpo tok leh kecek Thai nyor?" (why cant you speak Thai?) - question thrown back at me.
After explaining to her that I am not a Thai citizen though i may dressed like them and looked so Malay, she begin to understand the whole thing. Happened that most young people here will speak in Thai and the elder ones speak in the other language. When it comes to a conversation, for example, when the minibus driver ask the younger passengers for their next stop in Malay language, you can find the younger generation will answer back in Thai. Weird heh? I found it a little bit annoying. You will never see this in Homeland, don't you?
Dalam erti kata, kalau aku tanya ko dalam bahasa melayu, ko cakap mat salleh, memang kena parang lar jawabnya. Hahahahhahah.
Ok, coming back to our journey to Pattani. So we have waited for people to the van to be filled with more passengers. The driver was a little bit younger than the first one. There was a family joining us together beside two nursing college students (mati mati aku ingat budak sekolah agama, kerana mereka memakai serba tutup litup!)
The journey begun when an elder lady joined us. I nicknamed her "Mak Jah" based on this character from a malay drama. Suara dia sebijik macam watak tu, garau dan tegas. Throughout the journey, this Mak Jah kept on nagging in Kelantanese dialect and some in Thai language and sometimes mix or rojak language of both, spitting her anger ahahahhahah...but of course not to the driver or to us. She was on the phone most of the time, dunno on what occasion she was up to, but something to do with business?
There was a silver lining behind any cloud heh... listening to the words of this lady, eventhough she sounded fiery, it happened that the conversation ended with some nice thing to happen. Along the way, there were some wedding reception held and every brief stop at this places (the village area), there would be a person standing at the road passing kenduri food to this Mak Jah. How lucky!
The cute little boy who was curious with Fatiha
Mak Jah perhaps was so famously known and seemed to be an important figure to this people, I guess. She would hand some money to these people in exchange of those lauk kenduri. Thanks to her, due to the brief stop, we could witness how Pattani people hold their wedding reception.
Wowee... i can say, their wedding reception is far more interesting and why? When the bride and the groom sat at the front lawn greeting guest coming in and out, there would be some deejays blasting their merry thoughts and antics, jokes and tease the crowd and the couple, cool! Too bad I did not take any pic since I was too busy observing these people.
My Garden Hotel, the affordable in town
We finally made it to Pattani around 8 p.m and Mak Jah advised me to be careful with my belongings right before the van took off - takut kena curi, katanya. The kind driver dropped us at MyGarden Hotel, one of the most convenient as what he recommended, RM60 per night, and we need to find dinner ASAP - too famished and too tired.
Fortunately, as suggested by the van driver, there is a halal restaurant, next to the My Garden Hotel. How Convenient!
Dinner was some simple plain rice and two kind of dishes. Since I never try Singgang Daging made here, it was a good attempt. When we used to stay in Kelantan, in one occasion, Mum used to tell me that the origin of Singgang Daging is from Thailand. Betul ker?
So how was the verdict? My mother's version of Singgang Daging is more delicious, I think. The version cooked here is too much laden with galangal (as you can see in the pic) and the taste was more to beef soup broth.
Why i am so into Singgang Daging? It is the only dish I would open my eyes for it during Sahur. Lauk lain i tak layan. Kaki malas bangun sahur!
We too noticed many people made a line for the keropok lekor which were piping hot for sale and not to miss the opportunity, we bought RM2.00 for this. All thick cut of delicious keropok (10 pieces of them) and it was the star among the food here!
We had this crispy keropok for supper and breakfast with typical sweet sour sauce .... fantastic!
As it was still early at night (Thailand is one hour behind Malaysian Time), we decided to venture into Pattani night life (hope there was some activity). Luckily again, the hotel is within the tourist-friendly area.
Pattani itself does not really a touristy place but it has this road with shops, restaurants, cybercafes, ATM machines and many other shop along the road which I found this place very convenient for travellers. We went to check our e-mails in one of the cybercafes and to our delight, in fact it was unbelievable, the rate for an hour usage of the Internet was RM1.00, very cheap eh?
After some wandering a little bit here and there, we made it to the hotel to rest and sleep...
to be continued......
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