T.I.C.D.: Satun coast & offshore islands
The coastal shores of Satun province, condensed.
Welcome back to the Thai Island & Coastal Directory, a book-in-progress that promises to be the most complete guide to coastal Thailand ever written in English, covering more than 800 islands. For info on how to use the T.I.C.D. and a working Table of Contents, paddle over here. Thank you for reading!
T.I.C.D. ticker: So far, we’ve covered 290 islands and 68 notable mainland areas in 19 sections, including this one.
Resuming Satun province…
The final Satun sections digs into the mainland and a smattering of obscure isles found just offshore.
Satun provincial coast, offshore islands and inland reaches
Satun’s mainland coast spans roughly 90 km and has few beaches compared to most of Thailand’s coastal provinces. From a travel standpoint, it is better known for its bona-fide geological wonders and a slow-paced fishing lifestyle that invokes the Malay language in places, including to refer to the province by the name ‘Setol’ rather than the Thai-rendered ‘Satun.’
But while some Malay is spoken in Satun, many of the province’s predominantly Muslim people trace their roots to Siamese ancestors, differentiating them from the predominantly ethnic-Malay Thais of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces to the southeast. Unlike those provinces, Satun is not embroiled in an armed struggle aiming for more autonomy from the Thai government.
Among Satun’s notably expansive mangrove forests is a miles-wide swampy borderland that nudges up to Malaysia. Many of the province’s settled coastal areas are separated from the rest of the mainland by similarly broad swathes of mangroves, and, although most of those areas now have road access, a fistful of the coastal fishing villages are still only boat accessible.
Off the coastal shores of this 2,479 square-km province are 35 obscure islands — or 16 if discluding the estuary islands — that join Mu Ko Bulon, Mu Ko Khao Yai, Mu Ko Adang, Ko Tarutao and Mu Ko Sarai to complete Satun’s long list of islands. Plus, peninsular Malaysia’s two largest islands, Langkawi and Penang, can be reached from Satun in 2-5 hours, giving the area a multinational island menu. Indeed, most travelers skip the Satun coast and head straight for the islands.
Travelers who carve out time for Satun’s mainland will find a bunch of waterfalls, cliffs and impressive caves studded with fossils. Several mainland geological sites join parts of the islands to form the Satun Global Geopark, which was designated by UNESCO in 2018 as only the 5th global geopark in Asia-Pacific. Fossils are so numerous that Satun has been dubbed the “land of Paleozoic fossils,” referring to the many trilobites, tentaculites and others left over from 550 to 250 million years ago. A highlight of the Geopark Museum in Thung Wa is the skeleton of one of the extinct giant elephants that Tham Leh Stegodon is named after.