Geography
The province is located on the Malay Peninsula, on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. The highest elevation is the Khao Mai Kaeo at 821 meters.
In the north of the province is Songkhla lake, the largest natural lake in Thailand. This shallow lake covers an area of 1,040 km², and has a south-north extent of 78 kilometers. At its mouth on the Gulf of Thailand, near the city of Songkhla, the water becomes brackish. A small population of Irrawaddy Dolphins live in the lake, but are in danger of extinction due to accidental capture by the nets of the local fishing industry.
Two national parks are located in the province. San Kala Khiri covers 214 km² of mountain highlands on the Thai-Malay border; Khao Nam Khang, is also located on the boundary mountains. Chinese Communist guerilla settled in this region until the 1980s.
Within the boundaries of the city of Songkhla is the Samila cape beach, the most popular beach in the province. The famous mermaid statue can be found here. The two islands Ko Nu and Ko Maew (Mouse and Cat island), not far from the beach, are also a popular landmark, and a preferred fishing ground. According a local folk tale, a cat, mouse and dog were traveling on a Chinese ship, when they attempted to steal a crystal from a merchant. While trying to swimming ashore, both the cat and the mouse drowned and became the two islands; the dog reached the beach, then died and become the hill Khao Tang Kuan. The crystal turned into the white sandy beach.
Read more about this topic: Songkhla Province
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)