This is the area south of Hua Hin.
It is possible to break this into two parts, the first part from Hua Hin south of Bangkok to Hat Yai which shows no problems and the other behind southwards to Malaysia. This part of Thailand becomes "more and more" a lawless one where Islam insurgency from Malaysia blast bombs every day.
Bus Travel takes long but is probably the best transportation considering the comfort, prices and they are on time.
Most buses are very up to date double decker manufactured under license of a German manufacturer, this are just the ones as used in most west Europe countries and since the long haul units have two floors there is quite some space including a real toilet between the first and second floor. They usually cruise between 80 and 120 km/h and would be quite fast if the wouldn't continuously stop and go, they run the vehicle like a local bus on all distances.
There is the second group with 30 seat configuration in size between the big one and the van's which are for 10 passenger. The van's are the fasted with up to 130 km/h. At long distances such as from Phuket to Bangkok they have 2 driver since that is a 12 hour trip, when driving further e.g. to Chiang Mai or Nong Kai the change both drivers somewhere in the middle.
Considering the environment it's quite ok, to Bangkok it's Baht 680,- in the big one with a 2 + 2 seat configuration and 980,- with a 3 configuration, they call thai VIP bus. Every bigger town in the country has a centralized terminal, only in the very big cities such as Bangkok, Hat Yai and Chiang Mai they have several station for different directions.
In Bangkok this are the southern, west and northern plus eastern terminal it is a bit difficult to reach them since there is always a big gap from the BTS elevated train to the bus. The country side is definitely worth a visit and unless your destination is not the area south east of Hat Yai there are no problems. Actually in you become more likely involved in a traffic accident than in insurgency.
The biggest mosque is between "Hat Yai and Songkla".
Buddhist and Muslims living here are around half / half of the population but only the radical Islam oriented people cause trouble which is supported from Malaysia.
The victims are the people living there who have no protection from the state anymore, Bangkok city is far away and nobody care anyway. Every day they kill teachers, monks, temple boys and almost anyone at will with all it's the same. The new military government made some promising advances but it needs to be seen what happen in the long run.
On the other hand a main money source in the area is diesel smuggling from Malaysia to Thailand, that is pure organized crime. It looks now as if the Islamist joined forces with the other criminals to suppress the people. Diesel smuggling is because of very different prices behind the southern border and all kind of illegal activities shake hands.
In the third week in November 2014 the military arrested the whole top layer of the Thai equivalent to the FBI including the boss for running one of this oil smuggling rackets. They seized hundreds of millions Baht which where hidden at construction sites in the capital.
They also seized about hundred very valuable Buddha antiques, several kilos of gold, a couple of hundred 20 English pound notes and countless banknotes of thousand Baht, that means that the crime suppression top layer of the country run the biggest crime racket for several years, amazing isn't it? At Nov. 28 they even arrested the squad they used to sent to collect protection and extortion money just like Chicago under Al Capone.
But there are many problem in south Thailand.
They military took over in 2014 and it seems to be a good decisions, they got some of the worst criminals into the jail and get tough with corrupt politicians.
This border town is a typical "biotope" which happen when some people try to play games because of religious reasons. The governments in the bordering Malaysian states do everything to harness their citizen into their Islam behavior but the people are fed up with their clerics who do everything do give them ideological problems. But there is one city with nightclubs where they have liberal mind is left that's Kuala Lumpur around the Beach and Thai Bistro Club.
On the east coast the bordering state there even implemented Sharia law, yes that's not a joke. The Arabs are behind that, they also finance the insurgency on the other side of the border.
I was in the Kota Bharu area.
This is along the Malaysian coast down to Terengganu several times around 40 years ago, couldn't see any women with a scarf or burqa then today they all run around like black or colored mummies that happened after the Arabs started to make huge investments into the country they simply bought them up. It looks as if there was a deal struck with the terrorists to stay away from violence in the Danok area because most people here are coming over from Malaysia and that government supports the terror against Buddhists in Thailand, they don't want to have their own people killed. Currently 2016 they found out that the PM of Malaysia (Najib) got around $ 600 million dollars as a "present" from Saudi Arabia and another billion is missing from a state company he funded etc..
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