Narathiwat

Well, having stay in kelantan for more than 1 year, the inner site of me has call for the adventurous traveling to the nearest state of thailand. However, there are reasons that why it is not popular among the tourists to travel across the border.

Female official shot in Narathiwat | Bangkok Post: news

www.bangkokpost.com/news/security/.../female-official-shot-in-narathiwat

Oct 29, 2014 - Latest news, politics, business and sport from Thailand and Asean, ... of Si Sakon district of Narathiwat was seriously wounded by a motorcycle ...

Two slain, 3 wounded in Narathiwat - Bangkok Post

www.bangkokpost.com/news/.../gunmen-launch-two-attacks-in-narathiwat

Nov 3, 2014 - Latest news, politics, business and sport from Thailand and Asean, plus ... Suthida was seriously wounded and was rushed to Narathiwat ..

Sungai Golok is a small town located very near to Rantau Panjang the Malaysia Thailand border. In weekends, the Malaysians will be rushing to the Thai Southern Province for some grocery shopping. We have decided to travel to Bangkok via Narathiwat Airport, which is just located 64km away from the border. Driving there would be one option despite of paying 180 Bath for taxi. Of course along the ways there will be few checkpoints by the army, but most of them are very friendly.

We choose to drive there as we are not sure how safe to put our car near Rantau Panjang, We arrive early in the morning but only learn that they need two copies of documents instead of one. So we have to wait for the nearby grocery and photostat shop to warm up the machine before we can make a second copy. 

So we need to prepare two copies each:

1. Geran

2. IC

3. DRIVING LICENSE

4. Authorized letter if the driver is not the car owner

But what we can see is the checkpoint in Thai border is a bit unorganized

Nevertheless, we need to put the car aside, get down go through the custom check and then to the other side to declare and pay rm 30 for one month insurance. 

After settled everything within half an hour ( in fact can be even faster ) we are ready to go. 

The journey from Sg Golok to Narathiwat airport is smooth. The roads are well maintained, broad and sign boards are clear in English. We arrived within 45 minutes, and realized that Thailand is an hour behind us so we lepak in the airport, but sadly there is nothing much to do as the airport only has AirAsia Thai that fly once daily from Bangkok. 

The flight took about 1 hour 30 minutes to reach Bangkok.