A few days ago I needed to run some errands in Surat Thani.  It’s one of only two sizeable towns that are anywhere near me, and is about 90kms northwest.  I figured if I was going to go that far, I must be able to do some sightseeing while I was there.

After checking the Lonely Planet Guide and Googling a few locations, I had a short list of options.  But, with this being the rainy season, I checked the forecast before leaving home.

Accuweather was predicting heavy rain.  The early morning sky was clear and sunny.  So I decided Accuweather was wrong – again.  Big mistake.  The closer I got to Surat Thani the darker the skies became.  I’d picked a couple of sightseeing places north of the city, but it seemed the storm was moving south and I quickly found myself in heavy rain.  A U-turn was needed.

I know, real men don’t make U-turns, but I figured this was force majeure as the weather was beyond my control.  So it was back to Surat Thani.

The Lonely Planet guide recons there’s nothing much to see.  I recon they’re right.  A lot of tourists heading for Ko Samui pass through the town, or make a brief overnight stay on their way to or from the island.  There are some good shopping centers outside the town center, but there’s not much else to recommend the place.

The town is on one bank of the Tapi river, the longest in southern Thailand, with an island park, Ko Lamphu, right next to the town.  Actually the park is quite pleasant, even with the dark threatening skies, but that was really all I saw before the almost horizontal rain caught up with me.  Luckily I found somewhere to shelter until it eased off enough for me to escape back to the car.  I don’t much mind getting wet, but my camera does!

So, normally I wouldn’t have bothered with this post, but it gives me a chance to test a picture gallery feature I’ve added to my blog.  If I decide I like it, I’ll use it in future posts, in order to avoid having large images in the body of the text.

Just click/tap a thumbnail image to display the full sized one, then you can click/tap left or right on the image to display the previous or next one.  The “X” top right allows you to close the image display.  And the picture of the City Shrine I stole from Wikipedia since by the time I reached the place the rain was too heavy to get out of the car.