Things to do in Phatthalung.

The best morning available in this part of Thailand, and the reason anyone with an interest in birds comes to Phatthalung at all. Thale Noi — "little sea" — is the northernmost basin of the Songkhla Lake chain, roughly five kilometres by six with an average depth of about 1.2 metres, surrounded by a 460-square-kilometre non-hunting area that was the first ever declared in Thailand, on 29 April 1975. The 4.94-square-kilometre Kuan Ki Sian knoll inside it became Thailand's very first Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on 13 May 1998. Over 180 native and migratory bird species use it; migratory arrivals run from October to March; and pink water lilies bloom from March into April. Go out by long-tail boat before sunrise.

Not a staged attraction — more than four thousand water buffalo are farmed on the wetland by around 280 families, and they spend their days chest-deep among the lotus and the sedge. They are the image that appears on every photograph of the place, and the reason a good deal of the birdlife is there: herons, egrets, stilts and waders feed and breed around the buffalo grazing areas. It is one of the very few places left in Thailand where you can watch a genuinely pre-industrial wetland economy operating in real time rather than in a museum.

A 177-metre limestone hill with a natural hole clean through it, standing directly over the provincial town — it is the image on the provincial seal and the shape everyone in the south recognises. The name means, roughly, "mountain with a pierced chest". You can climb it for a view over the town, the rice plain and the lake beyond, which is the single quickest way to understand the province's geography: mountains behind you, paddy in front, lagoon on the horizon.

Phatthalung is the home of nang talung, the southern Thai shadow-puppet theatre, and the province's name is where the art's name comes from. The puppets are cut from dried cattle hide, painted, and held between split bamboo slats called mai tap, with the mouths and hands articulated to move with the narration. An ensemble is the puppet masters — who are also the vocalists — plus a band of pipes, drums, phon and gong, no more than eight people in total. Alongside it sits nora, or manora, the southern dance-drama with twelve major dancing patterns performed to lyrics the dancers sing themselves, sometimes improvised. Both are named in the province's own motto.

The province's national park, straddling the border with Trang where the Nakhon Si Thammarat range separates the two. This is the source of the พราวน้ำตก — "dazzling waterfalls" — in the provincial motto, and it is the wild end of a province where forest covers only 628 square kilometres, 16.3 per cent of the land. Limestone karst, caves, forest streams and waterfalls, an easy day out from the provincial town rather than an expedition. Best in and just after the October-to-March wet season, when the falls are actually running.

The last line of the provincial motto is hot springs, and Khao Chaison in the southern half of the province is where they are. It is a modest local facility rather than a resort spa, which is rather the point — a place people actually use in the evening rather than a photographed attraction. Combined with the limestone country around it, it makes a straightforward half-day from the town on the way south.

Where Phatthalung meets its water: a strip of open-air restaurants on stilts over the shallows, moored fishing boats, and the lagoon running away south into the haze. The province's official aquatic emblem, the tinfoil barb, is known locally as pla lam-pam after this stretch of shore. It is the standard local evening out, and it is genuinely good — freshwater and brackish fish straight out of the lake at prices that have nothing to do with a tourist market. Go for sunset.

Phatthalung's version of the southern Chak Phra tradition, held at the end of Buddhist Lent on the full moon of the eleventh lunar month, and distinct enough from other provinces' to have its own name. Buddha images are carried from the temples to the water and back in parades, each with its own drummers representing a shrine, and the centrepiece is a drumming contest between the temples using the taphon, or phon — which is where the festival's name comes from. Add dance shows, Buddha-parade competitions, water sports on the lake and exhibitions.

Not a place but worth going out of your way for, because it is the thing Phatthalung is proudest of. Khao Sangyod Mueang Phatthalung is an indigenous red rice grown here on the ground between the Banthat range and Songkhla Lake, and in June 2006 it became the first rice in Thailand ever to receive a geographical indication. It has since won GI protection in the European Union and registration in Indonesia. The dark red grain carries high antioxidant content and a nutty, chewy character that is entirely different from jasmine rice. Buy it at source in the province; it costs a fraction of what it does abroad.