Where to live in Phatthalung.

The capital sits in Khuha Sawan subdistrict, where King Rama VI ordered the city moved in 1924, and it is the only town-municipality in a province that otherwise has forty-eight subdistrict municipalities and twenty-four subdistrict administrative organisations. Everything institutional is here: Phatthalung Hospital, the provincial administration, the banks, the markets, immigration and the courts. It is also one of very few Thai provincial capitals with its landmark inside the town rather than beside it — Khao Ok Thalu, the 177-metre limestone hill with a natural hole clean through it, which is the image on the provincial seal. And the railway station is in the same subdistrict: a class 1 station on the Southern Line, 846.01 kilometres from Thon Buri, open since January 1913, which means a sleeper to Bangkok and a quick run to Hat Yai both leave from the middle of town. Housing is rooms above shophouses, small owner-run apartment blocks and townhouses. This is the sensible default and the only part of the province you can live in without a vehicle.

Best for: Anyone wanting walkability, the hospital, immigration, the train and everyday services in one place

A few kilometres east of the capital the rice paddy gives out onto Songkhla Lake, and Lam Pam is where Phatthalung meets its water: open-air seafood restaurants on stilts, moored fishing boats and the shallow expanse of the lagoon running away south. The province's official aquatic emblem, the tinfoil barb, is known locally as pla lam-pam after this stretch of shore. Be clear about what the water is, because it changes what living beside it means: Songkhla Lake is a lagoon chain of more than 8,000 square kilometres, not the sea, and Phatthalung is formally landlocked — one of only two landlocked provinces in the south, with Yala. No surf, no meaningful tide, no beach in the Andaman sense; a very large, very shallow, very calm body of water with a great many birds on it. Housing is houses and townhouses let by their owners, usually with a garden and parking, and you are still ten minutes from the hospital.

Best for: People who want the water and the sunsets without giving up proximity to the town's services

North of the capital the province opens into its rice plain, and at the top of it sits the most remarkable thing in Phatthalung. Thale Noi — "little sea" — is the northernmost basin of the Songkhla Lake chain, and the non-hunting area around it covers 460 square kilometres. It was declared on 29 April 1975 as the first official non-hunting area in Thailand, and in 1998 the 4.94-square-kilometre Kuan Ki Sian knoll inside it became Thailand's first Ramsar Wetland of International Importance. The lake is roughly five by six kilometres with an average depth of about 1.2 metres. Around it stand the largest paperbark swamp forests in the country; on it graze more than four thousand water buffalo farmed by around 280 families, and some thousand families harvest krajood sedge for weaving. Pa Phayom, to the west, holds the Thaksin University Phatthalung campus at Ban Phrao, established in 1989 across roughly 3,500 rai. Housing is village houses and farm compounds let directly by owners.

Best for: Naturalists, birdwatchers, university staff and anyone who wants real rural space at rural prices

The western edge of the province runs up against the Nakhon Si Thammarat mountain range — the Banthat — which separates Phatthalung from Trang, and this is where its waterfalls, its national park and most of its rubber are. Khao Pu–Khao Ya National Park straddles the Trang border here, and the motto's พราวน้ำตก, "dazzling waterfalls", refers to this side of the province rather than the lake side. The geography is striking: from the capital you can see paddy in the foreground, limestone karst behind it and mountain forest behind that, all inside about twenty kilometres. It is also the least serviced part of Phatthalung, and worth noting that only 628 square kilometres of the province is forest — 16.3 per cent — so most of the green here is worked land rather than wilderness. Housing is detached houses, farm compounds and village properties let directly by owners, with gardens and parking, almost never advertised online. Cheapest part of the province by a clear margin.

Best for: People who want the lowest costs and real space, and will trade services for quiet

South of the capital the province narrows between the mountains and the lake and runs toward Songkhla. Khao Chaison is the best-known stop, for the hot mineral springs that give the last line of the provincial motto its subject; Bang Kaeo is the smallest district in the province; Pa Bon climbs into the hills; and Pak Phayun sits on the water where the lagoon widens into Thale Luang. What makes this half of Phatthalung quietly interesting is the direction of travel. Hat Yai — the commercial capital of the entire south — is roughly a hundred kilometres and under two hours away on the same road and the same railway, which puts large private hospitals, an international airport and a genuine shopping city within a comfortable day trip. This is also the part of the province with the most visible Malay-Muslim heritage, in a province where Muslims are 11.1 per cent of the population. Housing is townhouses, houses and a handful of owner-run apartment blocks in the district towns.

Best for: People who want rural southern Thailand at rural prices but refuse to be hours from a city