THE old man of the sea dragged his longtail boat across white sands speckled with pink and golden shells, his weathered face as furrowed as the shoreline lapping around of Sichon Bay.
Behind the heaped dunes of sand, still glistening wet from the morning tide, the air was thick with the acrid smell of the jungle: raw, clammy and unpredictable.
''I remember when we had to fight our way through the swamps just to find somewhere to put the boat in, beat the crocodiles off with long sticks and walk waist-high in mud.
''Now they are calling this a 'resort area'. How the south is changing,'' the fisherman said.
The pace of life in this region is as slow as it ever was, and change has come gradually without the upheaval wrought elsewhere by mass tourism.
The south remains Thailand's least-known region, special and perplexing even to Thais who inhabit the sweeping central plains to the north.
