Thailand · Changwat Songkhla
Where to Stay in Songkhla, Changwat Songkhla
Songkhla, also written Singora, is a coastal city of southern Thailand, with Samila and Son Awn on its shore and its museums just inland.
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Where to stay in Songkhla
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Songkhla splits neatly between sand and streets. A room at Samila puts the water at the door, with Son Awn round the same shore and the green parks that back the beach a few minutes away in either direction. The sea is the point.
Samila and Son Awn are a short walk apart, and the sand runs on between them, so it hardly matters which of the two names ends up on the booking. Beach addresses suit anyone here to recharge before Hat Yai, and that is the role travellers most often give the city. Inland the character changes.
The old quarter carries the historical centres and the museum streets, so a stay near the Songkhla National Museum, the Songkhla Treasury Museum and the Thaksin Folklore Museum trades the sea view for the record of the city itself. Songkhla Zoo lies further out again. Rooms out that way come with space to park and a shorter run to the roads for Hat Yai and the border with Malaysia, though the sand is then a drive rather than a walk.
The distance is small either way. Songkhla covers a compact area, so a walk of twenty minutes crosses most of what a visitor came for.
About Songkhla
Beaches make the case for Songkhla.
What is Songkhla known for?
Samila and Son Awn wrap the seaward side of the city, green parks and a set of historical centres stand behind them, and travellers use the whole arrangement as a rest before the busier streets of Hat Yai. Indoor hours belong to the museums. The Songkhla National Museum, the Songkhla Treasury Museum and the Thaksin Folklore Museum sit within the same compact city, while the Songkhla Zoo keeps ground of its own.
What are the main landmarks in Songkhla?
Samila is the beach people name first. Son Awn carries the shore on from it, and behind the sand the Songkhla National Museum, the Songkhla Treasury Museum and the Thaksin Folklore Museum hold the collections of the city within a short distance of one another. The Songkhla Zoo takes more room.
Green parks fill the ground between the shore and the museum streets.
What is the history of Songkhla?
Songkhla has answered to more than one name. Singgora and Singora both attach to this city, and those older spellings survive in the record of a settlement that grew on the coast of what is now Songkhla Province rather than anywhere in the interior. Its historical centres remain legible.
Streets of the old quarter still hold the fabric that the newer blocks grew up around, and the museums of the city are built on precisely that inheritance. The border with Malaysia is close, near enough that the frontier has long been part of ordinary life here. Three museums divide the work between them.
The Songkhla National Museum keeps the regional collection, the Songkhla Treasury Museum takes the history of the treasury itself, and the Thaksin Folklore Museum gathers the customs of the southern provinces around it. The Songkhla Zoo sits apart from all three. Distance from Bangkok did as much as anything to shape the city, since the capital lies a very long way north and Songkhla was left to work as the seat of its own province instead of an outpost of somewhere else.
Hat Yai grew busier. Samila and Son Awn did the rest, drawing people to the sand and giving the city the beach reputation it carries.
Where is Songkhla?
Songkhla lies on the coast of southern Thailand, near the border with Malaysia and a very long way south of Bangkok. Sand fronts most of it. Samila and Son Awn run along the seaward edge, and the built ground behind them covers only a small area, which keeps the shore, the green parks and the museum quarter inside one short stretch.
The sea sets the limit.
What is the climate of Songkhla?
The sea governs the air here. Warmth runs through the whole year this far south, and the water off Samila and Son Awn works on it constantly, pushing a breeze across the sand that the streets behind the shore feel only in part. Rain arrives in its own season.
Midday sends people into the green parks, the Songkhla National Museum or the shaded ground of the Songkhla Zoo.
How do you get to Songkhla?
Most people arrive through Hat Yai. The larger and busier city sits close by, and traffic from Bangkok far to the north, along with movement from the border with Malaysia, funnels through it before the last stretch down to the coast at Songkhla. The road ends at the sea.
Samila and Son Awn mark where it does, and the museum streets, the green parks and the Songkhla Zoo all lie in the compact ground behind them.
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Updated August 2026