Samila Beach is a 3 km stretch of white sand beach in Songkhla in Southern Thailand. It is about a 45-minute drive by from Hat Yai, Thailand. And you probably can get a taxi or tuk-tuk driver to fetch you from your location and bring you back.

Samila Beach is the beach where you sunbathe or swim, but rather it is more like a park, where people walk around or come to exercise, ride bicycles, and even ride horses…

There are food trucks to indulge in even in the morning and we had some Thai style nasi kerabu and chicken porridge as well as some cha yen like the locals did ….

And yes, you can find a promenade with many souvenir /clothing shops there too which you can get your souvenirs for loved ones or friends…

And a foodcourt kind of place somewhere and many other restaurants and cafes nearby

Samila Beach is famous for its mermaid statue, supposedly modelled after a goddess called Mae Thoranee who squeezed the water from her hair to wash away the Demon God Mara and his army who were trying to break the Lord Buddha’s concentration and stop him attaining enlightenment.

There is also the story which says that the mermaid came from the sea and a young fisherman met her while she was combing her hair with a golden comb on the beach. But his appearance frightened her and she escaped to the sea, leaving her golden comb behind. The fisherman tried to find out and waited at the beach day by day but he never saw her again.

Another famous statue on the beach is the cat and mouse statue installed in 2000 to commemorate the local legend of the cat, the mouse, the dog and the magic crystal.

According to legend, a Chinese merchant ship carrying a magic crystal was passing by Samila Beach when the ships’s dog, cat and mouse, working together as a team, stole the magic crystal and made a bid for freedom by attempting to swim to the shore. Neither dog, cat, mouse or magic crystal ever made it to the beach. The dog turned into Tang Kuan hill, the cat and mouse turned into the two islands in the bay, named Cat Island (Koh Maeow) and Mouse Island (Koh Nu).

On the other end of the beach, you will come to a quieter section of the beach with casuarina trees where you can find the head of a naga serpent and also the statue of Prince Chumphon, father of the modern Thai Navy….

You can actually spend a good few hours strolling along Samila Beach , browsing the souvenirs and trying the food at the food stalls or cafe hop nearby….

My trip to Songkhla and Hatyai was made possible by Tourism Authority Thailand Kuala Lumpur and Hatyai…..but whatever is written here are purely my own thoughts and assumptions