Touring Thailand's quiet magnet: the southern province of Trang cntraveller.com

Trang is known as a gateway to the beaches, islands and limestone mountains. Early morning in the city of trang and it’s a confusion of charcoal smoke and lemongrass. Around me, vendors hawk pineapples and bitter beans in thick southern accents. Motorcycles zoom to and fro, handlebars loaded with plastic bags bulging with tuna and prawns plucked from the Andaman Sea, 20 miles west, just hours earlier. And everybody, everywhere, is eating.

From the cavernous belly of the market echoes the chack-a-chack of cleavers chopping roast pork. Whole hogs, scored and massaged with cinnamon, cloves and honey, are roasted to a crisp in giant ovens. They arrive wrapped in yesterday’s news, diced into sweet morsels. So beloved is this moo yang that it appears in the province’s official slogan, alongside ‘generous people’ and ‘scenic beaches’.

Trang’s breakfasts are equally famed. From 4am every day, the city turns into a cross-cultural buffet of stir-fries and noodle soups, grilled pork and gloopy rice dumplings. Open-air kitchens spill out onto pavements, with middle-aged women ladling fiery curries over rice.