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Talk:Touring prestigious and notable universities in the U.S.

Display Order
Is there an intended order within regions? Serving the traveler might mean listing in linear geographical order. Almost seems set up by perceived prestige at this point. (WT-en) OldPine 14:27, 27 May 2007 (EDT)

Is there a standard for famous?
Seems to me that this will soon deteriorate to every university in the US. It already seems to be headed that way. Unless we can come up with a standard. For example, the university has to be an ivy league university, a seven sisters college, on the top ten list of (say) US News and World Report for Engineering (how else would Stanford and MIT make the grade!).--(WT-en) Wandering 17:52, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

 * My thoughts exactly. (WT-en) OldPine 18:06, 11 July 2007 (EDT)
 * I say we list the universities in order of how many Nobel Prizes they've garnered... --(WT-en) Peter Talk 18:35, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

 * Um, no. Famous != "prestigious" or "Ivy". Famous is "widely known", and this could include big sports schools or decently known state schools. Also, major research institutions. 204.52.215.107 02:35, 20 January 2008 (EST)

 * It's already degenerating. No mention of Cornell, Dartmouth, or Johns Hopkins on the East Coast, no mention of Caltech on the West Coast, no mention of Vanderbilt in the South, and nothing about Washington University in St. Louis?  Huh?  Oh, but there is an article on St. Louis University.  And an article on Michigan State --- which isn't what I'd call 'famous' in any way.  I suppose the problem is in distinguishing "famous" from "academically rigorous" (i.e. top-tier research university).76.237.186.14 17:29, 10 September 2007 (EDT)

Objective measure for inclusion
This article should exist, but has been degenerating and will continue to degenerate as long as we lack an objective measure. I've tried my best to come up with an objective measure of university fame, and here's a spreadsheet showing the criteria, scoring, and weighting I used to rank universities by "fame." By necessity, this ranking is a bit complex in order to avoid being arbitrary and unfair.

Criteria:
 * 1) Nobel affiliations
 * 2) 07-08 US News Rankings: Top National Universities
 * 3) 07-08 US News Rankings: Top Liberal Arts Colleges
 * 4) Size (undergraduate + graduate enrollment)
 * 5) Age (year established)

I think Nobel affiliations are a good measure of research prestige (really good research --> nobel prizes), rankings a good measure of educational prestige. Size impacts influence and fame obviously, as does age—the older the university, the longer it has had to make itself known, and simply being old can be notable in and of itself.

I weighted the scores by criteria accordingly: 1) research prestige (score: 0-1)x5, 2) educational prestige for national universities (score: 0-1)x5, 3) educational prestige for liberal arts colleges (score: 0-1)x3, 4) size (score: 0-1)x1, 5) age (score: 0-3.64)x1. I figured that research and educational prestige should receive disproportionate weight, since they are the most important measures of fame. I didn't want size to have much weight, because that would lead to not-so-famous schools that happen to have gigantic enrollment (e.g., Arizona State) would be ranked as disproportionately famous. But size should count against the small liberal arts colleges, which are not nearly as famous as their educational prestige might lead one to believe simply because they are so small—I therefore reduced the weight allocated to educational prestige rankings for small liberal arts colleges from 5 to 3, simply to offset the light weight given to size scores. Lastly, I gave a light weight to age, simply because the range was greater than for any other score, allowing it to have noticeable impact without weighting. The precise scoring methods are available through the spreadsheet.

Given the score outputs from this measure, I think an overall score of 5 or better would make a good measure for inclusion in the article. So the cutoff would be at Amherst College. If you don't feel like downloading the xls document, of the universities I measured, the following would be allowable in the article: Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, MIT, Yale, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Stanford, U Penn, Cornell, CalTech, Johns Hopkins, Washington University in St Louis, Duke, NYU, U Michigan, Brown, Dartmouth, William & Mary, UNC Chapel Hill, U Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Georgetown, UVA, UCLA, U Wisconsin-Madison, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Tufts, USC, Williams, Amherst.

I'm curious if anyone a) understands what the heck I'm talking about and b) thinks this is a good way to objectively delimit which universities can be included in this article. I'm also curious if people have any other suggestions for criteria in determining fame. I left out a lot (like endowments) because a lot of criteria are already included in the criteria used by the US News-World Report rankings.

If anyone would like me to run another university through the measure to see if it makes the grade, please just let me know.

Well, should we use this? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 00:18, 8 March 2008 (EST)

 * I should add, I did not include sports prowess as a criterion, because I think visiting universities for sports-related events is beyond the scope of this article—that seems to me to be something different from "touring famous universities." I think university-sports-travel is a separate topic that could support a separate article. Sports acclaim does affect fame, but I just don't think that is what this article was set up to cover. Moreover, the article already suffers from subject creep, so it won't hurt to make this delimitation. I also did not include the recently added criterion of "massacre infamy," as I seriously doubt that there is any significant "school massacre tourism." --(WT-en) Peter Talk 03:40, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

 * I ran the last several universities already listed in the article through. Here's a quick list of the ones that passed (score=5+) and those that did not:

 * 5+: Harvard, Columbia, U Chicago, MIT, Yale, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Stanford, U Penn, Duke, NYU, U Michigan, Brown, Dartmouth, UNC Chapel Hill, Georgetown, UVA, Emory, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rice, & Rutgers

 * <5: U Delaware, UC San Diego, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, St Louis U, Georgia Institute of Tech, Virginia Tech, UT Austin

 * I think those results are pretty good, from my own subjective standpoint. So, if there are no reasoned objections to using this measure, I'll remove the schools that scored below 5 from the article in about 2 weeks. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 03:40, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

 * OK, no one has joined in this academic exercise yet, but I've waited and now plunged to reorganize the article according to the objective measure explained above. If anyone would like to help refine the measure, please let me know here.

 * I also added a "get around" section in part to condense the unwieldy university descriptions, but also to better organize that content, so visitors have a quick overview of how to visit all the listed schools in one trip. I think that this should basically be a "list of pointers," since university descriptions & landmarks (and detailed get in information) are all already available in their respective city articles, and this info should not be duplicated here. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 09:37, 24 March 2008 (EDT)

 * Actually, like most rankings, your method has some serious flaws, inherent in the fact that non-objective POV is determining methodology for determining a criteria that is being billed as objective. First of which, your ranking has turned the article from travel guide of "famous" universities, into a ranking of universities. And that ranking is considerably less accepted and less researched than previously existing and widely published ranking methodologies. Notably, neither the article nor ranking take into account any consideration of the value of a visit or tour of the school, which after all, is a main point of a travel wiki, e.g. is there actually anything interesting to see? For example, see, but trying to quantify that list has its own inherent issues.  However, this criteria could be added, for instance, by adding the number of things on the National Historic Registry (perhaps #NHR/10). After all, how can the value or a visit to a school be measured in terms of student population or even US News ranking? For instance, UVA and William & Mary should be on the list by the criteria of their historic campuses, whether or not they have the academics of the University of Phoenix (which, btw, by your method finishes ahead of Ohio State and Case Western). For that matter, Annapolis and West Point, which both dramatically fail your criteria because of a lack of research and size, should be included in a travel wiki of famous universities. Not including them is almost criminal, and exemplifies the serious flaws in the methodology. That said, what exactly is there to see at NYU (other than NYC in general)?  In any case, weighting against Liberal Arts colleges (of which category the service academies fall) seems entirely POV and improper, and is not at all objective reasoning.

 * As far as the included ranking criteria, being in biological research here at Penn, I can tell you that solely using Nobel prize winners as a measure of research quality is extremely lacking. It is horribly narrow view of research that contains several biases. A better criteria would be publication impact factor, which may be difficult to compile for all of these institutions, or perhaps easier, NSF (federally funded) research dollars that are awarded based on a stringent peer review process (currently ~10% of grant submissions).  Federal research award dollars are a major component of how most rankings factor in research prowess (see The Center for Measuring University Performance).

 * Another issue, for some reason this article seems aimed at foreign visitors, but your criteria uses US-centric, and highly controversial, US News rankings. International world rankings, such as Shanghai Jiao Tong's Univeristy's Academic Ranking of World Universities and US News/The Times Higher-QS World University Rankings  seem like better candidates based on how the article's intro is slanted. These give a more global perspective to the fame of US institutions (and include research). Perhaps a compilation of multiple rankings, US News, The Center, Shanghai, is warranted. Rankings are tricky though, as they sometimes fluctuate wildly from year-to-year, and as you currently have your criteria configured, moving just a few slots will cause schools to fall above or below your cut off.

 * In any case, deciding the cutoff at 5 seems entirely arbitrary. Why not 4, 4.5, or 5.5, or 6.  Was 5 just pulled out of thin air? How do you justify such a thing? Fame is subjective, and may not have anything to do with any of the criteria you list. For sure all of the Ivies would be considered famous, but Rutgers is hardly more famous than Ohio State.  Fame certainly doesn't seem to have much to do with size. For instance Princeton is tiny and among the most famous universities in the world.  Likewise the best-known (dare I say famous) very large schools, Ohio State, Texas, and Penn State all fail to make the cut by your criteria.  So the answer, IMO, is that size really doesn't matter, and that is why you don't find size criteria in any existing rankings. Age is also meaningless for fame, as well as academics, but may make a university more interesting from a historical perspective, so I tend to buy that a little more for a travel wiki.  For a domestic tourist, athletics has an immense impact on school fame, and there is no getting around this.  Athletics in the US are the most prominent face of any institution outside the Ivy League. Every BCS school should get bonus points, with bowl participants and NCAA tournament participants getting points as well. There seems to be a lack of common sense in the criteria selection.

 * As an aside, it seems as though the East Coast section really probably needs to be split into New England and Mid-Atlantic regions.

 * In the end, the title of the article is "famous universities" not "top ranked universities". Outside of some obvious choices (Harvard, Yale, Princeton & Stanford), fame is nearly impossible to quantify, and as mentioned previously, most definitely would require the inclusion of West Point and Annapolis if you would go beyond those four.  It seems the article as is should be named "tour of top ranked universities" and perhaps switched to use an established and published ranking system, or some compilation of such. Otherwise, it may be necessary to accept entries that seem to justify their inclusion and notability in their short description that make clear common sense for them to be included in a travel guide.(WT-en) CrazyPaco 07:19, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

This is a bit of a kitchen sink critique, so I'll try to break it down to make the discussion clearer.

1) Re: objectivity. All objective measures will have subjectivity in the choosing of the measure. In this case, there is a POV, and there should be (we encourage POV on Wikivoyage—that of the traveler, unlike Wikipedia). In this case, the precise POV is that of foreign visitors to the United States, interested in touring the country's famous universities. I thought it rather obvious that these tours would be for the purpose of determining which schools to apply to, rather than admiring the school's architecture, but perhaps this should be more clearly stated in the introduction. Information about the sights a school has to offer belong only in the destination guides, otherwise we will have overlap. (I see you have done some very good work in the Pittsburgh articles on precisely this topic.) Avoiding overlap is the main reasons that travel topics are viewed with suspicion on Wikivoyage.
 * The purpose of touring universities for admissions purposes is not obvious. Currently the heading reads "especially those with pre-college-age children". The article heading clearly does not define the article as restricted to those schools that would be most relevant for admission tours.  I would venture that most foreign visitors are not touring universities for their children's admission visits.  Schools like Princeton offer popular tours for visitors that are separate from those for candidates, and are often filled with foreign tourists. In any case, the assumption that foreign candidates are only interested in, or are viable candidates for, the 35 schools listed in the article is without merit.  The title of the article indicates fame is what draws the tourists, and therefore the sites, history, and architecture would be highly relevant. As far as architecture being criteria creep, I am at least not alone in thinking it has something to do with fame . However, the linked list is just as arbitrarily derived as your ranking.
 * Perhaps this topic is rightly viewed with suspicion.

The goal of an objective measure is to reduce as much as possible the subjective selection of schools. This was a major problem, referred to in the above thread, before the introduction of the method in this thread, as university students and alumnae are often fierce partisans and promoters of their own schools, and want their schools included as "famous" in this article.
 * This is what happens with an ambiguous concept like "fame". It therefore should not be a surprise that inventing a fame ranking is not without controversy.

2) The notion that these criteria have turned the article into a ranking of schools is silly. The actual hierarchical rank of these individual universities per the measure are irrelevant in the selection, and any rankings are not even referred to in the article.
 * Inclusion of a school this article depends solely on the hierarchical ranking that you devised. Whether you have the actual rank besides each school is irrelevant. You have essentially created a Top 35 list. It is actually a detriment to the article that your methodology for inclusion is not listed because it thereby incorrectly connotes the idea that it is a widely accepted standard list of the most "famous" colleges, which it certainly is not, except at the very top of the rank.

3) West Point and Annapolis are extremely unlikely choices for foreign visitors, for obvious reasons.
 * No, they are tourist magnets and define the concept of "famous".

4) The Nobel prize criterion is not to measure schools by research quality, it is meant to measure them by fame, particularly international fame.
 * As far as the use of Nobel Prizes, my issues beyond what was previous addressed, and now trying to stay within the concept of "fame", is that it is also extremely narrow and limited in that it accounts for only 6 fields. Thus this criteria ignores the top awards in dozens, if not hundreds, of other disciplines found under a particular university's umbrella. It unduly weighs a school's "fame" based on Nobel categories. A better metric would be the number of faculty awards which is easily derived from The Center's rankings.

5) The idea of creating a composite of US News' rankings + those of international rankings. I'd be interested to see a proposal on this measure. I think the US News rankings should be weighted pretty heavily, though, as they are so widely consulted (like it or not).
 * One criteria I would agree with for defining "fame" is the use of existing rankings, and I agree with you, they are highly popular reading in the US. However, if the article is geared toward foreigners, as you state, it also seems silly to rely solely on a US-centric ranking, rather than at least combining it with, for example, the Times QS and/or others.

6) Re: #5. I take it you are rather unfamiliar with social science methodology. It is desirable to select an arbitrary number, to reduce bias in determining the results. As the majority of schools fell under a "score" of ten, the midpoint seemed like a decent arbitrary number. Cherry picking a less arbitrary number like, say 4.75, would reek of bias, and the desire to include a specific university.
 * You are right, I'm not familiar with the social sciences. I'm in a field where you are highly scrutinized for using arbitrary numbers or quantifying "anything", so you'll have to forgive me because I've been trained to be highly dubious of such things, and rightfully so. You previously did not indicate your criteria for selecting "5" for your threshold other than to say it seemed appropriate "given the score outputs from this measure".  I don't care what field you are in, you learn as early as high school statistics that examining the outputs of your statistical comparisons to retroactively determine the threshold of significance is the definition of bias. A percentile threshold, or even a cutoff for the number of schools to include, selected prior to evaluating of the output, is a much more convincing way to avoid the appearance of bias than selecting 5 out of what you have listed as a maximum score of 14.64.

7) Re: size. Princeton, despite its small size, scores at the top of the list. Swarthmore, a school of outstanding academic quality, does not. This seems fair to me—I don't at all think that many foreign applicants are familiar with the latter, whereas they almost certainly know the former. Regarding large public schools, plenty of large public schools are included per the measure, and I do think they are more famous than the ones you cite. (Speaking of which, Penn passed the bar easily, and was always included in the list.)
 * I would highly doubt Swarthmore is less internationally famous than Williams. I disagree with your assessment about the fame of some of the included vs non-included schools.

8) Re: sports. Your statement makes this clear; the article was made for foreign visitors. It does not seem this way, it is stated very clearly at the top of the article, and afaik, it has always been that way. Excluding this, as I say above, is also useful to prevent subject creep, which is an obvious slippery slope. (This applies to your architecture idea too.)
 * You assume that athletics has no impact on fame outside the US. It certainly has a major impact within the US, which I would imagine would have some influence over its fame outside of the US, especially Canada, Mexico, and other countries in the Caribbean that are highly saturated by US Sports. It is only your speculation that athletics are not relevant to fame, which is no more valid than my speculation that they are.

9) Re: split. Whole-heartedly agree.

10) Re: impossibility of quantification. This is silly as well, and I presume you have no experience in the social sciences. Anything can be quantified, and should be when it's useful to do so. The criteria above, size, length of history, Nobel prize affiliations, college rankings (which yes, are in themselves dumb, but are widely consulted for college visits), all seem to me to have rather obvious connection to fame, and all of which have been quantified without my help.
 * You can quantify anything, but it doesn't mean that it is accurate or good. As is, this article is a guide to universities that have obtained your criteria for "fame" which you defined by achieving an arbitrary threshold in a ranking based on a compilation of age, size, US News Rank, and Nobel affiliations. These criteria in your ranking, except maybe for size, may be justified for determining prestige. However, they are hardly more appropriate indices of fame than popularity or pervasiveness in the media? Are you really going to suggest age and size is more relevant to fame than popularity or media exposure? There was no groundwork done to determine if any of your criteria actually correlates to fame. Thus I see no justification, other than your opinion which is no more valid than any other, for the use of most of your existing criteria as indices of fame .  Therefore, your invented ranking's relationship with fame is highly questionable, if not down right absent. Your criteria are arbitrary selections based on your POV, which this wiki allows, but is hardly conducive to consensus building.

Lastly, please refrain from making further changes along the lines of the ones you have been. We operate by Project:Consensus (please pay especial attention to "status quo bias.") Per policy, we'll need to hash this out and come to a new consensus if we are going to move forward, otherwise we stay where we were. Simply charging ahead, removing the commented in-article disclaimer, and adding universities that you know do not meet the established criteria was inappropriate. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 03:21, 17 May 2009 (EDT)
 * The main problem is that this article is titled to be about "Famous" universities and the theme of fame was obviously central to its original concept. The opening paragraph was later change to define "fame" as equivalent to "prestige". "Famous" and "Prestigious" do not have the same meaning, and either the article title or content needs to be changed to obtain consistency. Currently your ranking criteria, and thus the article's content, is much more appropriate for "prestige".

 * Finally, if the objective of the article, as you have stated, is to aid foreign visitors in touring the "most prestigious" schools, then the article title should reflect that. It currently does not. I suggest moving this article to "Touring prestigious universities in the U.S.", and if that occurred, I think most of my discomfort with the article would go away. (WT-en) CrazyPaco 08:37, 31 May 2009 (EDT)

 * I'd be fine with that move, but lets wait for other opinions. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 08:49, 31 May 2009 (EDT)

Reopening discussion
While I understand the desire to prevent willy-nilly addition of colleges to the list, I'm not sure that it's possible to set up an objective measure of prestige. The Nobel Prize criterion strikes me as particularly problematic, as CrazyPaco mentioned above, due to its limited selection of fields.

What I'd like to see us do moving forward is a) define what the purpose of this article actually is, including b) what we expect the purpose of people who read this article to be while touring colleges, and c) come up with a consensus list that remains enforceably static, with changes proposed on the talk page to garner consensus (which is what we do with the "Nine Cities" lists on destination guides). Not all prestigious universities are particularly tourable, and not all universities worth visiting are particularly prestigious.

-- (WT-en) LtPowers 11:35, 25 September 2010 (EDT)

 * The whole thing has proven ridiculous. The "ranking" hasn't even been updated on a yearly basis, and the methodology was constructed by one individual who asserted ownership over the article without consensus. (WT-en) CrazyPaco 00:00, 23 February 2012 (EST)

 * Besides having none of the even questionable credibility afforded to actual published rankings that are at least likely to be constructed without institutional bias and have a significant advantage of being more widely understood by the public (and open to review and criticism), the completely arbitrary selection of this "methodology"'s components have little to no validity for quantifying an impossible to define concept such as prestige. Even if it did, a major issue with is that this article is geared toward foreign visitors, yet it utilized a purely US-based US News undergrad ranking that no one outside of the states even looks at. (although clearly the "methodology" hasn't been used any time recently in deciding which schools to add).

 * If a methodology is to be developed, it would make more sense to rely on the most popular international rankings, or a combination thereof. Rankings like THES, HEEACT, URAP, and ARWU. Of course, this hurts smaller liberal arts universities, so even that can't be completely relied upon. You end up with a giant mess. Research universities and liberal arts colleges aren't even comparable, not that a good many foreign students aren't actually at the graduate level anyway. Really, there would needs to be at least two separate methodologies for ranking colleges of different categories. (WT-en) CrazyPaco 03:48, 23 February 2012 (EST)

 * I'm not sure about rankings, but I'm using another measure: All of these schools seem plausible for this kind of list, except that I've never heard of Salve Regina University, and I think it's the one that doesn't belong and should be deleted. As a notably beautiful campus, it should be featured in the Newport (Rhode Island) guide as a place to visit, but would anyone object if the description were cut from here and pasted in the Newport guide? There are other universities that should be added, though, as I see that some of the Big Ten schools are - Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin - are included, but some other obvious Big Ten schools, like Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio State, are so far omitted. Also, Howard University, considered the Harvard of historically black colleges, is an egregious omission. Various other universities could be discussed, but I think the ones I name should definitely be added. What do you all think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

 * I'm still trying to figure out what the purpose of this article is. As I said above, "Not all prestigious universities are particularly tourable, and not all universities worth visiting are particularly prestigious."  LtPowers (talk) 18:04, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

 * I think it's to help people who want to tour prestigious US universities. :-) But seriously, I think it's mainly because they or their children want to attend them. I'm not up to reading through this entire thread, certainly not right now. Which prestigious universities can't be visited? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:53, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to merge into new 'Study in the United States' article
I'd like to start a discussion about moving this content into a more general article about studying in the United States.

Please see the main United States talk page: Talk:United_States_of_America  Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:41, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Inclusion of Claremont Colleges
Why are the Claremont Colleges not included in this? In a region lacking many noteworthy private schools- beyond USC, Stanford, and Caltech- the Claremont Colleges are considered among the best undergraduate colleges. They are not regional colleges; only 26% of Pomona students hail from California (lower than Stanford's 33%), and the rest from 49 states and 63 countries.

Pomona College has always ranked as the highest LAC on the West Coast and within the top 10 LACs; its average ranking is historically 5. It ranks in the top 10 nationally by Forbes (and has done so for the last five years straight, including #1 of all colleges in 2015), ranks 15th by Niche (and 2nd among all LACs/California schools), and it is the most selective liberal arts college by admit rate- more than half of the Ivies. Some more rankings- among California private schools (2nd), 16th nationally, and 32nd nationally (4th among LACs). With the largest endowment per student of the LACs, it is considered the "Stanford" of Harvard/Yale parallels Williams/Amherst. In a Washington Post Analysis of the average rank in many different rankings, Pomona placed 2nd among all LACs after Amherst.

Claremont McKenna College (admit rate 10%) has also ranked in the top 10 by US News for the last 10 years and is generally up there with Pomona as the most selective liberal arts college by admit rate.

Harvey Mudd (admit rate 13.6%), generally ranked in the top 20 of LACs, has claims to fame as the liberal arts college with the highest starting salary and vies with Caltech and MIT for producing the most STEM PhDs per capita. This ranking includes it as #2 of private schools in California and 15th nationally. (Claremont McKenna and Pomona are both in the top 25 nationally as well).

While Pitzer and Scripps aren't as prestigious as the above three, they are both ranked within the top 35 LACs by US News. If one is to include Pomona, it wouldn't make sense to exclude the others, as they share resources (courses, dining halls, library facilities, etc) and are located adjacent to each other for the purpose of a visit.

Please do note that the US News does not advantage schools located away from the East Coast- Stanford at #5 has not been able to crack the top 3 for the last few years either and has ranked on average the same as Pomona, though few would argue it's worse than HYP. Using US News to determine what the best colleges, along with the age of the institution, is an exceedingly simplistic approach which discounts the reality of college selectivity and desirability (Pomona has a higher yield/lower admit rate than Williams and receives more applications as well). Truthordate (talk) 23:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Graduate-only institutions
One thing I notice that is missing from this list are some notable graduate-only institutions. The two I can currently think of that are famous enough to be included would be Rockefeller University in New York City and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as both are top class biomedical institutions. And of course, it is known that Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York City is definitely one of the most desirable graduate schools for people who wish to do cancer research for their PhD. So how about adding at least the first two in, and perhaps we can also see if any other institutions deserve inclusion. The dog2 (talk) 21:53, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Name change?
The name is overly complicated. There was an idea to write Study in the United States, but if the article concept does not change, we could consider a simpler name such as famous universities in the United States. /Yvwv (talk) 21:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * How about "Touring U.S. universities"? It's briefer and captures what this article is about, doesn't it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Studying in the United States has a different focus: it is for foreign students who want to enroll. This article is about people who enjoy touring university campuses. (I worked with a guy who immigrated to Canada from India, and took his family on vacations to visit the famous American university campuses. I agree that the article title is unwieldy. Your suggestion is better. Ground Zero (talk) 22:11, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Preferably Touring universities in the United States, since this is the only article that I'm aware of that uses an initialism in its title. SHB2000  (talk | contribs | meta) 22:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That name would do. /Yvwv (talk) 23:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I assume that "prestigious and notable" was added to avoid getting listings for the JW Boring Campus of Mediocre State University in one of those states that no-one ever goes to. "Famous" would allow us to sift those out. Ground Zero (talk) 01:06, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Listings gives guidelines for universities in destination articles. Inclusion in this article could require some reason to visit a campus except studies or work. /Yvwv (talk) 15:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There are about 4000 universities in the U.S. I think there should be some criteria for inclusion in this article. Ground Zero (talk) 15:42, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

We could perhaps employ a solution like the blurbs of Presidents of the United States article, where we can require editors to seek a consensus on the talk page when adding or removing a university from this list. The dog2 (talk) 17:22, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Graduate schools
Hi @Ikan Kekek! Re this edit, in which you reinstated the list of graduate institutions recently added to the lead, I'll expand on my thoughts.

WV:Lead says that "the main purpose of the lead paragraph is to hook the reader's interest and identify what the article will talk about." There's nothing particularly hooky about graduate institutions, but my bigger concern is that they're not something discussed in the article. I think either we should decide they're important enough to include in the body, or we should leave them out (beyond a brief note that they're not in scope). Putting a quasi-comprehensive list of the elite ones in the lead while simultaneously noting that they're not going to be covered further is an awkward middle ground.

Regarding that overall question of whether or not they should be included, I think there are multiple reasons they should not be.

First and foremost, there's this page's likely audience. My sense is that most people coming here are going to be looking at undergraduate programs, since that's more the stage at which people go "I'd like to study in the U.S., but wow, I could go anywhere among these thousands of schools; how do I choose?" By the time someone gets to the graduate level, they generally know a lot more about what they're looking for, and aren't as likely to come to a page like this (they'll be talking to their advisor/looking at more specific resources for their discipline instead).

Second, given the more specialized nature of graduate programs, there are a lot of different places that can claim to be the top in some discipline or another. Deciding which schools to include or not, without adding a million entries that'd bloat the article/distract from the undergraduate program coverage, would be an ongoing maintenance challenge.

If we're looking for an alternative place to cover graduate study, the article Studying in the United States could potentially include more info on it. But for the reasons above I think this article should focus on undergraduate study and mention graduate schools only to note that they're out of scope. Sdkb (talk) 06:30, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

 * I see your points; thanks for laying them out. Let's see what other people think before we make a decision. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

 * I would support moving them to the body of the article. Some graduate institutions would be of interest to tourists, perhaps because an important discovery was made there. And there could well be graduate institutions that have nice campuses too. The dog2 (talk) 15:33, 21 December 2023 (UTC)


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Talk:Touring Shaker country

I'm taking license to include this themed itinerary based on the section Fields of pursuit on Project:Other ways of seeing travel. I've deliberately confined this to 4 states so that over the course of a long weekend it is possible to visit both the beginning of the Shaker movement and what appears to be its end, as well as a couple gems in the middle. That necessarily meant leaving out several worthwhile former Shaker villages that lie in other directions. Anyone wanting to construct another loop into the Midwest could, for example, aggregate the museum villages of Pleasant Hill and South Union in Kentucky and Shaker Heights in Ohio. Feel free to add that second itinerary within Shakers, Beginning to End, or maybe I'll have a chance to get to it later. Within the New England leg of this itinerary, the die-hard Shaker fan could also squeeze in a visit to the Shaker collection at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts (the town, not the university). (WT-en) SHC 21:13, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * Ok, now that I see where you're going with this it seems neat, but the title threw me off at first. Could it be a little more descriptive? "Shakers, Beginning to End" is cute and literary, but not very informative at first glance (plus, have they really "ended"?) Maybe "One week in Shaker country" or "Tour of Shaker villages"? Just a thought... (WT-en) Majnoona 21:42, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * I'm not crazy about the title either and I'm open to suggestions by anyone with more creativity than me. No, they haven't ended, but as of August 2005 there were four, only one of which was under the age of 70.(WT-en) SHC 21:48, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * If it takes reading the discussion page to figure out what it is about, I didn't do the job right. Does it need a rewrite or a quick, painless delete? (WT-en) SHC 21:54, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * It would be a good title for a travelogue or travel journalism piece, I'm just not sure if we want to start down the road of "interesting" article name. Anyone have a good suggestion besides One week in Shaker country? BTW, I have to problems with keeping the "beginning to end" as a heading in the article, since that's the order of the suggested tour... (WT-en) Majnoona 22:33, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * I just looked down the list of Travel_topics and it seems like the two best options are the in or in type names, so Driving in Shaker country? Is "country" the best term? or Touring Shaker villages? (WT-en) Majnoona 22:37, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * Country is apt. They did have a tendancy to spread out from their epicenter at Watervliet. Make the change before inertia sets in. Chances are no one (least of all me) will remember to do the housekeeping tomorrow. (WT-en) SHC 22:41, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * Ok, I've renamed, and removed needless caps. Could use a map and a photo or two, but that's for another day. (WT-en) SHC 18:59, 2 May 2006 (EDT)

Capitals
Is there any reason for capitalizing the words beginning and end in the title? Otherwise we should stick to the article naming conventions and move the article a new title capitalizing only the first word. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 22:23, 1 May 2006 (EDT)
 * No particular reason. Make the change. (WT-en) SHC 22:24, 1 May 2006 (EDT)

This
...is a cool article. I wonder if there's a way to wedge it into the Project:Itinerary article template? --(WT-en) Evan 19:10, 2 May 2006 (EDT)
 * Sure is. I've started to rework into the template. (WT-en) SHC 20:29, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

Internal Links?
Why no internal links on the town locations? Too distracting from the article? Towns not usable status? Nice job on this, btw. (WT-en) OldPine 22:53, 27 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Thanks for fixing the omission of Pittsfield. I just linked it. The other locations either do not yet have articles or may not fit the definition of an article. (WT-en) SHC 19:51, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

I recently traveled to Orlando Florida and drove east of St Cloud to Lake Lizzie and Alligator Lake where there is the Lake Lizzie Nature preserve. I hiked to the are between the two lakes where the shakers planted their pineapples in the late 1890's as part of their development of their 7000+ acre Olive Branch Shaker Community. I also drove to Narcoossee and went to the cemetary where one of the shaker sisters was suppose to be buried. In all of my exploration, I saw no historical markers or no mention that the shakers were there and cleared much of the land for farming that is now being developed into residential communities.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Touring Shaker country


text:
Talk:Tour operators

I think this may be an interesting topic, but please see our Project:Manual of style and Project:What is an article. This content may be better suited to either this discussion page or a user workspace page. Let me know if you have any questions! (WT-en) Maj 22:37, 23 September 2006 (EDT)

So.... This page is about tour operators

In wikivoyage I want to talk about : 1. What is the difference between -tour operators -tour wholesalers -travel agents

title: Talk:Tour operators


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Talk:Tours

Extras!

- Visit the place where Joan of Arc had her armor made, right in the heart of Tours!

I added it, just came back from Tours and France, WONDERFUL city!

"Perfection" of local French
Please, reconsider the inclusion of "renowned for […] the perfection of its local spoken French". I was drawn to this page by a forum on examples of bad linguistic, the explanation it gives for linking this page is: "This one is innocuous enough, but it still made me roll my eyes when I came across it. The implication is that some varieties of French are "more perfect" than others, even though objectively no variety of French is better or worse than any other. The author would have been better off saying something about the accent being perceived as beautiful or particularly close to standard textbook French."

- /u/blissed_and_gone

What does it means for some natives to speak more perfectly than others? This claim is non-scientific, please reconsider its inclusion User:ThunderingTyphoons!. There seems to be some people pushing this idea online, but as a 30yo French, I've never heard of it, so I wouldn't call it a "well known claim".

-- 37.171.167.186 06:27, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

 * Hello! I thank you for taking the trouble to make this post.

 * You may not have heard of this, but you've only to google "accent tourangeau meilleur" (wonderful syntax there, I know!) to find plenty of results in French talking about this idea. Personally, I'm with you in that no native speaker of any language has a more perfect accent than others, but this article is not my personal work and it's not only my or your opinion which counts. Our focus on Wikivoyage is that the traveller comes first, and I know from first hand experience that many people visit Tours because there's this perception that it has the "purest" accent, so we should talk about it in the article.

 * Now, if you would like to suggest alternative wording to make our article more accurate, that would be very welcome, but to ignore the idea completely would not best serve the traveller, in my view.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

 * I'm not familiar with Wikivoyage's rules, but if there is something similar to WP:UNDUE, I'm not sure this deserve to be in the introduction, I won't insist though. Would you agree with changing the wording to: "and is renowned for its wines and claims of perfection of the local spoken French." ? (My English is far from perfect, hope it's not too unnatural.) 37.164.181.226 03:10, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

 * Hello, again :) Your suggestion was reasonable, but I put it as "supposed perfection", which flows better. There's nothing unnatural about what you wrote, and I could imagine a native speaker writing that.
 * WP:UNDUE doesn't really have an equivalent here, because that principle stems from needing to use neutral language on Wikipedia. On Wikivoyage, we are not required to be neutral, and are encouraged to write in a lively, engaging tone; as long as we're being fair, we have a lot of editorial freedom.
 * By the way, later this month the French phrasebook will be on our Main page as Featured travel topic. If you have the time or interest to review it, you'd be very welcome to do so (no pressure).

 * Hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your help ! I'll take a look. 37.167.134.242 21:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Tours


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Talk:Town of 1770

Comments
This article should be about the Town of 1770, not also about Agnes Water. Agnes Water should be in a separate article if it is a separate destination, or else it is an attraction of the town, or the region. - (WT-en) Huttite 04:18, 3 March 2009 (EST)

 * There are many precedents for covering more than one locality in the same article. Never have two localities more deserved to be in one article that these two. From the traveller's perspective they are the one destination. --(WT-en) Inas 05:34, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Name
There are three alternatives for the name of this article: Seventeen Seventy, 1770 and (The) Town of 1770. Because the name of the town is also a year, it is not clear what the most common English name is. However, this media article suggests the name is likely to be 1770, instead of Seventeen Seventy, while (The) Town of 1770 seems to be used on road signs, etc. to avoid confusion with distances. - (WT-en) Huttite 04:18, 3 March 2009 (EST)

 * The gazetted name is Seventeen Seventy. Many descriptions use the Town of 1770, so it doesn't look like a number.  Its known in conversation with locals as  the Town of 1770, 1770 and just Agnes Water.  I think I have got the balance right, by naming the article Town of 1770, and putting the other common name, and the gazetted name in as redirects.  Do you have another suggestion?  --(WT-en) Inas 05:34, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Name
This was brought up while the days of being hosted under IB, but I am proposing to rename the article to Seventeen Seventy. Not only is that the official town name, but this is not the actual name (only used colloquially). Some of the signs also don't have the number which is seemingly the more common name used. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:05, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Town of 1770


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Talk:Townsville

Internet Lounge
Intsol, I had a look at your work on the Townsville page and I've made some edits. I’ve reverted the title back to contact as that is the standard heading for internet listings. See the definition in Section Headings.

I've also noted that the write up is a direct copy from this site. This is not in line with our policies, see our community policies. So I've edited the article and placed the image to votes for deletion to clean it up.

I also noted that the new listing was further away from town centre. I thought it would be more helpful if the internet cafe closest to the centre was first and I've added descriptions where each of the businesses are.

I'll go and check out the cafe and see what their rates are in the near future.

It's also better to use the ‘show preview’ button for previewing before saving the page. It stops multiple edits showing up in the history.

Hope this helps (WT-en) Ctbolt 23:52, 1 February 2007 (EST)

title: Talk:Townsville


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Talk:Toyama

 * This page has been edited for its opinionated and often incorrect information. Also, I do not believe Canadian English is considered a standard in Japan. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 218.231.32.2 (talk • contribs)

 * Some good edits there, but please do keep in mind that we like opinionated information, indeed we need it, in order to guide travelers—just so long as it is fair! --(WT-en) Peter Talk 13:26, 15 April 2008 (EDT)

title: Talk:Toyama


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Talk:Trabzon

Does anyone have contact information for the Hotel Nur? Thanks, Rob

Street addresses?
This looks like a quite comprehensive article already, and probably not too far away from guide status (which means it would be possible to nominate it for Destination of the Month or Off the Beaten Path).

However the article has one big problem; there are hardly any street addresses in the listings! To my understanding, street names and addresses are used in Turkey; for example districts of Istanbul (an upcoming DotM) do have addresses in their listings, and street names seem to show up on most downtown streets and major streets in the dynamic map of Trabzon. -- ϒψιλον (talk ) 19:47, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I am glad you like the page. I will try to add address information. NeoRetro (talk) 13:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:21, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Trabzon City Centre.jpg

title: Talk:Trabzon


text:
Talk:Trail guide

VFD Discussion
Just a list. Where is this article going? There are too many trails in the world. Looks like it will be a long list. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 02:47, 7 December 2009 (EST)
 * I'm not sure a page listing a lot of trails all over the place is useful, but it brings up a question: These trail articles that are linked here, are they essentially itinerary articles? or something else? An itinerary serves as a way to fit in seeing certain things in a certain order and time frame and leaves the descriptions to other articles, typically. An article for a hiking trails essentially exists to give distances and describe things along a set trail. I don't know if trails make good itinerary articles, but I do kind of like the idea of trail articles, since they give a chance to give more detail than a general national park article would.(WT-en) Texugo 09:35, 7 December 2009 (EST)
 * I wouldnt think of them as Itineraries in the usual sense, and they are a bit sparse on information at present, but they could become something useful if there is enough input. -- (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) Talk 13:47, 8 December 2009 (EST)

 * Delete. Trail articles are good, and welcome.  They should be linked to the relevant articles and locations for the traveller to find.  Nobody would start looking for a trail at the global level.  If this is an administrative list that someone wants to maintain, then it should at least move out of the main namespace.   --(WT-en) inas 17:04, 8 December 2009 (EST)

 * Rename to something like Hiking trails in North America. Someone has done some work here and it has the potential to develop into a useful index. Arguably it is already better than, say Long_distance_walking_in_Europe because, unlike that article most of the entries point to actual WT guides, and more broadly interesting than, say, Tramping in New Zealand because North America has so many more people. (WT-en) Pashley 18:23, 8 December 2009 (EST)

 * Tramping in New Zealand actually has useful information about long distance walks in New Zealand. It isn't just an index, but an introduction to the topic.
 * Long_distance_walking_in_Europe limits itself to a handful of well defined walks, where as this list is somewhat arbitrary. The trails are fine, but best linked from the regions and destinations where they are relevant.  We should demonstrate a very clear traveller benefit before allowing an article that is just a list.
 * If we really really decide that an index of these things is necessary - surely a Category is a better way to accomplish it than a manually updated index? --(WT-en) inas 00:46, 9 December 2009 (EST)

 * Redirect to List of itineraries, move the items there, and slap itinerary tags on them. A trail article would seem to be as clear an itinerary article as we could possibly have. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 01:11, 9 December 2009 (EST)

 * A fine solution, Peter. Why didn't I think of that? (WT-en) Pashley 01:26, 10 December 2009 (EST)

 * Redirect per Peter. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) talk 06:23, 13 May 2010 (EDT)

Result: Redirected to List of itineraries. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 23:36, 20 May 2010 (EDT)

title: Talk:Trail guide


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Talk:Trail of Israel

Gosh, I dunno, is this a destination? or an Itinerary? I'm not sure how it fits in exactly. It seems like a cool thing to talk about, but I'm not sure anybody is going to find it off in its own article like this. -- (WT-en) Mark 13:08, 12 March 2006 (EST)

title: Talk:Trail of Israel


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Talk:Tramping in New Zealand

Nice start to a good article. -- (WT-en) Evan 09:00, 6 Nov 2003 (PST)

Most national parks are administered by DOC? I thought they all were. Which ones aren't? --(WT-en) nurg

Thinking about extending information on the back-country hut system in New Zealand (basically thinking of creating a page for each hut in NZ (there are about 800 or so) with information on where it is, what it's like - track etc. etc. Can anyone tell me if this is something that WikiTravel is set up to do?  Or encourage?  I don't want to create something that is against the spirit of the thing! --(WT-en) patrick.davey 01:53, 9 February 2010 (EST)

title: Talk:Tramping in New Zealand


text:
Talk:Trang

I think there is some confusion between the city of Trang and the province of Trang.

 * You mean the "land of paradise islands" blurb? I moved it to Trang (province), but please help fix up the rest! (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:10, 1 February 2007 (EST)

TAT Listings
I moved the TAT Listings of Trang (province) to Talk:Trang/Listings for future reference. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 17:36, 5 February 2010 (EST)
 * No, you copied and pasted them, which disrupted the edit history. You should have moved Trang (province) to Talk:Trang/Listings instead.  I could still do that for you if you want.  (WT-en) LtPowers 18:32, 5 February 2010 (EST)

title: Talk:Trang


text:
Talk:Trang/Listings

Amphoe Mueang Trang
Phraya Ratsadanupradit Mahison Phakdi Monument (อนุสาวรีย์พระยารัษฎานุประดิษฐ์มหิศรภักดี) is in Trang Municipal Park, about 1 kilometre from the Provincial Hall on the Trang-Phatthalung route. Phraya Ratsada helped to make Trang the prosperous city it is today. He developed transportation, agriculture, animal husbandry, education, and local administration. He was also the first person to plant rubber trees in the province, which contributed to widespread planting in southern Thailand.

Sa Kaphang Surin (สวนสารณะสระกะพังสุรินทร์เทศบาลนครต���ัง) in Trang Municipality is about 2 kilometres from the Provincial Hall on Wian Kaphang Road. This is a natural pool of about 80,000 square metres. A concrete bridge spans the pool to three beautiful connecting pavilions in the pool’s centre. The surrounding area is a public park. A zoo is not far from Phraya Ratsadanupradit Monument.

Somdech Phra Srinagarindra’95 Park (Thung Nam Phut) (สวนสมเด็จพระศรีนครินทร์) is 3 kilometres from the city. Nam Phut Road is on the right of Tha Klang Road. The park has a lovely landscape and a magnificent view.

Phra Non Song Khrueang Nora (พระนอนทรงเครื่องโนรา) is at Wat Phu Khao Thong, Mu 1, Tambon Nam Phut, around 20 kilometres from the city. The Buddha image is in the death posture. The most distinctive feature is the head, which has a decorated headdress of the Nora dance called the Throet, regarded as a holy and royal ornament of the dance that is an indigenous performance of southern Thailand.

Amphoe Na Yong
Khao Chong Wildlife Development and Conservation Promotion Station (สถานีพัฒนาและส่งเสริมการอนุรักษ์สัตว์ป่าเขาช่อง) is approximately 21 kilometres from the city on the Trang-Phatthalung Road. This is one of the more attractive places of southern Thailand. There is an abundance of large trees, streams and waterfalls like Ton Yai, Ton Noi and Ka Chong. This is the first nature and wildlife study place in Thailand. In addition, the “nature study trail” is a walking trail ideal for studying nature up close. Signs along the trail provide information on the environment. “The Museum and Exhibition Building” has exhibitions on nature and natural resource conservation. More information can be obtained from the station at Mu 7, Tambon Chong, Amphoe Na Yong, P.O. Box 4, Trang.

Khlong Lam Chan Waterfowl Park (อุทยานนกน้ำคลองลำชาน) is in Khlong Lam Chan Wildlife Reserve, 17 kilometres from the city on the Trang-Phatthalung route, then a right on the Ban Ka Chong-Ban Hat Lao road (Highway No. 4124) for about 1 kilometre. A large swamp in the park is the home of numerous waterfowls. The period when there is the most number of birds is January-March. The park is a peaceful place suitable for relaxation, tourism or overnighting. Permission must be obtained in writing from the Chief of Wildlife Reserve Section, National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department, tel. 0 2562 0760, 0 2561 4292-4 ext. 765. http://www.dnp.go.th

Na Muen Si Woven Cloth (กลุ่มผ้าทอนาหมื่นศรี) is the most famous product of Na Muen Si, a Tambon in Trang. Currently there is a women’s Na Muen Si weaving group that maintains the weaving heritage of the area. Visitors can see the group’s works at its office that is on the same way as the road to Khao Chang Hai Cave, or about 5 kilometres on Na Muen Si Road. For further information, please contact the Amphoe Na Yong Community Development Office, tel. 0 7524 2431. About 300 metres away is the Tambon Na Muen Si Local Heritage Museum that is the local cultural centre to preserve local arts and handicrafts. Over 300 ancient utensils and artefacts are on display.

Tham Khao Chang Hai (ถ้ำเขาช้างหาย) is 5 kilometres from Amphoe Na Yong Market in Ban Na Muen Si. The cave has a great deal of lovely stalagmites and stalactites of various shapes.

Namtok Ka Chong (น้ำตกกะช่อง) is in Khao Chong Botanical Park on the Trang-Phatthalung Road in Amphoe Na Yong, about 7 kilometres from the district office. The majestic waterfall falls from a high mountain down a cliff and rocks. It is very popular with locals who visit it in large numbers everyday.

Amphoe Kantang
Phraya Ratsadanupradit Mahison Phakdi Museum (พิพิธภัณฑ์พระยารัษฎานุประดิษฐ์มหิศรภักดี) is around 200 metres from Kantang Municipality at No. 1, Khai Phithak Road, Tambon Kantang. It is the site of an important historical site, which is the “old Trang lord’s house” or the house of Phraya Ratsadanupradit, the former lord of the province. The house is a two-story wooden building. Inside are a wax figure of the lord and a complete collection of his daily personal items. The Na Ranong family looks after the house. It is open to the public every day except Mondays (it is open on public holidays but closed the following day). Groups requiring a guide must contact in advance Kantang Phitthayakon School, tel. 0 7525 1100

The first rubber tree in Thailand (ยางพาราต้นแรกของประเทศไทย) is along a road that leads to Kantang. This tree represents the first group of rubber trees that Phraya Ratsadanupradit planted to pioneer the rubber plantation industry in 1899.

Khuan Tamnak Chan Public Park (สวนสาธารณะควนตำหนักจันทน์) is located in the municipality of Mueang Kantang. The 250-acre park has beautiful surroundings. It has been developed to grow large trees and decorative plants. There is a rest pavilion and a parking lot for tourists. The park offers a great view of the sea and Kantang.

Hat Yong Ling and Hat San (หาดหยงหลิง-หาดสั้น) is on the way to Chao Mai Beach and a 2-kilometre road leads to Yong Lin Beach. This curved beach parallels a pine forest. At the beach’s end is a high mountain with holes and caves that can be passed through to a cliff with more caves and rocks similar to a fortress encircling sand dunes. The beach is ideal for swimming and rest. There is a park headquarters and a tourist service centre.

Hat Yao (หาดยาว) is at Mu 6 in Tambon Ko Libong. This long beach extends from a mountain in the shape of a shark’s fin to the north. Lovely sea pines line the beach. The wide beach is suitable for camping and there is private accommodation available.

Hat Chao Mai – Tham Chao Khun (ถ้ำเจ้าไหม-ถ้ำเจ้าคุณ) is a stalagmite/stalactite cave in To Nae Mountain near Ban Chao Mai. It can be reached by boat from Yao Beach onto Khlong Chao Mai for about 15 minutes. A small rowboat can go through the cave to a verdant mangrove forest where the cave is nearby. Visitors have to walk up to the cave to fully appreciate its beauty.

Ko Libong (เกาะลิบง) is in Tambon Libong and is the largest island in the Trang Sea with an area of 40,000 square kilometres. Around the island are seaweed and a large herd of manatees, large mammals of Thailand. It is also the home of a variety of native and migratory birds that are most abundant in winter. Ko Libong is part of the Libong Archipelago Wildlife Reserve. The park headquarters is located here. The island has many capes and beaches such as Hat Tup (หาดตูบ), Laem Chu Hoi (แห���มจุโหย), Laem Thuat (แหลมทวด), and Laem To Chai (แหลมโต๊ะชัย). People can walk across the beach at Laem Chu Hoi at low tide to Hat Tup (หาดตูบ) where seabirds and mangrove birds from colder climates not found anywhere else are in great numbers. Many fishing villages are on the island. Most residents are Muslims. From Ko Libong, one can get a good view of Hat Chao Mai and Chao Mai Cape. To get to the island, take a boat at Hat Yao Ban Chao Mai Pier. A boat leaves every hour and takes 30 minutes to get to the island. The boat rent is 400 baht per boat. There is accommodation on the island. Please contact the Libong Archipelago Wildlife Reserve, P.O. Box 5, Amphoe Kantang, Trang, tel. 0 7525 1932.

Kantang Hot spring (บ่อน้ำร้อนกันตัง) is at Mu 7, Tambon Bo Nam Ron, around 10 kilometres from Kantang. This natural hot spring has a constant temperature of 60 degrees Celsius. It is an interesting place for health tourism.

Ko Muk and Tham Morakot (เกาะมุก-ถ้ำมรกต) are the most prominent points in the Trang Sea. Ko Muk is mostly occupied by sea-facing towering cliffs to the west. Located on the eastern side of the island is a village of fishermen who have still maintained their ways of life as islanders. Visitors can walk around the island. On the island to the west is Tham Morakot, a dazzling sea cave. To access the cave, one must swim through a small entrance hole for 80 m. With light from the outside, emerald water can be seen inside the cave; it is unusual and amazing beauty by nature. Getting through the cave to the other side, one can see a clean beach of white sand encircled by high steep cliffs, and enjoy sitting in the shallow sea. Accommodation provided by private operators is available on Ko Muk.

To get to Ko Muk, tourists can take a boat from Pak Meng Pier in Amphoe Sikao for the 40-minute trip. The boat rent is around 2,000-3,000 baht/day. Accommodation is available on the island.

Ko Chueak - Ko Waen (เกาะเชือก-เกาะแหวน) are small islands between Ko Muk and Ko Kradan. They are teeming with shallow and deepwater corals and many types of fish. Visitors can depart from Pak Meng Pier for the islands. Boats leave regularly using the same route as to Ko Muk and Ko Kradan. The 50-minute trip costs 2,000-3,000 baht/day for a chartered boat.

Ko Kradan (เกาะกระดาน) is the most beautiful island in the Trang. It has an area of 600 acres. Most of the island (5/6) is under the responsibility of Hat Chao Mai National Park. The rest are privately owned. The island offers good restaurants and accommodation for tourists. The most striking feature of Ko Kradan is its powdery white beach and crystal-clear water that permits a great view of the coral reef underneath that stretches from the beach’s northern end to the coast. A variety of colourful fish inhabit the shallow water corals. Ko Kradan is to the west of Ko Muk and Ko Libong. Visitors can take a boat from Pak Meng Pier or Chao Mai Pier to Ko Kradan. The trip takes 1.30 hours. The boat rent is around 2,000-3,000 baht/day.

Amphoe Sikao
Hat Chao Mai National Park (อุทยานแห่งชาติหาดเจ้าไหม) is a marine national park covering 2 districts that are Kantang and Sikao. The park’s coastline is about 20 kilometres. The park headquarters is at Chang Lang Beach in Tambon Mai Fat, approximately 47 kilometres from the city. To get there, take the Trang-Sikao-Pak Meng road (Highway No. 4046-4162) and then 4 kilometres more on a road paralleling the beach to the park headquarters. Land-based attractions of the park are beaches such as Hat Pak Meng (หาดปากเมง), Hat Chang Lang (หาดฉางหลาง), Hat San (หาดสั้น), Hat Yao (หาดยาว), Hat Yong Ling (หาดหยงหลิง), Hat Chao Mai (หาดเจ้าไหม), and a cave called Tham Chao Mai (ถ้ำเจ้าไหม). All are easily accessible by car. Moreover, there are 7 other islands for which the park is responsible. They are Ko Muk (เกาะมุก), Ko Kradan (เกาะกร���ดาน), Ko Chueak (เกาะเชือก), Ko Pling (เกาะปลิง), Ko Waen (เกาะแหวน), Ko Meng (เกาะเมง), and Ko Chao Mai (เกาะเจ้าไหม). The area was proclaimed a national park on 14 October 1982. The park also has the Marine Natural Park Education Centre, tel. 0 7521 3258 and the Tourist Service Centre. Accommodation is available on the island. For more details, please contact the National Parks Division, Royal Forestry Department, tel. 0 2579 7223, 0 2579 5734 or Hat Chao Mai National Park, Mu 5, Tambon Mai Fat, Amphoe Sikao, Trang, P.O. Box 9, tel. 0 7521 3260.

Rajamangkala Aquarium (พิพิธภัณฑ์สัตว์น้ำราชมงคล) is around 30 kilometres from the city on the Trang-Sikao-Pak Meng road (Highway No. 4046-4162). The large building is inside the Fishery Faculty, Technology Rajamangkala University, Trang Campus, Tambon Mai Fat. The aquarium has 61 displays, not including fishponds. The aquarium has both freshwater and marine fish, amphibians and the most realistic model of a mangrove forest. It is open daily during official hours. Please call tel. 0 7527 4169, 0 7527 4151 ext. 4011 or www.fishtech.rit.ac.th

Hat Pak Meng (หาดปากเมง) is at Mu 4, Tambon Mai Fat, 40 kilometres from the city on the Trang-Sikao-Pak Meng road (Highway No. 4046-4162). The beautiful and peaceful 5-kilometre long beach is in the shape of a crescent moon. A lovely pine forest fringes the beach. Assorted large and small islands dot the sea, looking like a person lying face up in the ocean. Trang locals and people from nearby provinces like to come here to relax and sample spicy seafood in the restaurants. Boats from Pak Meng Pier take visitors to Ko Ngai and other islands close by.

Amphoe Palian
Sea tour of Palian (เที่ยวทะเลเมืองปะเหลียน) is recommended by taking the Trang-Palian road (Highway No. 404). The Palian coastline is a lovely, indicative of the extraordinary feature of the Andaman Sea. Famous beaches include Chao Samran and Ta-se. Interesting islands are Ko Sukon (เกาะสุกร), Ko Phetra (เกาะเภตรา), Ko Lao Liang Nua (เกาะเหลาเหลียงเหนือ), and Ko Lao Liang Tai (เกาะเหลาเหลียงใต้).

Mu Ko Phetra National Park (อุทยานแห่งชาติหมู่เกาะเภตรา) is a marine national park in Amphoe Palian and Amphoe La-ngu in Satun. The area was proclaimed a national park on 31 December 1994 and comprises islands such as Ko Phetra (เกาะเภตรา), Ko Khao Yai (เกาะเขาใหญ่), Ko Lanti (เกาะลันตี), Ko Lidi (เกาะลิดี), Ko Bulon (เกาะบุโหลน), Ko Lao Liang (เกาะเหลาเหลียง), and Ko Praoma (เกาะเปรามะ). Access can be from Pak Bara Pier in Satun. The most suitable time for a visit is during December-April. There is tourist accommodation near park headquarters. For more information, please contact the National Parks Division at tel. 0 2561 4292 ext. 724-5 or the Mu Ko Phetra National Park at Mu 4, Tambon Pak Nam, Amphoe Langu, Satun, tel. 0 7478 1572, 0 7478 3008.

Koh Lao Liang (เกาะเหลาเหลียง) These two islands are twin island, located in between Koh Libong and Koh Petra. The color of the sea around Koh Lao Liang is emerald green. The sea between these two islands is deep and swift. Both islands are big limestone mountains. There are highly sloped cliffs on both sides. The beach has white sand with fine grain.

Koh Takiang (เกาะตะเกียง) is a small island on in the group of south Trang islands. It is the island with only 100 meter long beach. The rest area is covered by rocks and hillocks. There is a lighthouse for chip in this region.

Koh Petra (เกาะเภตรา) is a rock mountain. There are a lot of high cliffs and sea gull. On the eastern part of this island, there are Petra beach and Kam beach. A huge rock separetes these two beaches. The beaches have the length of about 500 m. However, they are not so wide.

Ko Sukon (เกาะสุกร) is a Tambon in Palian, only 3 kilometres from shore via the Trang-Palian road (Highway No. 404). The island has many lovely beaches. In addition, it is renowned in the province for its delicious watermelons, which is abundant in March and April. To get there, take a bus on Trang-Palian route or a van from Amphoe Mueang for approximately 35 kilometres and cross a ferry at Tha Kham Pier (ท่าข้าม) in Palian. Boats leave twice daily at 10.00 a.m.and 2 p.m. The trip takes 40 minutes. Alternatively, embark a boat at Ta-se Pier (ท่าเรือตะเสะ) in King Amphoe Hat Samran by using Highway No. 404, turn right at Ban Na intersection and drive for around 18 kilometres and then left for another 7 kilometres or so. The total travelling time is 20-30 minutes. The boat rent is 700 baht for 10 people. There is tourist accommodation on the island.

Namtok Ton Te (น้ำตกโตนเต๊ะ) is 45 kilometres from the city. Go on the Trang-Phatthalung road for about 17 kilometres, right onto the Ban Kachong-Ban Hat Lao road (Highway No. 4124) for 27 kilometres and left for 1 kilometre. This large and beautiful waterfall of Trang has water that drops down 320 metres of rocks. The source is in the Banthat Mountain Range. Assorted tropical flora covers the surrounding area. Visitors can go by car to the waterfall in every season.

Namtok Ton Tok (น้ำตกโตนตก) is 1 kilometre from Ton Te Waterfall along a walking trail. Streams flow through rocks large and small. Ton Tok offers a great view of Ton Tae.

Amphoe Huai Yot
Khao Pina (เขาปินะ) is located in Tambon Na Wong, around 45 kilometres from town on Phetchakasem Road and another 2 kilometres off the main road. This hollow mountain looks like an upside down wok. Located at the foot of the mountain is Wat Pina. A flight of stairs leads the way to a cave of many inner parts and a panoramic view. On the rock shelter of Tham Champa, there appears an incision of the royal initials of King Rama VII.

Tham Le Khao Kop (ถ้ำเลเขากอบ) is in Mu 1, Tambon Khao Kop, about 7 kilometres from the district office on Phetkasem Road, then 700 metres on a road on the left. This cave is truly a natural wonder. A stream flows through the cave. The cave itself looks like a high and steep cliff with layers of rocks. A canal from the Banthat Mountain Range divides into 3 waterways upon reaching Khao Kop, 2 going around the mountain and the other flowing through the cave under the mountain. Stalactites and stalagmites line the cave for about 4 kilometres. Currently the Khao Kop Tambon Administration Organization provides rowboats for visitors to view the cave’s beauty and to be an eco-tourism and adventure activity by the locals. The fee is 200 baht for 6 persons or 30 baht per person. Please contact tel. 0 7550 0088, 0 7550 0117.

Amphoe Yan Ta Khao
Southern Thailand Botanical Garden (Thung Khai) (สวนพฤกษศาสตร์ภาคใต้-ทุ่งค่าย) can be reached via taking the Trang-Palian road (Highway No. 404) to Km. 11. This is a new tourist destination for those interested in studying nature and flora in particular. Inside the park are a tourist service centre, a botanical garden, an herbal garden, a botanical library, a plant museum, and a technical meeting centre. The most important aspect of the park is the many nature trails available, all going through a lowland jungle, as well as a forest with many interesting plant species. Accommodation is available. Please call tel. 0 7521 8435.

Namtok Sai Rung (น้ำตกสายรุ้ง) can be visited by taking the Trang-Phatthalung road to about Km. 17, turn right onto the Ban Ka Chong-Ban Hat Lao road for 15 kilometres, then turn left at the waterfall sign and continue for about 4 kilometres. This single-level waterfall falls from a high and huge cliff. The water turns into a rainbow as the sun shines through it.

Namtok Phrai Sawan (น้ำตกไพรสวรรค์) is a medium-sized waterfall of 17 sub-levels. It can be reached by taking the Trang-Phatthalung road to about Km. 17, then turn right onto the Ban Ka Chong-Ban Hat Lao road and drive for 20 kilometres. Then turn left at the waterfall sign and drive for around 4.5 kilometres. Visitors can currently go for a 5 kilometres raft trip around the waterfall. Rubber boats are also available for hire.

Namtok Lam Plok (น้ำตกลำปลอก) is a large 6-level waterfall. From here, one can see islands and the view of the mouth of the Palian River. To get there, take the Trang-Phatthalung road to Km. 17 and turn right onto the Ban Ka Chong-Ban Hat Lao road and drive for 26 kilometres where you have to turn left into the waterfall. The Khlong Lam Plok Hydroelectric Project is situated here.

Amphoe Ratsada
Tham Phra Phut (ถ้ำพระพุทธ) can be accessed from Ban Ka Pang by turning right to Cha-uat and driving for around 10 kilometres. At the intersection, turn right and continue for about 7 kilometres. Inside the cave is a large reclining Buddha image and also a standing image decorated in the style of a regal southern Thailand dancer. Moreover, there are personal belongings of upper-class people like ceramics, lacquerware and old pottery. The origin of the items and the temple’s history are shrouded in mystery.

Tham Phraya Phichai Soangkram (ถ้ำพระยาพิชัยสงคราม) in Ban Nai Wang, Tambon Nong Bua, is a naturally beautiful cave that has plenty of stalactites and stalagmites. It is teeming with wildlife, especially “Hoi Lo” or Lo snails that are edible.

Amphoe Hat Samran
Hat Samran (หาดสำราญ) is in Tambon Hat Samran, about 59 kilometres from the city. Take the Trang-Palian road and turn right at Ban Na intersection in Palian, and drive for 22 kilometres. This beach has a thick pine forest and offers a good view of large and small islands offshore. The climate on the islands is warm and breezy all day, making them great holiday spots. Tourists come here to sample fresh seafood and watch the life of local fishermen.

Do
Trekking For those who just love trekking, then they won’t be disappointed if they try it out in Trang. The province is a haven for pristine forest, exotic wildlife and more than 20 virtually ‘unseen’ waterfalls. Some of the most beaten trekking trails include:

 * Tontok Waterfall-Bantra Ranger Center (moderately)
 * Huaysom-Sahaipakao Camp-Chedchan Waterfall (difficult)
 * Tontok Waterfall-Sakai Village-Klongtok Waterfall (moderately)
 * Sairung Waterfall-Nanmuang-Khao Rutu (difficult)
 * Tonte Waterfall to Khao Chedyod (very difficult)

Diving Trang offers divers succulent coral reefs, amazingly clear water and an abundance of colourful marine life.

Unfortunately, most divers on coming to the south to dive fail to realize that Trang province offers diving sites on a par with neighbouring Krabi, Pha-nga and Phuket. So, Trang is ideal for those who wish to get off the beaten track and away from the tourist crowds.

Chaomai National Park: This area, 20km in length, is said to have one of the best diving sites in the world. Among the 40 islands in Trang, Koh Kradan is considered the most awesome. Other popular islands for diving include Ko Chueak, Ko Ma and Ko Ngai. Wanna-be divers can get all the information they desire at one of the diving centers, otherwise they can arrange a diving tour to Trang while staying in Krabi.

Bird Watching For bird watching, Ko Libong is the place to go.

Golf For a game of golf, play a round at the course at the Sri Trang Golf Club. Prayarassadanupradit Army, Tambon Lam Phura, Amphoe Huay Yod, Trang 92190 Tel: (075) 203-319, (081) 891-4907

Spa & Massage

The major spa providers in Trang are:

 * Sivara Spa at Amari Trang Beach Resort & Spa. Tel: 0 7520 5888
 * Rueansuanchan Massage& Spa  14-6 Rakcham Road, Amphoe Mueang  Tel: 0 7522 0775, 081 807 2875
 * Spa at Koh Ngai Fantasy Resort & Spa. Tel: 0 7521 0317
 * Sabai Gaya Thai Traditional Massage at Thurin Thana Hotel Tel:075 223 223, 211 211

Strolling along the city Trang is rich in its history as a commercial centre of Southern Andaman provinces. Take your time and walk along Rama VI street and the morning market. Chino-Portuguese buildings are on Kangtang Rd., and Lang Talad Rd. Don't forget to try Trang-style breakfast in local cafe, various kinds of Dim-Sum served with the famous Trang Roasted Pork, rice noodle with spicy soup, and a cup of traditional coffee.

Eat
In the provincial town visitors should check out the delicious local food offered at the Kang Som Restauarant and the Koteng Restaurant, on Rama VI rd. Simply delicious food served at ONe More....Smile cafe at Thumrin Hotel near Trang Train station. Friendly atmosphere and very reasonable prices. The cafe is very good place to relax and sip freshly brewed coffee. At Pak Meng Beach there are some stalls dishing up some sumptuous seafood and testing out the local Tao Teiy fish is highly recommended.

Amphoe Mueang Trang

 * The Terrace at Thumrin Thana Hotel (เดอะเทอเรส ธรรมรินทร์ ธนา), live band, beer and cocktails, and delicious food. Live football broadcast. Tel: 075 223 223, 211 211 opening time 5 pm - 1 am.
 * Balcony (บาโคนี่) 80/15 Ratsada Road, (Tel : 0 7521 0083, 08 1273 4627) (open 11.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Ban Suan Mueang Trang (บ้านสวนเมืองตรัง) 21 Mu 1 Tambon Na Ta Luang (Tel : 0 7521 1574, 08 1825 4070) (Thai food; open 11.00-21.00 hrs.)
 * Ban Suan Sudaphon (บ้านสวนสุดาพร) 66/25 Rak Chan Road, (Tel : 0 7522 6070) (Thai food; open 10.30-22.00 hrs.)
 * Ban Suwimon (บ้านสุวิมล) 113/3 Wian Kraphang Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel: 0 7521 8653, 08 1083 0477 (Thai food; open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Cha Ngao (ชะเงา) Pleanpitak Road, (Tel : 0 7522 2469) (pub & restaurant; open 11.00-24.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Kantang

 * Ko Kae (โกเกี๊ย) 8-10 Sakon Sathan Pitak Road, (Tel: 0 7525 1393) (Sea food; open 11.00-15.00 hrs. and 17.00-20.30 hrs.)
 * Ko Khao Seafood (โกเก้า ซีฟู๊ด) Mu Ban Hat Yao, Tambon Ko Libong (Tel: 0 7520 3033) (Seafood; open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Krua Na Thong (ครัวนาทอง) 45/2 Kuan Thong Si Road, Tambon Kantang (near Kantang Hospital) (Tel: 08 9724 2913) (Seafood; open 10.30-23.00 hrs.)
 * Pu Nim (ปูนิ่ม) 6 Mu 4 Tambon Kantang Tai (Tel: 0 7525 4066, 08 1125 6459) (Seafood; open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Rim Nam Restaurant (ริมน้ำ) Ratsada Road, Amphoe Kantang, (Tel: 0 7525 1327) (seafood; open 11.00-20.00 hrs.)
 * Rim Suan (ริมสวน) Pa Mai Road, Tambon Kantang (Tel: 08 4627 9944) (Thai food; open 10.00-21.00 hrs.)
 * Hat Yao Seafood (หาดยาวซีฟู้ด) 54 Mu 6 Tambon Libong, Chao Mai Pier (Tel: 0 7520 7930 (seafood; open 09.00-20.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Huai Yot

 * Chin Dam (จีนดำ) 167 Phetkasem Road, Tambon Huai Yot (Tel: 0 7527 1238) (Thai food; open 09.30-20.30 hrs.)
 * Che Aeng (เจ๊เอ่ง) Phetkasem Road, Tambon Huai Yot (Tel: 0 7527 1155) (Thai food; open 10.00-21.00 hrs.)
 * Che Wan (เจ๊หวั่น) 77-79 Thet Sa Ban 5 Road, Tambon Huai Yot (Tel: 0 7527 1192) (Thai food; open 10.00-21.30 hrs.)
 * Man Seng Lung (หม่านเซ่งหลุ่ง) Phetkasem Road, (Tel: 0 7527 1105) (open 06.30-14.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Sikao

 * Ko Pu Ko Pla (เกาะปู เกาะปลา) Hat Pak Meng 171 Mu 4 Tambon Mai Fat (Tel: 0 7527 4006-7) (Seafood; open 10.00-21.00 hrs.)
 * Kru Kid (ครูคิด) Hat Pak Meng 170 Mu 4 Tambon Mai Fat (Tel: 0 7527 4100) (Seafood; open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Krua Latdawan (ครัวลัดดาวัลย์) Hat Pak Meng 141 Mu 4 Tambon Mai Fat (Seafood; open 10.00-22.00 hrs. )
 * Lay Trang (เลตรัง) 54/22 Mu 4 Mai Fat Road, Tambon Pak Meng (Pak Meng Pier) (Tel: 0 7527 4027-9, 08 1904 8185) (Seafood; open 08.00-22.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Palian

 * Daw Talay (ดาวทะเล) 21/4-5 Tambon Tha Kam (Tel: 0 7524 1122) (Seafood; open 10.00-23.00 hrs.)
 * Ko Sek Sa Lam Pok (เกาะศึกษาลำปลอก) 22 Mu 10 Tambon Palian (near Lam Pok waterfall) (Tel: 0 7520 3604-5) (open 09.00-20.00 hrs.)
 * Leam Yong Star Seasight (แหลมหยงสตาร์ ซีไซด์) 276 Mu 4 Tambon Tha Kam (Seafood)
 * Ruam Mit (รวมมิตร) 31/29 Mu 1 Trang-Satun Road, Tambon Tung Yao (Tel: 0 7528 8062) (Seafood; open 09.00-20.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Yan Ta Khao

 * Ka Tang (กะตังค์) 176 Mu 1 Trang-Palian Road, Tambon Yan Ta Khao, (near Yan Ta Khao Market) (Tel: 0 7524 0655) (Thai food; open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Ko Lit (โกลิต) 24 Pi San Road, Tambon Yan Ta Khao (near Yan Ta Khao Market) (open 09.00-14.00 hrs.)
 * Krua Chai Klong (ครัวชายคลอง) 100 Mu 1 Worakiree Road, Tambon Yan Ta Khao (near Yan Ta Khao Market) (Thai food; open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Pai Nguen (ไผ่เงิน) Trang-Palian Road, (opposite Yan Ta Khao Post Office) (open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Na Yong

 * Khao Pub Pa (ร้านเขาพับผ้า) Mu 7 Phattalung Road, Tambon Khao Chong (Tel : 08 7891 5007) (Thai food; open 10.00-20.00 hrs.)
 * Ko Kang (โกกัง) 107/2 Mu 2  Phattalung Road, Tambon Na Yong Neua (noodle; open 10.00-14.00 hrs.)
 * Nong Som (น้องโสม) Phattalung Road, Tambon Na Yong Neua (open 10.00-22.00 hrs.)

Amphoe Hat Samran

 * Hat Samran Resort (หาดสำราญรีสอร์ท) 199 Mu 5 Tambon Hat Samran (Seafood; open 08.00-22.00 hrs.)
 * Ton Por (���้นปอ) 178/1 Ban Na-Hat Samran Road, Tambon Hat Samran (Tel: 0 7520 8208) (Seafood; 08.00-22.00 hrs.)

Drink
The Terrace (Beer Garden) – Thumrin Thana Hotel.

Casper – Huai Yot Road. Live Music

Cha Ngao –Ploen Pitak Road. Pub & Restaurant and Live Music

Say yes pub (เซเยสผับ) – Thammarin Thama Hotel .Very popular discotheques in Trang.

Wunderbar - Near the railway station. German / Thai ownership. Good western and Thai food. Lots of good cheese and Pizza. Good selection of German magazines and also Bangkok Post.

Sleep
There are plenty of hotels in Trang town and lots of resorts at Pak Meng Beach, Chang Lang Beach, Kradan island, Libong island, Mook island, Sukon island.

Amphoe Mueang Trang

 * Thumrin Thana Hotel (โรงแรมธรรมรินทร์ ธนา) 69/8 Huay yod Rd., Tambol Tubtiang, Tel: 66 75 223 223, 66 75 211 211. or booking online at www.thumrin.com. Comfortable and really spacious room, beautiful swimming pool. Suitable for travellers with family esp. small children.
 * Thumrin Hotel (โรงแรมธรรมรินทร์) 9 Satannee Rd., Tambol Tubtiang, Tel: 66 75 211 011 - 14 or booking online at www.thumrin.com. 3-stars hotel with desirable room rate. The room is clean and fully equipped. Just 5 minutes from Trang Train Station.
 * Center Point Inn (เซ็นเตอร์พ้อยอ��นน์) 108/84 Huai Yot Road, Tambon Thap Tiang (Tel: 0 7522 3383-6, Fax: 0 7522 3381) 80 rooms: 400-800 baht
 * Ko Teng (โกเต็ง) 77-79 Rama 6 Road, (Tel: 0 7521 8622, 0 7521 8148), 56 rooms: 180-380 baht
 * M.P. Resort (เอ็ม พี รีสอร์ท) 184 Trang-Phatthalung Road, (Tel: 0 7521 4230-45 Fax: 0 7521 1177) BKK. (Tel: 0 2251 4200-1, 0 2251 2069-71 Fax: 0 2253 9586) 251 rooms: 1,200-3,000 baht
 * My Friend (มายเฟรนด์) 25/12 Sathani Road, Tambon Thap Tiang (Tel: 0 7522 5447, 0 7522 5984, Fax: 0 7522 5976) 35 rooms: 450-680 baht
 * Na Ka Chalet Resort (นาขา ชาเลท์ รีสอร์ท) 28/4 Mu 1, Tambon Na Ta Luang (Tel: 0 7521 0988, 08 9197 1919 Fax: 0 7522 2469), www.nakachalet.com 20 rooms: 600-700 baht

Amphoe Palian

 * Ko Suk Sa Lam Pok Resort Fishing park (เกาะศึกษาลำปลอก รีสอร์ท ฟิชชิ่งพาร์ท) 22 Mu 10 Tambon Palian, (Tel: 0 7520 3044-5, 08 6597 8783, 08 1875 1077) 7 rooms: 500-600 baht
 * Ton Te Resort (โตนเต๊ะ รีสอร์ท) 175 Mu 12 Tambon Palian, (Tel: 0 7526 9156, 08 9874 1488) 6 rooms: 350-700 baht

Ko Sukon (Sukon Island Amphoe Palian)

 * Ko Sukon Andaman Beach Resort (เกาะสุกร อันดามัน บีช รีสอร์ท) 176/1 Mu 1 Tambon Ko Sukon (Office: 113/20 Ratsada Road, (Tel: 0 7521 8990, 0 7521 0602 Fax: 0 7521 8990) 10 rooms: 900-1,650 baht
 * Ko Sukon Beach Bungalow (สุกรบีชบังกะโล) 174 Mu 1, Tambon Sukon, (Office: 22 Sathani Road, Amphoe Mueang) (Tel: 0 7521 1457, 0 7520 7707, 08 1228 3668 Fax: 0 7520 7706) www.sukorn-island-trang.com, 20 rooms: 600-1,850 baht
 * Ko Sukon Resort (เกาะสุกร รีสอร์ท) Ko Sukon 140 Mu 1 Tambon Ko Sukon, (Office: 298/15 Huai Yot Road, Amphoe Mueang) (Tel: 0 7521 9679, 0 7521 1460 Fax: 0 7521 5648) 50 rooms: 1,000-1,600 baht
 * Sukon Cabana Resort (สุกร คาบาน่า รีสอร์ท) Ko Sukon, 117 Mu 1 Tambon Ko Sukon (Office: 160/3 Mu 10 Trang-Palian, Amphoe Mueang) (Tel: 0 7522 5894, 08 9724 7890, 08 9724 2326 Fax: 0 7522 4985) www.sukorncabana.com 17 rooms: 800-1,600 baht
 * Trang Island Resort (ตรัง ไอส์แลนด์ รีสอร์ท) Hat Sai Yao, Tambon Ko Sukon (Office : 110 Mu 4 Tambon Ta Sae, Amphoe Hat Samran) (Tel : 08 1978 8100 Fax : 0 7521 7717) www.trangislands.com 6 rooms : 750-1,200 baht
 * The Small Sea (เดอะสมอลล์ ซี) 31/1 Mu 3 Tambon Ko Sukon (Tel: 08 9727 7761, 08 1535 8283) 5 rooms : 350 baht

Amphoe Huai Yot

 * Wang Suan Kaew (วังสวนแก้ว) Km.21 82/3 Mu 3 Ban Nam Pri, Tambon Pak Kom (Tel : 08 9867 0511, 08 9196 3091), 8 rooms :  400 baht

Amphoe Kantang
Ko Kradan (Kradan Island, Amphoe Kantang)

 * Ko Kradan Beach Resort (เกาะกระดานบีชรีสอร์ท) Ko Kradan, Tambon Ko Libong (Office : 66/10 Tambon Thap Tiang, Amphoe Mueang) (Tel. 0 7559 0270 /Fax :  0 7521 1391) www.kradanisland.com         54 rooms: 800-2,000 baht

Ko Libong (Libong Island, Amphoe Kantang)

28 rooms : 500-1,200 baht
 * Le Du Kong Libong Resort (เลอดูกอง ลิบง รีสอร์ท) Ko Libong 15 Mu 5 Tambon Ko Libong (Tel : 08 7972 7228, 08 1124 6569, 08 9159 9239, 08 1912 4312) www.libongresort.com  10 rooms : 250-800 baht
 * Libong Beach Resort (ลิบง บีช รีสอร์ท) Ko Libong, 18/1 Mu 5 Tambon Ko Libong (Office : 18/3 Mu 6 Tambon Ban Kuan, Amphoe Kantang) (Tel : 0 7522 5205, 08 1747 4600 Fax : 0 7522 5205) www.libongbeachresort.com
 * Libong Nature Beach Resort (ลิบงเนเจอร์บีชรีสอร์ท) Ko Libong (Office : P.O. Box 8, Hat Yao, Amphoe Kantang) (Tel: 0 7520 7934, 0 7520 3012, 08 1894 6936) www.trangsea.com  20 rooms: 800-1,500 baht

Ko Muk (Muk Island, Amphoe Kantang)

phoe Mueang) (Tel : 0 7520 3281-2, 0 7521 7671-2 Fax : 0 7520 0072) 80 rooms : 700-2,500 baht
 * Family Resort (แฟมิลี่ รีสอร์ท) Ko Muk  123 Tambon Ko Libong (Tel : 08 9868 1799, 08 1747 9117) 8 rooms : 300-400 baht
 * Hat Farang Bungalow (หาดฝรั่ง บังกะโล) Ko Muk 108 Mu 2 Tambon Ko Libong (Tel : 08 7884 4785) 11 rooms : 400 baht
 * Ko Muk Chalie Beach Resort (เกาะมุกชาลี บีช รีสอร์ท) 164 Mu 2 Tambon Ko Libong (Office : 17 Sathani Road, Am
 * Ko Muk Garden (เกาะมุก การ์เดน) 164 Mu 4 Amphoe Kantang (Tel: 0 7521 1372, 08 1748 3894, 08 9872 3412) 13 rooms: 300-500 baht

Ko Lao Liang (Lao Liang Island, Amphoe Kantang)

 * Lao Liang Resort (เหลาเหลียง รีสอร์ท)  (Tel :  08 6311 1232, 08 3711 1192  BKK. Tel: 0 2730 0935-6) 40 rooms: (3 days 2 night: 4,300-8,500 baht)

Amphoe Kantang

 * Hat Yao Nature Resort (หาดยาวเนเจอร์รีสอร์ท) Hat Yao P.O. Box 8, Hat Yao, Amphoe Kantang (Tel : 0 7520 3012, 0 7520 7934, 08 1894 6936 Fax : 0 7520 7526 www.trangsea.com ) 20 rooms : 400-1,500 baht
 * Ko Kao Resort (โกเก้า รีสอร์ท) 54/1 Mu 6 Tambon Ko Libong (Tel : 0 7520 3033) 4 rooms : 800 baht
 * Mod Ta Noi Resort (มดตะนอย รีสอร์ท) 113/2 Mu 2 Tambon Ko Libong (Tel : 0 7525 2992, 08 1272 6308) 15 rooms : 500-1,700 baht
 * Sinchai Chao Mai Resort (สินชัย เจ้าไหม รีสอร์ท) Hat Chao Mai 63/1 Tambon Ko Libong (Tel: 08 1396 4838) 6 rooms: 300-600 baht

Amphoe Sikao

 * Nature Farm Resort (เนเจอร์ ฟาร์ม รีสอร์ท) Kuan Kun  P.O.Box 8, Hat Yao, amphoe Sikao (Tel : 0 7520 7934, 08 1894 6936 Fax : 0 7520 7934) 20 rooms : 600-800 baht
 * Waree Park Resort (วารี ปาร์ค รีสอร์ท) 78 Mu 3 Tambon Kala se (Tel : 0 7529 3052, 08 6957 4350 Fax : 0 7529 3052) 11 rooms : 600-1,000 baht

Amphoe Sikao

 * Amari Trang Beach Resort (อมารี ตรัง บีช รีสอร์ท) Hat Changlang199 Mu 5 Hat Pak Meng-Hat Changlang Road, Tambon Mai Fat (Tel : 0 7520 5888 Fax : 0 7520 5899) 144 rooms : 3,500-15,330 baht
 * Changlang Resort (ฉางหลางรีสอร์ท) 131/1 Mu 5 Tambon Mai Fat Changlang Beach, (Tel: 0 7521 3369, 0 7521 3603), 22 rooms: 500-1,800 baht
 * Lay Trang Resort (เลตรังรีสอร์ท) Pak Meng Pier 54/22 Mu 4 Tambon Mai Fat (Tel: 0 7527 4027-8, 0 7527 4227-8 Fax: 0 7527 4029) www.laytrang.com, 30 rooms: 800-5,000 baht
 * Mak Mai Resort (แมกไม้รีสอร์ท) 189 Mu 4 Tambon Mai Fat (Tel : 0 7527 4234, 08 9725 4369, 08 9727 0031 Fax : 0 7527 4234) 17 rooms : 350-550 baht

Amphoe Hat Samran

 * Ton Po Resort (ต้นปอรีสอร์ท) Hat Samran 178/1 Mu 12 Tambon Hat Samran (Tel : 0 7520 8208, 08 9728 3135) 4 rooms : 300-450 baht

Ko Ngai (Ngai Island

 * Co-Co Cottage 109/77 Mu 9 Tambon Khok Ro (Tel : 0 7522 4387, 08 9724 9225) www.coco-cottage.com 28 rooms : 800-4,000 baht
 * Ko Ngai Fantasy Resort & Spa (เกาะไหง แฟนตาซี รีสอร์ท แอนด์ สปา ) Ko Ngai, (Tel: 0 7521 0317, 0 7521 1045 ; on the island Tel : 0 7521 6339), 60 rooms: 2,190-6,000 baht
 * Ko Ngai Paradise (เกาะไหงพาราไดซ์) Ko Ngai, (Tel : 0 7521 8535, 0 7521 1260,  0 7521 6420, 0 7520 3024) 18 rooms : 400-800 baht
 * Ko Ngai Resort (เกาะไหงรีสอร์ท) Ko Ngai, (Tel: 0 7559 0035, 0 7520 6924-5), 80 rooms: 1,000-6,500 baht

Local Food
In general, Southern Thai food is renowned for its spiciness. Much of the cuisine has its origins in Malay, Indonesian and Indian food. Favourite dishes from the south include Indian-style Muslim curry (massaman), rice noodles in fish curry sauce (Khanom Jeen) and chicken birayani. Trang also has a unique breakfast cuisine found nowhere else in Thailand.

Trang is a famous place, where you can find many delicious local foods such as Mhu Yang Trang (Trang-style roasted pork), Trang’s cake, Trang’s breakfast (Dimsum). Local coffee shop (Ran Gafae) in Trang have their own special menu which you can try, such as Go pii (black coffee served with sugar), Go pii-Or (coffee mixed with condensed milk (if you don’t like sweet, just say Mai Waan), Gafae Ron (instant coffee with cream), Go-pii Chaum (coffee mixed with tea, served with condensed milk), Ceylong (Tea from Sri Lanka with sugar). The other is the local breakfast, Ja Kuai (deep fried bread), Pa Tong Ko (Trang local sweet bread), Khanom-Jeep (local dimsum).

With the dim sum, fortunately, you don't even have to waste time trying to speak Thai to order, you simply eat what's there laid on the table and pay for what you've eaten.

Local Products
Trang has a few local products which are popualr souvenirs : Suea Toei or Suea Panan (mats woven from screw pine), Muk (container for small things), ray leather products; namely, bags and shoes, basketry made of cattail stems, carved-wood products from Thep Tharo wood, para rubber toys, and ‘Na Muen Si’ local woven cloth. Products of local food include Trang roast pork, Trang’s cake, ‘Khao Chong coffee, ‘Kapi’ or shrimp paste, etc.  For more information, contact the Trang Provincial Industry Office at Tel: 0 7521 8699, Trang Community Development Office at Tel: 0 7521 8267, 0 7521 5109 or visit the website: http://www.trang.go.th

Souvenir Shops
Amphoe Mueang

 * Anny Book (แอนนี่ บุ๊ค) Ratchadamnoen Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 08 1397 4574) (Thai Handicraft Products)
 * Cake Benchamit (เค้กเบญจมิตร) Kantang Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 1804) (Cake Mueang Trang)
 * Cake Chim (เค้กชิม) 187/4 Phattalung Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 1821) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Cake Ko Pok (เค้กโกป๊อก) 10/4 Chem Pan Ya Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7522 0017) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Cake Rod Lert (เค้ก��สเลิศ) 59/3 Sathani Road (near Trang Railway Station), Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 9093, 0 7522 2831) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Cake Sai Jai (เค้กสายใจ) 6/10 Chem Pan Ya Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 2256) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Fa Trang Collection (ฟ้าตรัง คอลเล็กชั่น) Ratchadamnoen Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 8617) (Thai Handicraft Products)
 * Local Products Centre (ศูนย์จำหน่ายสินค้าพื้นเมือง) Trang-Phattalung Road, (next to Trang Governor House) (Tel : 0 7521 5395) (Trang OTOP Products)
 * Sin Yu Heang (ซินหยูเฮียง) 192 Huai Yot Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 1627) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Sri Trang Batik (ศรีตรัง บาติก) Chem Pan Ya Road, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 4125) (Batik Fabric Cloth)
 * Trang OTOP Centre (ศูนย์จำหน่ายสินค้าโอทอปจังหวัดตรัง) Praram 6 Road, Amphoe Mueang, (Tel: 0 7521 8356) (Local Products)
 * Union & World Class (ยูเนี่ยนและเวิลด์คลาส) 22/1 Mu 3 Soi Huai Yot 23, Tambon Na Ta Laung, Amphoe Mueang (Tel : 0 7521 1167, 0 7521 5051) (Ray Leather Products)

Amphoe Huai Yot

 * Cake Kuk Ming (เค้กขุกมิ่ง) 5,6 Phetkasem Road, Tambon Lam Phura, Amphoe Huai Yot (Tel : 0 7528 4080, 0 7528 4118) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Cake Nam Keang (เค้กนำเก่ง) 23-24 Phetkasem Road, Tambon Lam Phura, Amphoe Huai Yot (Tel : 0 7526 6148) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)
 * Cake Siriwan (เค้กศิริวรรณ) 6/1 Phetkasem Road, Tambon Lam Phura, Amphoe Huai Yot (Tel : 0 7528 4085, 0 7526 6065) (Cake Mueang Trang & local dessert)

Amphoe Yan Ta Khao

 * Plan Toy (แพลนทอยส์) 8 Mu 8 Tambon Tung Krabue, Trang-Palian Road, Amphoe Yan Ta Khao (Tel : 0 7528 0200-4) (para rubber toys, for more information Tel : 0 7521 8699, 0 7521 2841)

Learn
Learn about the huge variety of lovely delicate coral there is in Trang and if you get the chance learn too about the different diversity of birds on Bird Island.

Nightlife
Types of nightlife available in Trang include:
 * Discos in town are popular with the younger trendier crowd
 * Live Music Joints play Thai Folk or classics
 * Karaoke clubs can be found all around and customers can either sing to everyone or rent a private room
 * Barbeques are large restaurants which play music and serve alcohol to the wee restaurants (unlike the other venues)
 * There are some bars on Pak Meng Beach
 * Thai Pubs are not like Western ones, they are usually huge. Visitors enjoy great live music sung by pretty female singers and handsome guys. They may also have naughty Coyote dancers

Health and Medical Centers
Medical Facilities

The provincial town has two quality hospital which provides top-class service.

 * Trang Hospital (โรงพยาบาลตรัง) Khuan Han Road, Tambon Thap Thiang, Amphoe Mueang, Tel: 0 7521 2241-3, 0 7521 8018
 * Watanapat Hospital (โรงพยาบาลวัฒนแพทย์)  Phattalung Road, Tambon Thap Thiang, Amphoe Mueang, (Tel: 0 7521 858)
 * Trang Ruampat (ตรังรวมแพทย์) Kokkhun Road, Tambon Thap Thiang, Amphoe Mueang,           (Tel: 0 7521 8988)

In all areas of Trang, clinics and pharmacies can easily be found.

Retirement
Trang is ideal for retirees who want to retire in peace and quiet and lead a contented simple no-hassles life. The weather is ideal for those who are fed-up of the cold back home and want instead to enjoy tropical weather. The locals are renowned for their friendly nature, crime is virtually non-existent and the cost of living is dead cheap.

Media/Contact
Local television, satellite TV channels are available. English language newspapers and magazines are available in some bookstores.

Landline telephone, satellite phone and all mobile phone systems are available at Sukhothai downtown and village areas. Internet can be had in hotels, resorts and internet cafés. There are Post Offices in every district.

Local Tips
The best time to visit Trang is between the months November to April when the area’s climate is less hot than usual. During this period the island gets a lot of dry North Easterly winds, so giving dry blue skies and starry nights. Then, down on the beaches one can enjoy nice sea breezes. From June to November the area gets a lot of rainfall, more on average than the rest of the country. During this period the island gets a lot of moist South Westerly winds, so giving a mixture of dry days and wet ones. The sea stays at a warm 29 degrees Celsius all year round. Visitors however, coming in this period will find it cheaper.

Dos
 * Do buy gems from a reputable company.
 * Do carry around small change.
 * Do take water when jungle trekking and do drink a lot in such a hot climate.
 * Do bargain with vendors.
 * Do make sure your scuba diving instructor is fully accredited.

Don’ts

 * Don’t take any boat unless it has life jackets.
 * Don’t go into the jungle alone.
 * Don’t go to the beach at night either to walk or swim.
 * Don’t get involved with any narcotics.
 * Don’t, as a woman, got topless on the beach.
 * Don’t, as a man, walk around shirtless, other than at the beach.

Suggested Itinerary
3 Days Day 1 : Take the overnight train from Bangkok and arrive in Trang in the early morning. Visit one of the coffee shops and have local coffee and dim-sum. Travel to Pak Meng Pier and take a boat trip to the stunning Emerald Cave at Koh Mook. After that go to Resort and check in and relax. In the evening, enjoy some local seafood.

Day 2: Take a boat to Kradan island and snorkeling to admire the colourfully delicate coral and marine life. After go to Chueak island to snorkeling. Come back to Pak Meng and return to Trang Town. Stay overnight in Trang Town and enjoy some live folk music.

Day 3: Get up early and have one of the delightful roasted pork breakfasts. Go to Tham Le Khao Kob, visit to the stalactite and stalagmite in the cave. In the afternoon, travel to Krabi.

--(WT-en) globe-trotter 17:36, 5 February 2010 (EST)

title: Talk:Trang/Listings