Thailand forum

Hello everyone! I'm planning a trip to south east Asia to visit friends in January. I plan on visiting my friends in Pattani (southern Thailand) before continuing on to Malaysia and Singapore (or in reverse).

Flights seem to be cheapest through airasia however, flying into Phuket is alot more expensive than flying into Kuala Lampur. So I thought I'd start there, travel up into Thailand and then back into Malaysia. Has anyone traveled from Malaysia to Pattani? Can you recommend a route? Is it relatively safe (I've heard that the southern part of Thailand has the occasional uprising). My friends are Malay Thai so while I am asking for their guidance on how to get there their experiences are going to be different from mine (I'm from the US).

Also, does anyone have any must-sees in the Pattani area or surrounding provinces? I'll be in Thailand for a few days before returning to Malaysia for a couple of days and then I plan on continuing onto Singapore (I'm open to suggestions for those countries as well). My interests are more towards cultural heritage sites, temples, markets and seeing how people live as opposed to diving with sharks, holding baby tigers, etc. My trip will coincide with the lunar New Year and I'm not sure if there's one area that would be more interesting in which to celebrate the new year in comparison to others.

At the moment I'm only looking for suggestions for southern Thailand - central and northern Thailand will be a different trip (I live in Korea).

Thank you so much!