It is situated on the western bank of the Golok River estuary, which is the natural international boundary between Thailand and Malaysia.

Visitors can enter Malaysia via Pengkalan Kubor, Kelantan with a ferry service.

Administratively it is a town (thesaban mueang), and covers 9.14 km2 of the subdistrict (tambon) Che He.

[1] It is the location of the Tak Bai Incident of 25 October 2004 in which at least 85 demonstrators died.

[2][3] Under the 1909 Anglo-Siamese Treaty the Golok River was made the new border and thus Tabal was reassigned to Narathiwat Province.