Hat Yai

If you have not been to Hat Yai, it is a quiet city located in Southern Thailand.

On my recent trip to Koh Lipe, we had to stopover at Hat Yai for a night as the timings for our flight to Hat Yai and the timings for the ferry to Koh Lipe couldn't coincide. Basically, in order to get to Koh Lipe, you would have to take a flight to Hat Yai or a few other neighbouring cities that offer transport to catch the ferry to the island. However, there are only that many flights flying in to Hat Yai per day or even Phuket / Krabi per day and also a limited number of ferry timings taking you from Pak Bara to Koh Lipe. By the time our flight touched down in Hat Yai, we would already have missed the last ferry out so we had no choice but to stay in Hat Yai for a night.

Might as well take the time to explore Hat Yai for a day right?

I'll be honest with you. There isn't much to do in Hat Yai. It's quite a quiet city and my friend, Natalie, likened it to Hanoi. Personally, I've never been to Hanoi so I do not have a gauge but I can vouch for the city being really quiet.

We ended up grabbing some Thai food along the street as we were starving and craving for something spicy. You cannot go to Thailand and not indulge in as much spiciness as possible.

Eating and navigating with the map a little

There are markets in Hat Yai. The largest one being Kim Yong Market and it's located in the city centre. There is a whole street adjacent to the market that has loads of food vendors offering you street food. Best experience. I would suggest coming here to get your thai food fix.

Since there wasn't much to do, we decided to head to the Trick Eye Museum!

Took a tuk tuk there where I shared the wonders of Airdrop with Nat who was as clueless as me a few months ago about the function available on our iPhones. #noob

 

 

The entrance fee per person for the Trick Eye museum is 400THB.

However, since the museum was closing at 7pm and we only got there at 6pm, they decided to let us in for 200THB per person! We were all ready to fork out that 800THB for both of us already and they literally just refunded us the money. Best deal ever! There was also no one in the museum so we literally had the whole place to ourselves.

Had a simple dinner along the road near our hotel. By the way, hotels in Hat Yai are really cheap as well. Our room was about S$35 per night. Definitely will not bust your budget if you had to stay one night in the city.

Have you been to Hat Yai?

Comment below if you have any other recommendations about this city, I would love to hear it.