It was our first time at Hatyai, Thailand's south city very near the Malaysian border. My siblings, the kids and I took a van from the Sungai Nibong bus terminal on a Friday morning and reached the bustling city after lunch.
We checked in the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel, chosen for its very central location. The spacious twin rooms were pretty basic but have very clean beddings which were most important to us. A quick rest and off we explored the surrounding area for our late lunch. Late afternoon was spent experiencing our first authentic Thai body massage while Sarah and Sofi were treated by the staff to a free hair wash and braid while waiting. Everybody was happy with the deal.
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| Jing and I occupied one room with the girls while Mitch and Rap stayed in the room right across the hall. Rooms were spacious and very clean, thumbs up! |
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| The kids enjoyed their free hair wash :) |
Khlong Hae Floating Market was our first adventure. The parked tuk tuks in front of the hotel were overcharging us, no surprise there, so we walked a block away. We flagged down an empty tuk tuk and negotiated a roundtrip transport service. Our tuk tuk driver is a senior guy, like most of the drivers we've seen around the city. We only saw a handful of younger men driving a tuk tuk.
The Khlong Hae floating market opens only Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 3pm to 9pm. Local food and snacks are sold by lovely Thai ladies on traditional boats in a canal. There's also souvenirs, shirts, crafts and other knick knacks offered in other stalls. We stayed there for an hour and half before it was time for our tuk tuk ride. Our driver was about 20 minutes late but we didn't mind. But he informed us despite the language barrier that our 7:30pm pick up time was Malaysia time, 1 hour ahead of Thai time. He was actually early! We were pretty sure this happens quite frequently that's why he came 40 minutes before our appointment. We made sure to sync our watches to the local time after that haha
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| Excited at our first look at the floating market! |
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| Native delicacies and drinks |
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| Sofi and Mitch |
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| These drinks can be served with the bamboo container, a Hello Kitty/Pokemon claypot mugs or in a normal paper cup. The fancy containers serves as souvenirs too. |
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| Busy ladies prepping their offered food |
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| Jing by the claypot mugs |
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| Colorful sweets and fried spiral potatoes |
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| The lady uses that long stick with a basket at the end to receive money and return any change. |
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| Group shot at the signage. Side story: We were patiently waiting for our turn but the group in the picture us took forever for their own shots. It was too much I just asked my siblings to pose even when they're still there. |
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| Various country flags on display at the bridge to the floating market. |
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| Mr. Egg |
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| We're complete! Group shots with no cranky kids (or adult!) were very few =) |
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| A last look. |
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