"Hat Yai....." Top 5 Page for this destination Hat Yai by PS_Lee81

This is actually my first travel to Thailand... I wanted to visit Thailand very long ago after hearing many of the nice things about Thailand from friends and family.

Well it was quite a long holiday for the Malay Hari Raya + Deepavali (1Nov - 6Nov 2005). I dunno where i wanted to go at the first place, but then me and my gf ended up in Hat Yai (3D2N) as our first visit to Thailand. To save the trip cost, we planned to do a backpacking trip. I learned about the place a lot from VT, and it was actually my first time using VT. Then i started to enjoy it and now i'm starting to write my own travel page!

Picture with the street in Hat Yai

As the first time visiting Thailand, the only thing i can say about Hat Yai is that this place is really looks like a gathering spot for the Malaysian and Singaporean during the holiday season! Once i reached the Hat Yai city, i can already see a lot of people, mostly from Malaysia and Singapore around the busy street, walking around, shopping, shopping and shopping... I believe many of the Malaysian and Singaporean are very familiar about this place, and some of them really do a regular visit to Hat Yai.
I think that Hat Yai had transformed to be more Malaysian style than Thai itself. This happen maybe because they used to interact a lot with the Malaysian and the Singaporean and had since adapted to the way that tourist like. This includes the way they do business, the way they speak, etc... Most of them can even speak Hokkien (Chinese dialet) to accommodate the tourist from Malaysia and Singapore. Very little about the Thai culture you can expect from them except that all their writting is >95% in Thai language...

Hat Yai - Songkhla Bus

For me, Hat Yai is only a place to spend my long holiday... I think there are not much things to do in Hat Yai, except shopping, and night (or adult) activities for those people who like it, and for some people who seek for the local medicine and religion matter. I see nothing really special about this area, except that the thing and food here are cheaper compare to KL (Malaysia).

My prefered next destination might be Bangkok or Chiang Mai as they offer more of the local custom (i think), still preserving the historical monuments and the local style of doing business... (correct me if i'm wrong). I'll definetely do backpacking again and write more about my travel in the future!!

• Pros:Cheap Food & Goods + Night Activities
• Cons:Not very special for tourist, mostly for regular traveller looking for specific thing