Hatyai Jaunt

Hubby and I together with a bunch of church friends went for a weekend trip to Hatyai on the 20-21 July weekend. So this is really a very belated post with only the highlights of the trip.

Due to good business Lee Garden Hotel was out of rooms so we had to upgrade to a suite. The room was huge but the air-con vent was placed at the lounge area instead of the bedroom. Isn't that ridiculous? All of us couldn't really sleep well that night because of the heat. Thank God we only stayed one night.

Our very spacious suite

After we checked in, we piled back into the van and headed to Songkhla for a seafood lunch.

Hmmm, what shall we have for lunch?

Lunch was cheap and good but some of the dishes were so spicy hot that I cried!

Then the van driver insisted that we have to go to the beach because it was too early to go to the floating market. 

Baked eggs sold by peddlers at the beach
stirred our curiosity but not our appetite

We were told that the coconut ice cream in Thailand is very delicious and since we had time we asked the store keepers for the location of the coconut ice cream stall. They weren't helpful at all and we were given the run around. Nevertheless we eventually found the stall. 

Enjoying my super yummy-licious coconut ice cream

And then we stumbled upon the Consulate General of Malaysia at Songkhla.

All of us felt compelled to take a photo outside the building of
the Consulate-General of Malaysia in Songkhla. So patriotic!

Finally we arrived at the floating market. 

At the floating market

The seller will use a basket to serve the food to the customer
who will, likewise, put the payment into basket

It was there that I did something so unthinkable and unbelievable that no one who knows me would believe that I did it if I don't have pictures as proof. 

There were other stalls by the river-side and there was this stall
selling crispy fried maggots, larvae, crickets, grasshoppers, etc!

Kelvin bought some and somehow managed to persuade me to try some.
Surprisingly the silkworm (that's what the vendor said it was)
didn't taste too bad. In fact, it was quite "lemak." 

Then Hubby also joined in

As we wondered around the market, the one thing I noticed in Thailand is their great love for colours. 

From colourful baskets...

to colourful cakes...

to colourful sushi!

 Most of the time we travelled by tuk-tuk which was a real squeeze for the 10 of us. 

Hardly any space left for Hubby who was taking the photo

But the most memorable thing for Hubby was the 3-layer teh tarik just outside the hotel. 

 The next day was spent shopping and by the time we left...

...the van was packed full to overflowing. 

On the trip back we also had an adventure trying to escape being stopped by the authorities who were asking passengers to come down from the vans and unloading their luggage for a thorough check. 

We even went off the highway into the small kampungs with our van leading a convoy of 6 vans. When we went onto the highway again we thought all was well but the van driver saw the enforcement officers at the rest area. So all the vans went fast and furious trying to get across the toll before being stopped. 

All the while there were so many calls from our van driver to the rest and vice versa. Some of the conversation was in Hokkien and while others were in Thai. We had a great time trying to decipher what was going on since we could only hear the driver's responses which is only a quarter of what is being said. 

Everyone was caught up with the adventure. Even those who were sleeping woke up.