Hat Yai – A Bizarre Border Town

Location: Hat Yai, Thailand
NP: David Bowie – I’m Deranged
Mood: Estranged

I woke up too early again. Eight hours of sleep had eluded me for days. Sometimes it was because of a sound or a numb arm or the heat. Most of the time it was because of how I felt. The inability to sleep was my body’s way of telling me something was wrong.

This place, this city of about 200 000 inhabitants, was strange. Hat Yai they called it. It served mostly as the south’s commercial and transport hub for Bangkok-bound tourists and as a welcome to new arrivals from Malaysia. My guidebook also claims it’s an energetic border town of ethnic diversity where you might not purposefully disembark.

Well, we had.

Before the trip began we’d booked a cheap flight from Hat Yai to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, because Thai customs might require us to have a ticket out of the country within 30 days (we don’t have a visa) as proof of your intentions to leave before you’ve overstayed your welcome. It didn’t need to be an airline ticket, which we didn’t know for certain then. Any ticket would do. Well the customs hadn’t needed to see the ticket, but Turkish Airlines did. Otherwise we would not have been allowed on the plane, despite of what their customer service claimed when I’d asked them.

For me Hat Yai was the strangest town I’d seen so far on this trip. It gave off a similar vibe as Chumphon’s bus station did at night. It felt wrong and bizarre, almost unreal.

The restaurants were strange, open places with the food on display in front and tables behind. I think you were either supposed point at the dish you wanted or gobble it up on a plate yourself as I’d seen some of the locals do. But I didn’t know for sure. So far I’d avoided them and eaten one of the spiciest dishes I’ve ever had at a pub (called The Pubb) instead.

The hotel, Ladda Guesthouse, was strange with steep stairs, low arches on passageways and disinterested staff who napped on the bench in the tiny lobby at night. Travelfish had described it as claustrophobic with dank and dark rooms. There was no wifi, no complimentary water and most of the rooms didn’t even have windows. Mine did, Mika’s didn’t. Though my window was pretty useless. The view was at a plain concrete wall just two meters away overlooking an alley, perhaps, that I couldn’t see.

At night, an elephant roamed the streets.

The people were strange. Right when we’d arrived we met a man doing the wai at us, speaking in Thai (or was a part of that English?) we couldn’t understand, touching my arm and bringing his hand on his lips, then bowing his head and proceeding to follow us for a block or two for no apparent reason. A little later we met a local woman asking us where we’re from, claiming she had a friend in Helsinki and warning us about holes on the streets as she escorted us across the road. She then proceeded to describe the local department stores with words that were difficult to understand. What we did understand, though, is that somewhere in between the topics she suggested we should visit her massage parlor.

Johnny was the only way out.

The nightlife was strange. The guidebook claimed there’d be many bars along Thanon Thamnoonvithi, which might be the main street of the city. We’d only seen four and the locals didn’t even know the word “nightclub” (Mika tried asking for one several times from several people – I guess he was aching to find one). We visited only two, among them a “farang favourite”, the guidebook claimed. It was right. When we went there, there were a total of three farangs within.

I think it may be a law in Thailand that bars should close at 1 AM, but not all bars follow this rule. One by one they closed. At night ladyboys and prostitutes roamed the streets of Hat Yai, distanced from the few vendors washing their stalls. Rats and cockroaches completed the seedy image of this bizarre border town, with two farangs trying to make it back to the hotel.

On the way I killed three roaches.