Hat Yai, Thailand – November 9th – 11th, 2016

Our minibus from Penang to Hat Yai, Thailand would be the nicest overland travel experience yet, or so we thought when we first took our seats. The van picked us up at the hotel on time and there were actually empty seats (though they were filled with people’s luggage) – a first in our limited Asia bus experience! We thought to ourselves, “This is a lot better than we expected.” We drove for about 15 minutes before we stopped to pick up three more people along with their luggage. Turns out their plan for fitting everyone and their bags was to seat people in their seats and then pack the luggage all around people, just like packing peanuts. That’s how we rode for 5 hours to Hat Yai: surrounded and cushioned by our fellow travelers’ bags. We were only a little concerned about getting out of the van in the event of an emergency…

Once we arrived in Hat Yai, our first order of business was to buy bus tickets for the next morning. We were headed to Pak Bara, where we would catch a speed boat to our island paradise! Unfortunately, it wasn’t so simple. Our hotel was conveniently located next to the big bus station in town, so we made the quick walk over. It was there that we found out that there are TWO bus stations in town, we needed to go to the other one, and it would cost us $15 roundtrip by tuktuk. We didn’t believe this, so we got lunch to cool our nerves – it shouldn’t be this difficult or expensive to buy bus tickets. Our lunch, though especially spicy, was delicious and served by a helpful French expat who, along with his Thai wife, helped explain the bus situation and corroborated the story. BTW, we found out papaya is an amazing and delicious way to soothe your mouth after very spicy food (we also learned ginormous banana crushes are another way to soothe your mouth, but the absolute BEST way to soothe your mouth is get both papaya AND banana crushes 😊). With our bellies full (and mouths soothed), we bartered with a few tuktuk drivers and headed over to the other bus station. At the other station, they refused to sell us bus tickets for the next day. Through very broken English, we gleaned that we would need to return early the next morning to buy the tickets before the 7:30 am bus left. We were frustrated that the “buy your bus tickets the day before” rule that we had learned in the rest of Asia now randomly didn’t apply, but we were (and are) finally learning that we just need to accept and roll with these types of things.

Not many pictures of our time in Hat Yai and no pictures of Dani unfortunately, but we were productive and got my hairs cut!

Though it was a large, ugly, and uninviting city, we decided to stay an extra day and finish our Christmas shopping, which we had begun in Malaysia. The next morning, we walked to the post office to investigate our Christmas package shipping options. The man we spoke to was very helpful for the first five minutes, after which he randomly lost interest and – without another word – began reorganizing his desk. We continued walking to the main shopping and market area where we happened upon another post office whose postwoman was extremely helpful and answered all of our questions without making us feel like we were wasting her time. The rest of the day was spent shopping, walking, wrapping, and packing the small Christmas gifts we had bought for our families. When we returned to the post office to send the package out, the helpful postwoman was no longer clocked in, but the replacement postman recognized he would need some help with English and brought in a translator on his own accord! We felt a huge wave of accomplishment and relief when the box was all packaged, paid for, and sent off. Here’s hoping it actually takes only a month to arrive in the States!

In Hat Yai, we noticed a few major differences compared to Malaysia:

1. the language barrier is much much worse
2. for the first time on our trip we encountered someone (more than one actually) who couldn’t be bothered to help us (unclear if this was due to language barrier or disdain for tourists)
3. twice, someone tried to help us figure something out and then decided to give up right in the middle of it
4. they have SUPER tiny tuktuks that you can’t even sit up straight in (see the photo above).

Reading this list again, we sound like very snobby tourists… But it also goes to show how tourist-friendly and genuinely helpful Malaysia and its people are. Come to think of it, even in India and Nepal we never encountered someone unwilling to help us out.