Khlong Hae Floating Market at Hat Yai

When I told my friends I'm going to Thailand, Hat Yai, everyone seems disinterest with this place. Most of them visited this place previously and this was my first visit. Some of them even told me to go Phuket or Bangkok a better place for shopping. Nevertheless, these 2 places are bit far from Malaysia and more convenient with airplane than road trip. Hat Yai indeed is a bit country side and not so developed like Bangkok the capital city. But the best thing is we can always find some sumptuous local Thai food on the street and a good place to shop too.

I will share more about shopping experience in Hat Yai in next post. This time I'm going to write about the floating market in Hat Yai. Based on the map I got, Khlong Hae Floating Market is at the northern part of the Lee Garden Plaza which is impossible to go with a walk. Therefore, we have to hire a private charter（包车） tuk tuk, the main transport mode from one place to another at Thailand. Tuk tuk is like a small van and functions like a taxi but without air-conditioner. They don't have the meter. We have to bargain with the driver to bring us there.

The driver offered us 600 baht to go Khlong Hae Floating Market, but my friend bargained (in Hokkien) until we got 500 baht plus going to Big C shopping mall on the way back. It would be better if go with 2 more friends so that you can share the cost, and much cheaper per person. We could not find 2 more persons/strangers who going there at that time, thus we both going there in a tuk-tuk.

We saw some vintage buildings on the way to the market. We seldom see any taxi on the street. I was told previously by my friends who visited this place before that the tuk-tuk driver would promote about "Thai Girl Show" but it did not happen when we were there. But hey sorry, I will not pay that money to watch such show xoxo

Hat Yai is a small town. Even though it is quite near to Perlis and Kedah, Malaysia, but it does not as developed as in West Malaysia. I saw the same thing in Sabah, East Malaysia last year. The petrol station here is operated by a Thai outside their house.

Finally, we reached Khlong Hae Floating Market. A bit of the eye sore of this place is the dogs' dung everywhere at the ground opposite the floating market. I had to walk carefully as not to step on it...yeee

One of the must buy here is the coconut drink comes with the cute clay cup. It was 30 baht in total. We can bring the cup home afterall as a souvenir.

Variety of food and drink selling on the boat. It made me crazy of choosing what to eat at that time as I was spoiled with lots of choices.

Most of the food here are cooked on the spot. Once the food is done, they will place in the bamboo basket, hand it to you and next we put the money there. That's such a creative way to solve the problem of not having a long enough hand to reach for the food and money.

There are a lot of stalls selling not only food but clothes, shoes and souvenir next to the floating market. Some of the food here is very local and I never heard of it such as Luk Chup. I must say they are so cute and just resembles the items for the shape and colour to be so alike.

Luk Chup is actually fruit shape dessert made up mung beans. It was a dessert made for King of Siam in old days. I did not try it perhaps next time.

But my friend bought the grilled scallops from this stall.

35 baht per dish

 Another Thai dish by local Thai woman at one of the stall.

I must say 1 hour here is too short for me. But what to do? We only allow to spend 1 hour as we bargained with the tuk tuk driver. Next, we headed to Big C shopping mall.

The sky is getting dark as we on our way back to find the tuk tuk driver. We cant simply ride on any tuk tuk there as it was already hired by other people heading to this place. I guess it would be cheaper ( no need to hire private charter tuk tuk) if we can easily catch the tuk tuk here. Well, till here my sharing about this place. Stay for more and Happy Chinese New Year!