Hatyai Municipal Park

Hatyai Municipal Park was in our bucket list to visit when Lowe and I traveled to Hatyai early this year. Hatyai Municipal Park is not that remote like Hatyai Stainless Steel Temple in comparison. Charter a tuk-tuk from the town to here or you could wait for the song-tail at certain stop point in Hatyai.

We reached the park with a friend's car who just dropped us off at the Guan Gong / Guan Yin statue there! To visit the gold buddha as shown above, we need to walk some amount of staircases to get up there!

We did not check out the whole park as we lack of time. Hatyai Municipal Park is so different that we can find temples and Buddha statues or worship place there! This in contrast of what I think the park used for only recreation and jogging purpose.

I'm not a Buddhist. For me, I just came here for photo taking and exploring this place.

Next to the Guan Gong is the dragon head with opening mouth which is actually the path leading you to the Gold Buddha on top of the hill.

Along the way, we spotted God of Prosperity sit handsomely on our right side on top of white dragons statues.

Honestly, if we have other choices, we would not climb up the staircases to go up here! We waited for so long at the dragon head after visiting Guan Yin for song-tail that can drive us up for a fee. We only came to disappointment when a local tour guide told us that the park did not provide the service on weekday and we need to try our luck if any tuk-tuk coming up here! We did not have any luck as all those tuk-tuk that we seen was actually chartered by others and we can't simply ask for a ride. On other side, I counted while I stepped on every staircase that total up around 330! What a good exercise we did!

The highlight of the park is this Gold Buddha! The Buddha faces the staircases and Hatyai city!

Situated next to the Gold Buddha building is this Hatyai Cable Car station.

Expensive cable car ride

For tourist, we have to pay 200 Baht just for a VERY SHORT distance ride. (I still think that Genting cable car ride is much affordable in this case)

That's what I mentioned VERY SHORT distance ride to another side of the hill. I still can't brain this actually. Why they don't build the cable car connecting the park from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill? While connecting the two hills, you could actually build a bridge!

View from the cable car looking at the Hatyai cable car station and the gold buddha statue.

Not worth the visit

I thought the view from another side of the hill will be amazing but what I imagined is totally wrong! That's just a small temple with lots of elephants statues surrounding it. Another thing about this temple is the non-stop annoying firecrackers noise when the worker burns it. What I get to know is when someone donated/dedicated the money, the worker would burn the firecracker to inform the God! That's really nothing much to see here! I was in despair.

The only interesting thing here was the sight of local Thai girl in traditional wear when we about to head back to the cable car station.

Inconvenience

We were in the same cable car with a Malay family. I was very surprised that they came here for a visit which conservative Muslim would never do this even in Malaysia. That old man (in the picture) started the conversation with us, asked me if I am a Japanese. LOL. They were in a family trip going to visit Betong, Thailand (passed by Hatyai) since it was a week school holiday in Malaysia. The old man, his wife, his daughter, his son in law are all teachers!

Since the trip only Lowe and I (2 girls), we tried the best to sort out our way to get to every destination. But we faced the difficulty as our friend dropped us off here and we can't find any Grabcar and not even tuk-tuk at this place. We were hesitated if we should walk down the hill which pretty dangerous if the car did not notice us for the steepy slope. We discussed and I finally braved myself (thick face enough!LOL!) to ask the Malay family if could gave us a ride to the bottom of the hill as we did not have any transportation. To my surprise, the old man (I called him pak cik) agreed to take us with his son and his son in law car! (Both of us separated in 2 cars). 

Actually I was scared when I was alone with the family in a car but what to do when we the one asking for help (ride)? So while waiting Lowe and his other family members to get into the car, Lowe suddenly came to me and asked if we should follow the old uncle traveled to Betong. I was in puzzle when she asked me so. My reply to her was, how we going back to Hatyai later if we followed them to Betong for perhaps a half day/ a day trip? Where we going to stay there? At last we turned down the offer from the family since it would disrupt our travel plan and we still not manage to figure out the situation there!

Before we headed back to town, we just found out the park provided the song-tail service at the park main entrance which fetched the passengers/ tourists to go up the hill (not sure where they would stop). After all, we confused with the transport service in the park.

Thing to know

That's the last article for my Hatyai trip! My advice is better not travel in two if only girls in group. Get some guys and make up to four at least to share the charter fare. Hatyai still not that developed like Bangkok, it's very hard to get a Grabcar if you out of the city/town area. Do some research on the destinations and plan in advance the transportation before you go!