Hatyai Trip - Part 2: Foodies in Hatyai

We arrived in Hatyai at 1pm. Aloha Hotel was just about 4 minutes away from the Hatyai Junction train station. I turned on my offline map and we made our walk towards the Hotel (50% on my hunch..shhh don't tell my travelling partner).

We passed by a KFC restaurant along the way and they had a big banner of cheesy chicken on display, the one that was discontinued in Malaysia some time ago, the same one that is dearly missed. Hunger immediately made a nasty nudge on our tummies, considering our body clock was way passed 2pm Malaysia time. Lucky for us, the hotel room was ready and check-in process was a breeze. Dropped our bags, refreshed for a bit and made our way for the first food stop in our list.

Centara Hotel's PadThai - well, I don't know if this was the best PadThai in Hatyai but it served us well. It wasn't complicated, the place was nice, proper and it got us recharged for our next quest.

We had the tuktuk ride to ourselves.

Our next destination was the biggest mall in Hatyai, the Central Festival Plaza. It was supposed to be a free tuktuk ride to this plaza from Centara Hotel, available every Friday-Sunday only. But the tuktuk was parked on the other side of the building and we only noticed of its existence when we were already taking a ride on a paid tuktuk, though we managed to haggle the price down softly. Nevertheless, it was just a small thing compared to what's in store for us at the mall (in store..mall..geddit? Hehe)

There are around 50 stalls selling food items and merchandise at the entrance of the shopping mall. Come evening time, a live band playing known songs entertaining the crowd. Quite a perfect setting with the pleasantly cool breezy weather.

You know how sometimes you feel like the law of attraction was working for you...when you made an intention and the 'universe' conspires in helping you to achieve it?

Well, imagine the Epiphany/Angelic choir in the background the moment we walked into the mall's convention centre, just out of curiousity, only to find they were organizing a grand SME Start Up event which, based on our observation, was about all things foodies.

There were, dare I say, a hundred booths occupying the hall displaying their food products, mostly completely with samples for the visitors. It was....food haven...free food haven.

Come have a taste!

Although we were neither curious nor wanting to buy the love letters, I had to take a piece of the samples because love letters are my favourite, both types if you'd ask.

There were a lot of these by products from various of their local produce - from banana chips to jackfruit chips and even pineapple chips. Extremely creative, Thai people, when it comes to food. Aren't they also the famous producer of junk foods? 

Some of the foods, we don't exactly know what they exactly were..but looked pretty curious..

while some are pretty standard..

and some can be too pretty to be cooked. Bunga Kantan. 

Meanwhile, some can be..err..

A durian and its by produce stall.

Honestly I took this picture coz of the eggs...

right..right...right..?

A type of dumpling and it's really quite yummy. In here, it's drenched in coconut milk. The pack of six that we bought, we ate it with raw chilly padi (small bites) to enhance its taste.

Unfortunately for us, shyness run thick in our blood. Though we could have run rampant from one stall to another at random and pick on the bits of samples, we decided to only taste the ones we were mostly curious about or with a high chance of us making a purchase. Although, if I had my way, I would've bought a lot of the varieties and we might have been the most famous visitors at the event.

We walked out of the event hall with our stomachs nearly filled and legs needing some rest. So what else do you typically do during an outing in Penang? Yups, we decided to watch a movie in their cinema, and a horror one at that. To our surprise, the horror movie turned out to be a rip-off from the movie, Black Swan, so it became more like a parody than a horror movie, at least for us. At one point, the supposedly horror scene was too hilarious we almost cramped our necks and tummies from refraining ourselves from bursting out laughing. Perhaps the good looking casts saved the film for us.

            

 

In Hatyai, Thailand, what you see is what you get.

There seemed to be no such thing as the disclaimer saying,

"Picture is for illustration only."

In the many instances where we were attracted to a food advertisement, the experience was further excited upon tasting the food itself.

For instance, this Mango drink. You can never have it anywhere better than MangoMania; and I am not in any way endorsed by anyone. This is really yours truly honest opinion.

Journey to mangosm - What you see is what you get - Mango Mania for 99baht. If only we had another day...we could try all of these. Well, save it for another trip then.

The famed Coconut Ice Cream Songkhla.. all these for only 50Baht. 😍😍😍😍 I should have eaten this on the first and second and third dayyyyyy..been craving for this ever since.

All of it? All of it.

She speaks Thai, Malay, and some Mandarin.

 

Please help to pay for me. I'm too busy admiring my coconut ice cream left and right.

Counting our blessings, ain't this a treat for the hot weather.

 

Thank you for reading.

Follow me on Instagram @azida.azizan