The next day we had breakfast at Cha My Friend restaurant nearby. It was a decent halal restaurant that serve mixed rice, roti canais and noodle soup. The dim sum was also good. Our first agenda of the day was the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Natural History Museum (a mouthful, I know). It is situated inside the Prince of Songkhla University and parking was pretty hard to find. In the end we parked in front of the bank near the business centre and thankfully nothing untoward happened to our car. As the name suggests, it is a natural history museum with exhibits of animal and living things including human evolution. I suspect my family was oblivious of the significance but that’s probably for the best. The ticket price was quite cheap and we stumbled upon a bunch of school kids doing a visit. It’s a nice little museum full of informative exhibits if you wanna visit.
For lunch, we played it safe and decided to visit the other Kai Tod Decha branch at Chong Kai. Again we had fried chicken and briyani rice but this time with some authentic Thai chicken tom yum. I must say it was one of the best tom yums I’ve ever had. Even better than Yana Restaurant in Bangkok.
Our visit to Hat Yai would not be complete without getting some souvenirs. For that, we stopped at Kaysorn Souvenir, a well-known souvenir shop in Hat Yai. True enough, we found a variety of souvenirs from keychains, magnets, clothes, bags, food, you name it. I did bought some souvenirs and food for ourself and and for friends and family back home which also burned a hole in my wallet.
Next on our itinerary is Songkhla, some one hour drive away from Hat Yai. This coastal town is famous for its Samila beach, among others. We stayed at Ma Ni Ta in Muang Ngam district which was a nice little homestay with water lily pond near the beach. What we didn’t see from Google maps though is the rubbish-strewn beach. It was really disappointing to visit a beach just as dirty as the one back in Kelantan and Terengganu. Nevertheless, we hung around for a bit near the water while enjoying the sunset.
We looked around for halal restaurants near the homestay for dinner. The one we found didn’t look too appetizing and we end up having some 7-Eleven dinner which was not that bad.
