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| Fresh Orange Juice | |||||
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Map: Map 2 No matter what the claims of the manufacturers for different brands of packaged orange juice, nothing tastes the same as real fresh orange juice. If you doubt this pop into this little shop in Hat Yai to taste the difference. It's just a tiny business and the idea couldn't be simpler. Each day they buy about 200kg of oranges. The oranges are cut in half (by hand) and squeezed (also by hand) using a manual juicer. That's it. The orange juice is bottled with absolutely nothing added to it. Small bottles are Bt30 and large bottles Bt50. It is impossible to get better tasting orange juice than this. The shop is located on Saeng Sri Soi 4. From the Suphasarnrangsan end, turn into the Soi and the shop is a little way down on the right-hand side.
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| Hat Yai Baptist Church | |||||
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Map: Map 1 There are quite a few places in Hat Yai for Christian worship and because my web site statistics indicate that people want to know about these, I will add some more later. Here is one, the Hat Yai Baptist Church. It is located on Niphatsongkhrao 1 Soi 9.
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| Hospitals | |||||
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Hat Yai boasts some superb hospital facilities such as the Bangkok Hat Yai Hospital. It's amazing how a country can be so 'Third World' in some respects but can offer hospital facilities far superior to those found in many developed countries.
Hundreds of thousands of 'health tourists' now come to Thailand every year for medical treatment, procedures and operations. It doesn't surprise me. The doctors are competent, most speak good English and have access to the best equipment. The gentle Thai nurses are almost enough in themselves to make me start feeling better. I honestly can't overemphasise how impressed I've been with the care I've received in Hat Yai hospitals, especially the Bangkok Hat Yai. If you have an accident while in Hat Yai you can be confident of getting good treatment, or if you need a scheduled operation it may be worth planning a visit to Hat Yai.
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| Immigration Office | |||||
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Map: Map 3 The local Immigration Office is located next to the main police station on Phetkasem Road just over the railway bridge on the other side of central Hat Yai. This area is known as Hat Yai Nai. This is the place to get your visa extensions, re-entry permits; and it is where foreigners living in Thailand do their 90 day 'alien' registration. It is pointless trying to give advice about visas in Thailand because the rules change all the time and everything is at the discretion of immigration. What's valid one day may not be the case the next day; and what applies to one person may not apply to another.
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| Internet And E-mail | |||||
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The on-line world has changed beyond recognition since I first added this entry. At the end of 2003 when I first arrived in Hat Yai, hotels and apartments didn't routinely have Internet access. New apartments started adding broadband access but it was unusual.
At that time my only choices to get on-line were to use a dial up connection from my room or to visit an Internet shop. There were quite a few small Internet shops around then because people didn't have access at home. Nowadays, almost all apartment buildings provide Internet access and many hotels provide a Wi-Fi facility. For some years, laptop computers have had built-in Wi-Fi so just turn up with your laptop and you can get connected straight away. As a result, many small shops have closed down. New Internet shops still open but they tend to be large places where Thai kids congregate in the evenings to play on-line games and Hi5. If you are in town without a laptop then finding somewhere to get on-line is easy and it should only cost around Bt20 an hour. One place to avoid is the Regency hotel. It's a very upmarket hotel but it charges an arm and a leg for Internet access.
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| Laundry | |||||
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Getting clothes washed and ironed is extremely easy and extremely cheap in Hat Yai. All hotels and guest houses will offer a laundry service and almost every Soi has at least one small laundry shop. These are easily recognised by the clothes hanging up to dry inside and outside the shop.
Some places charge a fixed price for one machine load (about Bt85) and others charge per item with fixed prices for each type of item. For long stays in Hat Yai it is possible to pay a fixed amount up front for one month's worth of laundry (typically Bt500). Some places impose a limit on the number of items per month but others don't.
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The main post offices (tii tam gaan bprai sa nii) are indicated on the Map of Hat Yai by small envelope signs. I've never worked out if there is some kind of a queuing system or whether it is just a free-for-all. Probably a little of both. I've joined what I thought were queues but Thais walk in and go straight to the counter. The post office in the photo is near the train station on Rattakarn Road. If you get really bored you can visit the Hat Yai philatelic museum upstairs.
The length of time mail takes to arrive overseas is variable. Letters I have bought stamps for and posted in mail boxes on the street have taken an age to get to their destinations. Ones posted at the post offices get their faster. I have found the best overall service to be at the small post office inside Tesco Lotus (Map 2). There is no envelope sign on the map to indicate that a post office is present at Tesco Lotus but there is.
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| Phone Calls | |||||
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Map: Map 3 Not unique to Hat Yai but a common scene everywhere in Thailand are people on the street offering cheap rate phone calls. They buy mobile phone contracts that have very good deals for high usage and then sell phone time. Provided they sell enough time they make some money and people using the service also get a good deal. Rates within Thailand are typically Bt2 to Bt3 per minute and they will give you a quote for overseas calls. Visitors to Hat Yai are mostly from Singapore or Malaysia so phone calls to these countries are common. It normally works out cheaper than public phones or hotel rates but the noise in the street can be annoying.
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| Photo Processing | |||||
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Map: Map 3 There are several photo labs around offering various services. They can process film and digital images, burn digital images to CD, or take photos of you for passports and things. Teenage (and older) Thai girls like having their photos taken with cute little teddy bears while officious looking Thais with serious faces get the labs to cut and paste photos of their heads on to crisp white uniforms with lots of medals and sashes. You might just want something boring, such as a passport photo in order to get a visa extension. I like Chia Colour Lab at 58-60 Suphasarnrangsan Road. Telephone + 66 (0)74 246808, + 66 (0)74 231390 and Fax + 66 (0)74 237141. Their service and quality is good and they seem to be the cheapest place in town. I've had some 8x10 inch prints made from digital images which normally cost Bt50 at Chia but there was a promotion and I got them done them for Bt30. Everywhere else wanted Bt100. Chia also have a selection of cameras for sale. It's not Singapore or Bangkok and professional photographers or keen amateurs are unlikely to find much of interest but the choice isn't bad for Hat Yai. For SLR equipment you will find a better selection at the Fuji shop. See my Hat Yai Shopping page for details. For those of you who can read Thai, you probably already spotted that a better transliteration of the name of the shop would be Jia.
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