i travelled to hat yai in the luggage compartment of a bus with my girlfriend jane and a mad mate called mat. it was a pretty uncomfortable trip to a somewhat boring town but the journey there was worth it in the end. read on to find out why.
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there isn't really a great deal to see and do in hat yai. it's no more than a frontier town blanketted by shops and markets crawling with people selling everything and anything to those who are prepared to hand over a few baht. i didn't expect much of the town itself but hadn't gone there to see the sights. i was drawn to hat yai to drink the blood of a freshly killed snake.
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taxi drivers have no sense of direction at the best of times so the urban sprawl of hat yai confusde the shit out of every taxi, tuk tuk and sondthaew driver that we met. locating the local snake market there in the middle of the night therefore proved to be a nightmare. we eventually found it however by the time we reached the market the shops were closed for the evening. it was therefore decided that we'd call it a night and return the following morning. we woke early the next day we headed back to where the snake market was located, only to discover that all but one of the snake-vending establishments had long since closed down. the one shop that was still open was called the snake house restaurant - and it is the one gem that hat yai has to offer.
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| Accommodations: |
whilst in hat yai we stayed at the cathay guest house. it wasn't exactly the ritz and there were too many cockroaches for comfort but they had a laundry service, which was really handy.
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the snake house restaurant is located at thungsao square, thungsao 1 road, hat yai, thailand. when you ask for a menu the lady who runs the restaurant points at a number of cages full of cobras and asks you to choose a snake. baby cobras will set you back by 300 baht and large king cobra will cost 600 baht. as i was shouting everyone breakfast, i chose one of the smaller, cheaper reptiles. the snake was caught, had a noose put around its' neck and was hung in the corner of the restuarant. after watching it being slit lengthways with a scalpel, the blood is drained from the snake - which is still moving - and put in a glass with whisky and honey. after this is done, you hold your nose and knock it back. it doesn't taste as bad as it sounds and the effects seem to add an interesting twist to your day.
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Published on Tuesday December 3th, 2002
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