After a few days sitting around on Patong Beach, I decided to hop a flight out to Hat Yai, in the Songkhla province of southern Thailand. Airfare from Phuket International is around $100USD, and the flight takes less than an hour.

I read in a travel guidebook that described Hat Yai as a kind of “mini Bangkok.”

Not really.

To me, Hat Yai looks and feels a lot more like old Phuket Town. Older. Older buildings. Fewer tourist attractions, and so fewer tourists. In fact, I don’t think I saw more than a handful of farang (white folk) the week I was there.