Sleeping between bombs: An accidental night in Hat Yai

I would never choose to visit any of the four southern Thai provinces known for their bombings carried out by Muslim separatists. I like travel and adventure and new places, but diabetes provides all the tension and drama I need: no thanks to dangerous places.

Which makes it all the more strange that Masayo and I ended up spending the night in a hotel right in the bombings area of the beleaguered town of Hat Yai (หาดใหญ่).

Here’s what happened. My 90-day tourist visa for Malaysia was expiring so we had to get out. The easiest way, from where we were in George Town in northwestern Malaysia, was to cross over the Thai border, getting tourist visas for that country as we crossed.

With our guesthouse in George Town, we worked out a minivan ride to the Thai town of Trang, safely out of the way of the four problem provinces, which our Lonely Planet so strongly advised against that it didn’t even have information for travel there.

Avoiding them seemed fine with me, so Trang was a good destination: we could pass through Satun Province on the border and stop in the next, Trang Province, and its capital city of the same name.

So on the appointed morning, Masayo and I went down at 7:00 am with our receipt and tickets in hand. The driver showed up, smiled and by way of confirmation said, “Hat Yai?”

Hat Yai is a town in Songkhla Province, one of the ones known for its deadly bombings. I emphatically corrected him – “Trang! Trang!” He seemed a little confused at first and went to talk to someone inside the guesthouse. Then he re-emerged, smiling reassuringly. “Trang!” he confirmed.

We rode to the border, and leaving Malaysia and entering Thailand was easy; Masayo and I each got a 30-day visa. Another bit of driving down the hot but verdant Thai highway, and we entered the town, getting dropped off at the train station on a little roundabout.

The minivan took off back for Malaysia, and Masayo and I started to walk down the road from the train station towards a couple hotels I saw on our Lonely Planet map for Trang.

As we walked I noticed a building across the street with some Thai writing on it, and an English translation underneath: Hat Yai City Hall or something like that. “Wow,” I thought. “Hat Yai is so dangerous that they’ve chosen to keep their official offices here in Trang.”

We continued on down the street, but after a couple blocks things didn’t seem to be matching up with the Lonely Planet map. It wasn’t the first time a guidebook map had steered us wrong, but something seemed odd.

Masayo began to wonder if we were in fact in Hat Yai; it was a possibility I wouldn’t consider since I’d made absolutely sure with the driver that we was taking us to Trang.

We finally found a little hotel on the side of the road a few blocks from the train station. We trudged up the dimly-lit stairs and checked in. As the guy behind the counter was filling in some paperwork for us, I looked at a stack of fliers on the counter. They were about a Hat Yai festival.

It was sinking in: this isn’t Trang at all. We have been driven to dangerous Hat Yai.

I asked the guy, with a wide-eyed, earnestly inquisitive expression, “Hat Yai?” and pointed down to the ground. “Hat Yai,” he confirmed. (And probably thought, “How do these farang not even know what town they’re in?”)

My heart went cold. We were in Hat Yai, not Trang.

What were we doing in Hat Yai??

Masayo ventured the imminently plausible theory that when I was saying, “Trang, Trang” to the driver that morning, he thought I was saying “Train, train” – that I wanted be dropped off in Hat Yai (which he had mistakenly been told was our destination), at the train station specifically. Which is what he did.

A language miscommunication.

Now, it’s April 2008. In 2005 and again in 2006, bombs had been detonated by Malay Muslim separatists at various places around Hat Yai: supermarkets, department stores, the airport, a parking garage, and a hotel about four blocks from where ours was.

But we were checked in and would have to stay the night here. It would probably be safe; those most recent bombings were seventeen months ago, after all. Probably safe.

For dinner we went to a local market next to the station. A perfect place for a bomb, if you wanted to inflict casualties and get attention. But what could we do? You have to eat. People were there – families, women running the food stalls, everything garlanded with flowers – and if they thought it was ok, then we might as well fall into line and do likewise.

We bought some random foods from random vendors and sat at one of the folding tables with everyone else; I took my Novolog shot in my stomach and we ate a dinner that was, by all appearances, very mundane and unremarkable, but for me at least was filled with tension.

We confined ourselves to the hotel that night, electing not to walk around the streets. A lizard in our room was a welcome bit of friendliness. (You take your solace where you can!)

The next morning we found a Mister Donut for breakfast – a popular chain in Japan, it was funny to see one here in southern Thailand of all places. I took a photo of the display but the woman behind the counter sharply told me not to. In my mind, of course, this rather un-Thai act of scolding was linked to terror. “Maybe she thinks I’m an agent casing the place for the next attack?” suggested my rampant imagination.

But the coffee and doughnuts were good.

The first and only order of business after breakfast, of course, was to leave Hat Yai. We got a cheap tuk-tuk ride to the bus station a few blocks away, and I was tense the whole way. At the bus terminal we bought tickets for a highway bus ride to Trang (actual Trang this time, the ticket said so!) and waited. “A bus terminal is a good place for a bomb,” I thought as we waited.

But there was no event. We left Hat Yai (mercifully) and made it to Trang without incident. The road that extends from the train station in Trang would indeed resemble, on a map, that of Hat Yai. No wonder I was confused there.

So, while I didn’t plan on it, I did get to spend time in a place I consciously avoided, a place known for terror campaigns and the killing of innocent civilians (and foreign travelers). I don’t recommend it, but seeing how regular life was there made me realize that, while things have happened there, the fear and danger is exaggerated. Life goes on, people shop and eat and go to movies, and while terror can strike almost anywhere at any time, maybe a little danger makes travel that much more fun.

Maybe – but to be honest, I’m glad to be out of there.

Have you visited a place known for danger or terrorism?

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