Hat Yai
— — a southern crossroads that never quite sleeps.
Not only on a wall.
“Hat Yai is the working heart of southern Thailand, set in Songkhla Province above the long isthmus that runs down to Malaysia. It is the largest city of the south and the place trains, buses, and short flights converge before going on to the border or the beaches. The streets read Thai, Chinese, and Malay at once. Morning markets work early; night markets work late. Above the city on Khao Kho Hong, a long reclining Buddha rests under an open roof. The light, most of the year, is humid and gold.
Hat Yai, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hat Yai is the largest city in southern Thailand and the commercial centre of Songkhla Province, with a city population of roughly 160,000 and a metropolitan area several times that. It lies about thirty kilometres inland from the Gulf of Thailand and around sixty kilometres north of the Malaysian border at Sadao, which makes it the natural pivot point for road, rail, and air traffic between the deep south and Bangkok. The city grew up around the railway junction laid out in the early twentieth century and still wears that infrastructure in its grid.
Most visitors arrive at Hat Yai International Airport or the central railway station and orient themselves around Niphat Uthit roads, the three parallel streets that hold the bulk of the markets, hotels, and gold shops. Hat Yai Municipal Park climbs the slope of Khao Kho Hong to the west of the city, where a 35-metre reclining Buddha lies under an open shelter beside a standing Guanyin and a four-faced Brahma shrine. The cable car between the three is short. The Kim Yong fresh market opens before dawn; the night market on Greenway runs late.
The climate is tropical and humid year-round, with two clear seasons rather than four. The southwest monsoon brings rain from May to October, and the northeast monsoon brings the heavier weather from October through January, when the city sometimes floods at the rivers. Daytime temperatures sit around 32 degrees Celsius most months. The dry season, from February through April, is the easiest light for walking the markets and climbing the park road to the reclining Buddha. The food on the street smells of charcoal, lemongrass, and palm sugar.