Let's Go Haadyai Again! - By Peter Chan

In the 1970s, when I told friends I was in Haadyai, suddenly all eyes became wide opened and conclusions were quickly made. SEX was the perception. Has it changed since then? Depending on your background, your views may be different from mine but it's probably because we are looking at the same thing in a different way. If I am new to Haadyai, I probably thought the same way as you did but hopefully perceptions can change over time. Surely we all know we live in a world of sin but we don’t have to be sinners.

Photo 1: The 1974 memories are kept alive in my photo album including those of the late Michael Chua who wrote, “Dear big Pete, whenever you look at the photo think of the good times we had together and me.”

Haadyai, isn't it a big farang tourist trap? It was actually a big tourist town from the late 1960s through 2007 for tourists from mainly Malaysia, who were there for the weekend although some Singaporeans did go there. However Haadyai is unlike Phuket, Pattaya or Bangkok’s Patpong because Haadyai was never on the R&R list of U.S. servicemen involved in the Vietnam War; so the influence was never there. While you can find wild crowds of merry Westerners, street bars, katoeys, pole-dancing, lap-dancing, street walkers, and music (that increases in volume as the moon rises), the same cannot be said of Haadyai.

Photo 2: Left – Standing on Niphat Uthit 3 Road. In the background is the present-day Yong Dee Hotel and Yongdee Market. Middle – We’are on the way to the “chicken farm”. Right – The short and taller blocks of Novotel Centera Hotel (circa 2009). The shorter block was the original Sukhontai Hotel. The neon corporate hotel logo faces the Hadyai Junction Railway Station.

My recent trip to Haadyai was more heritage than anything else: of utmost importance was to locate the old Sukhontai Hotel where we stayed, 35 years ago. That day my luck was pretty good. I spoke with a Thai-Chinese money-changer and was told the Sukhontai Hotel (under new management and ownership) is now Novotel Centera Haadyai. I hurried off with my friend but a big surprise awaited me. The single 10-storey block became a part of an even taller tower block with a podium block. I was very happy on one hand and confused on the other. I could not figure out some of the old photos with the street names and nearby buildings. Once my orientation became better, nostalgic memories came back: our Minute steak at the Morakat (the popular Sukhontai coffee house), BBQ seafood, cha-cha-cha dancing, our first experience with fiery hot Thai chili padis, Mohan Rao’s hand trapped between the elevator doors, and not forgetting the night life in Haadyai. What night life?

We got educated about “chicken farms” and what was available as an after-dinner treat. We probably pissed-off the bell-hop (who acted as a sort of go-between) after visiting the “chicken farm” on the outskirts of Haadyai town. Despite generous discounts from the opening price of 1,300 bahts or so for an “8pm to 8am companion” our minds were made up. We were not into that kind of excitement. I still can remember the moment our tuk-tuk arrived at the “chicken farm”; a loud whistle brought all the girls together forming a circle as if ready for parade inspection. You won’t find chicks from southern Thailand, the vast majority of the girls selling their bodies (as is usually the case) were from the northeast of Thailand. Why would an 18 year fair-skinned girl do that? We got the standard answer: farmers and families paying off their loans in kind because the rice harvest was poor that year. Then there was the occasional Myanmar girl who was given a Thai nickname “Nok or Phin” - and she looked similar - but you will only discover that if you speak Thai. Generally, the Myanmar girls don't speak any Thai, or speak a very limited amount. “Lah” means he’s from Malaysia. If you hear “Cheap”, that’s from Singapore.

We went to check out a few night spots because we heard so much of their cabarets and unique shows. As these photos show, we soon learnt the "house specialty". Initial bubbling excitement soon became monotonous. We had many questions but few answers. It was easy to deal with the ala Rose Chan performances but suggestive non-stop couple-acts (and more couple to couple acts) and paraphernalia were very mind-boggling. Was it humanly possible to do it? It sure looked a tough way for any (Thai) (wo)man to make a living. Well I thought I found the answers when I had to use the loo - which also doubled up as the backstage changing room.

Photo 3: Left – Can you use your hands? Full suction power to pick up the coin (or suck Singha beer through the straw) and transfer it to another bottle? How could she ever do it? Another entertaining act we saw that night was one of using an artist brush to paint a “Van Gogh”. (Funny thing - Asians, especially couples, like to sit in the front row while Angmohs sit backstall.) Those who sat in front row got a rude surprise. The performer sprayed “water” by bending her knees/body backwards and resting her palms on the floor. Right – In the dark the audience could not make out whether the sexily-clad dancers were real women or "post-ops". Could you tell the difference? I think I might have the answers for both photos.

There has been an effort in the last few years under the leadership of Mayor Prai Pattano to clean the town up. The results can be seen with the new sidewalks and the removal of the overhead electricity cables, but it has gone a little further than that. Ever since the Muslim insurgency problems in the southern provinces flared up, Haadyai's tourist economy had to change. Today you can be forgiven when you mistake Haadyai for a Malaysian town because out in the open, many Thai Muslims and Thai Muslims of Malay origin are wearing the tudung.

Photo 4: Left – Everywhere you go, you find this new Haadyai cultural landscape. Right – I tried the “Korek Telinga” service at 50 bahts. Everywhere I went, I found foot massage services.

Before rushing off to catch the last train back to Padang Besar, we found time for one “last fling”. We headed for the spa because we know that in Singapore, a spa treatment can run into hundreds of dollars and you had to reluctantly purchase a package of 10 sessions in order to get the best deal. Here at the Preuksa Spa (ask for “Toy”), an hour cost me S$20 (S$1 = 23 Baht); in Singapore the equivalent of S$90 at a wellness and spa retreat. Come to think of it, even a doggy in Singapore gets a good body massage, so why can’t I pamper myself?

Photo 5: Doggy gets a massage at Bishan Park (Photo Credit: a Flickr user). Middle – The spa tariff from Peruksa Spa on Niphat Uthit 3 Road (Photo Credit: Ms. “Toy”). Right – One of the treatment rooms at Peruksa Spa. I slept for 3 hours because of the rustic ambience, the soft piano music and lavender-scented body massage.

Personally I am glad I found my old Sukhontai Hotel. When the group holds the reunion at this year’s end, we should have a good program lined up. Where else can you have a bowl of original beef ball kway teow soup for 30 bahts? Tired bodies and Singapore-made stress? I have the answer. Even Mr. Asdang Sukwises, the general manager of Novotel Centera has promised us the hospitality of a lifetime after he heard about how we crossed the Malaysian-Thai border to come to Haadyai 35 years ago. Now, it’s time to sit back and reminisce about Haadyai back in 1974:



In the concluding series, I will tell you more of our return trip through Sadao to Changloon, the nearest Malaysian border town 10km from Thailand.

Meeting An Old Friend 27 Years Later

In late November, I visited Taiwan with my family. We booked the 7-day tour only 10 days before departure. As such, we paid a premium price. For 4 adults and 1 child, we paid a total of $8,130.00 to the tour agency. However, as promised, we did get 5-star hotel accommodation throughout the tour and business-class seats on the return trip. Taking that into consideration and that it was super-peak holiday season, I guess that the tour price was fairly reasonable.

This was in fact my third visit to the island - my previous 2 visits were in 1980 and 1981, both official trips. During the first visit, I stayed for 3 months together with 3 other colleagues. A 55-year-old man was our mentor. I shall name him MX here.

The very handsome 55-year-old MX

Since we left Taiwan, MX had never failed to send us Christmas cards every year. Of course, we returned his gesture of friendship by sending him Chinese New Year cards yearly as well.

I longed to meet him again on this trip. I got his latest postal address but the phone number that I had was very old. I tried calling him several times about a week before my departure - there was ringing each time but nobody ever answered. I feared the worst.

I decided to write him a letter 4 days before departure, hoping that the letter would reach him before I did. I was very much relieved when indeed he called me one day before my departure. He told me that his phone number had been changed. He would end a meeting early on 25 Nov just to meet up with me. How nice of him!

That night, I skipped the dinner with the tour group. I called MX at around 7 pm to confirm our appointment. Then I took a cab from Parkview Hotel (美伦饭店) in Hualien to his place. The fare for the 10-minute ride was about NT180 each way but I paid the cab drivers NT200 (about S$9.20). The cab driver was not very sure of the way there at first but eventually he found the place after some help over the radio from a colleague.

It was drizzling at that time (and for almost two whole days during that period because of the typhoon). When I arrived, MX was waiting for me below his 5-storey block here:

It was a grey-coloured building which did not look all too new. Here is a photo of the very retro-looking mailboxes:


It was not equipped with a lift. We had to climb the narrow stairway to his unit on the 4th floor.

Despite his age of 82, MX did not show any signs of it. (It must have been the benefit of repeatedly climbing 4 flights of stairs daily that contributed to his health. I am not joking, he even walks faster than me. I will not be surprised at all if he could outlive me.) To keep healthy, MX woke up early each day to do morning exercises. He even proudly showed me his scooter which he still rode (and it's a "Sport" model, don't pray pray okay?):


The apartment in which MX lived alone was simply furnished. There were some unsightly brown stains on the wallpaper which obviously had seen better days. MX's daughter, the elder of two children, was married and residing near New York. His son was also married and stayed in Taipei. The families each had two children, making MX a grandfather of 4.

There were photos of the two families taken with MX displayed in the cabinet. With MX's permission, I took photos of the 2 families.

Luckily, I had the foresight to bring along my camera stand and managed to take a snapshop with MX:

I presented MX with 2 copies of the stamp book which I co-authored. MX could not read English but he said that he could look at the pictures:

I also gave him 2 pre-1985 one-dollar coins (the ones with the large stone-lion design), 2 fish-design 20-cent coins and a Singapu-lah book (新加坡啦) comic satirical book which he promised he would read:


He told me that his apartment was once broken into and the thief stole the Singapore coin sets which we gave him previously. I asked him what was the meeting which he ended early in order to meet me. He said that it was a party meeting and that he was still active in party politics. He was pro-Mah Ying Jiu (马英九).

After that, we went to a restaurant nearby to have steamboat set dinner. The waitress served each of us a large plate filled with raw vegetables and mixed food:


"那就够了" (That would be enough), I told the waitress in Mandarin. Much to my bewilderment, she insisted that we each ordered a meat. It seemed like it was needed to complete the set. So I ordered sliced fish and MX had sliced pork.

We ate and talked about the good old times like what had changed and who had passed on. Dinner ended at almost 10 pm and we walked back to his apartment in the rain. I called the same cab company to send a cab over to pick me up in 10 minutes. I shook hands with MX and gave him a hug. He said that he would like to visit Singapore sometime. I told him not to let us wait too long.

I didn't tell him this but I certainly hope that I don't have to wait another 27 years for our next meeting.

GD Is Back!

To all readers of this blog (but especially to Etel, otherwise known as Elaine or my GNE), GD is back from holiday in Taiwan.

Alisan Here I Come

Hi Guys and Gals,

I will be going for a Taiwan tour from 24 - 30 November 2007, so I may not have the opportunity to update my blog and go visit yours for a week or two.

Meanwhile, please take care.

But wait a minute... Alisan is NOT on the itinerary. Dammit!

First Time On A Cruise Ship (2)

At check-in, each passenger was issued with a personal access card. It was used as a "passport", room key and credit card, all rolled into one.


Our room was on the port (left) side. The carpet and doors in the long corridor leading to our room were red.


In contrast, the carpet and doors in the corridor on the starboard side were blue. Hence you were unlikely to make a wrong turn even when your were returning to your room drunk like a sailor.


Our room was not very spacious. Yet there were 4 single beds in it - 2 were along the walls opposite each other, 1 was mounted on the wall (can be folded against the wall), another was a sofa bed. I slept on the sofa bed which was not very comfortable. Had we taken a room with balcony, it would have been much more luxurious. However, there was no such option for us.


The toilet-cum-bathroom was only slightly bigger than those you see in an aircraft.


In fact, the feeling on board was quite like flying on an aircraft. Why, they even had a route map on one of the TV channels!


And just like on an aircraft, safety procedure was demonstrated separately by pretty crew members in different parts of the ships.


Dinner was served not long after boarding. We had a choice of 3 "inclusive" (meaning we didn't have to pay anything extra) restaurants - Pavilion Room (Chinese), Mediterranean Buffet (International) and Bella Vista (Chinese/Western). We had our first dinner at Bella Vista. It was a sumptuous 6-course meal - braised sea cucumber, steamed prawns, half-a-fish, kai lan vegetable, roasted pork with jellyfish and soup. (Since it was not a whole fish, we flipped it over and indeed the ship didn't capsize.)



The restaurants had very good ambience. You could get a seat by the window from where you could get a good view of the sea.


And if that is not romantic enough for you and you don't mind paying a little extra, you can even have serenading musicians to set the dining mood just right.


The ship set sail at about 9 pm. We were having supper at the Mediterranean Buffet on Deck 12 when we felt some tremor-like vibrations when the ship started sailing. We could see ripples in our glasses of water. However, we couldn't hear any engine noise. Other than the slight vibrations, the ship was very steady - we didn't feel any rolling of the ship in the waves at all. Even the vibrations went away after a while. We knew we were in the good hands of the captain and his crew.


A few hours after sailing, our handphones were no longer connected to our usual service providers. Sometimes, we were connected to Indonesian service providers while at other times, we got connected to Malaysian service providers.


At one point, we even thought that we had reached Great Britain!


Most of the time, we were connected to Navitas 1 network. (Navitas is a subsidiary brand of UK's Jersey Telecom Group Limited. That probably explains the "Welcome to G Britain" sms. Read this document about the installation of Navitas GSM-based services on board the SuperStar Virgo.) However, communication on the Navitas 1 network was not cheap. I made a 1-minute call to Singapore and was charged $2.39 while each outgoing SMS cost me $0.96.


We saw some celebrities on board the ship. Moses Lim was probably on board to review some of the restaurants' food.


You Ya (尤雅), the Taiwanese songstress who was as famous as the late Teresa Teng (邓丽君 or Deng Li Jun) in the late 70s and the 80s, performed two 45-minute concerts in the Lido auditorium. My wife and I watched the show. At $40 per head for the cheapest seats, the tickets were quite reasonably priced. Anyway, my wife I saved us some money by not watching the topless show which was priced at $20-$25 per ticket. Hmm... it's good that You Ya's concert was still worth more than the topless show. And she didn't have to show anything more than her voice which was still as good as ever.


The facilities on board the SuperStar Virgo were indeed very comprehensive. If the ship was a star in the Asian movie industry instead of the Asian cruise business, it would definitely have won multiple Golden Horse awards.


My third and final entry on the cruise will cover the facilities on board the ship.

(To be continued.)

First Time On A Cruise Ship (1)

Our forefathers probably came to Singapore from China as human cargo in the hold of a ship. You could see the pathetic condition of a cargo hold from the following video-grab of a 1984 local TV series, Wu4 Shuo3 Nan2 Yang2 (雾锁南洋):


Unlike our forefathers, my family has never taken a trip on board a ship. So for the experience, I paid $1630 for four of us to go on a cruise-to-nowhere from 10-12 Aug 2007 on board the luxurious SuperStar Virgo. At 76,800 gross tonnage and 268m length, the Virgo is the largest ship in the Star Cruises' fleet. It has 13 decks and 980 cabins which can carry 2,000 passengers. From what I was told, it takes more than 1,200 staff of a dozen nationalities to keep the ship's operations running smoothly.

We boarded the ship at 5.30 pm on 10 Aug 2007. Embarkation at the Singapore Cruise Centre at the Harbourfront was a breeze as my wife had the foresight of pre-registering a day earlier.


Our cabin number was 5520 on Deck 5.


I was sort of relieved that it was above the waterline.


It was an "oceanview stateroom with window" on the portside of the ship.


(It is obvious that both my sons are avid fans of Walt Disney cartoons.)

Being someone who is quite observant, I noticed that on the entire ship, there were no cabin numbers with a figure "4" as any of its digits.


Notice the missing cabin numbers (marked by red arrows) 5502, 5514, 5524, 5004, 5014 and 5024 in the deck plan above. Also, cabin numbers on the portside run from 5500 to 5610 (with no numbers beginning with 554) while those on the starboard side run from 5000 to 5100 (with no numbers beginning with 504). It looks like a deliberate attempt to avoid the number 4 at all costs. I can only think of superstition as the reason for such a weird numbering system. (The figure 4 when pronounced in Cantonese sounds like 死 or "die".) Yet surprisingly, there is a Deck 4 which houses the tendering area and the medical centre. Hmm... how then would you rate your chances of recovery should you ever have the misfortune of being cared for in the medical centre?

I also heard of this superstition - when you are sailing and eating a whole fish at a meal, never flip the fish over to get at the meat on the other side. Instead, always try to get to the meat from between the bones because if you flip the fish over, the ship may capsize!

(To be continued)