Hat Yai rewards a self-drive itinerary better than most Thai cities its size, with temples, dim sum, street art, and a floating market all reachable within a compact loop around Songkhla province. This guide covers six stops for a one-day road trip, mixing food, culture, and photography without requiring more than a rental car and a single day.

Book your flights into Hat Yai International Airport to begin.

Wat Hat Yai Nai, formally known as Wat Mahathat Mangkharam, houses one of Thailand's largest reclining Buddha statues at 35 metres long, 15 metres tall, and 10 metres wide. Beyond the main hall, visitors can feed fish in the temple canal, a simple but genuinely popular activity that makes this a good first stop before the day gets busier.

Pranee Thai Cuisine serves modern southern Thai cooking in a contemporary, air-conditioned setting, with braised pork belly and yam with edible flowers among the dishes worth ordering. The restaurant closes on Tuesdays and runs split lunch and dinner hours the rest of the week, so checking the schedule before planning your route around it is worth doing.

Guk Chai specialises in Cantonese dim sum and duck noodles, open from 6 am daily until 1 pm, making it a strong breakfast or early lunch stop before continuing the loop. The Cantonese-style duck soup is the dish most regulars order first, and arriving before mid-morning avoids the lunch rush that builds as the shop approaches closing time.

Comparing hotels in Hat Yai gives you a base to start the loop from, particularly useful if you want an early start at Guk Chai Dim Sum.

Space Bar Café brings a British countryside theme to Hat Yai, open daily from 10 am to 7 pm, with a mango passion fruit soda paired with coconut cake as the combination most worth ordering. It works well as a mid-afternoon stop between the temple and market legs of the route, offering a slower pace than the rest of the day.

Songkhla Old Town, around 30 km from Hat Yai, spreads its street art across three connected streets, Nakornok, Nakornin, and Nangnuam, with murals depicting local fishing traditions, coffee culture, and regional heritage. The relatively compact area makes it easy to cover on foot once you've parked, and the murals photograph particularly well in late afternoon light.

Booking activities like an evening city and floating market tour is a practical way to see several of Hat Yai's landmarks without driving yourself for the whole route.

Klong Hae is Southern Thailand's first cultural floating market, open only from 1 to 9 pm on Fridays through Sundays, so this stop needs to anchor your route planning rather than fit around it. Southern-style noodles and traditional desserts make up most of the food on offer, and the market's limited operating days make it worth confirming before you build the rest of the loop around it.

Guk Chai Dim Sum's early close and Klong Hae's Friday-to-Sunday-only schedule are the two hardest constraints on this route, so build your day around those two before slotting in the more flexible stops.

A car rental is genuinely the most practical way to cover all six stops in a single day, particularly given the 30 km drive out to Songkhla Old Town and back.

Thai, Chinese, and Malaysian influences all show up across this route, from the Cantonese dim sum in stop three to the Buddhist temple in stop one, giving Hat Yai a genuinely different character from more homogenous day-trip routes elsewhere in Thailand.

November to February brings cooler, drier weather that suits a full day of driving and walking between stops, while the floating market's Friday-to-Sunday schedule makes a weekend trip the more natural fit for this itinerary regardless of season.

An airport transfer booked in advance gets you from Hat Yai International Airport to your hotel smoothly before the road trip begins.

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