The £5 market munching challenge - Florida Night Market in Hat Yai, Thailand
When you're travelling long term (we can say that now, it's been a whole 6 months :P) you sometimes need a bit of structure to a day, a challenge or just a goal to achieve. We came up with the £5 market challenge (okay us and a few thousand YouTubers before us).
Armed with 210 baht (just under £5 sterling) we headed off to the Florida Night Market in Hat Yai - Map Link.
We wanted dinner and so far we'd unfussily eaten extremely well and for very little in Thailand's southern city of Hat Yai.
Would we be able to eat and drink a full dinner for two for under £5?
Challenge set we headed into the colourful market.
We'd come to the Florida Night Market as it was a stone's throw away from our hostel Silla House in Hat Yai. From the balcony of the hostel we could see the lit up tents and throngs of customers coming and going, and decided this would be the perfect place to attempt our first market munch challenge!
Thai Style Barbecue Skewers
First things first, our bouches needed amusing. We were led by our nostrils to a charcoal barbecue. It was time for some skewers. Marinated and grilled to perfection, we quickly devoured two chicken skewers.
20 baht down (£0.47 / $0.58) - 200 baht remaining.
Deep Fried Quail Eggs
Walking around a Thai market as an outsider you'll always find something you haven't tried before. Today we found eggs. Okay we have had eggs before… but these weren't just any eggs (no they weren't M&S eggs - a very British reference) they were deep fried quail eggs on a skewer. Dipped in soy sauce and coated in a generous sprinkling of white pepper they were delicious! We don't know what sort of deep fried dark arts were employed in their construction but the yolks were still gloriously gooey!
One skewer of quail eggs set us back 15 baht (£0.35 / $0.43) - 185 baht remaining!
Hat Yai Fried Chicken
Hat Yai is famous throughout Thailand. Its fame is not only due to its spectacular mosque, cable car or floating market; the largest city in southern Thailand is famous for its fried chicken. Throughout Thailand all the way to the very north, you can find stalls selling "Hat Yai Fried Chicken''. As KFC aficionados there was no way we were going to miss trying this legendary chicken! Wandering up to a stall, we brought two thigh pieces. The chicken came with the traditional accompaniments of rice, sweet chilli sauce and best of all, crispy fried shallots. It's really hard to quantify quite why Hat Yai fried chicken is so good, but we can happily report that it deserves its fame. The thinnest layer of crispy batter, covers almost impossibly juicy chicken. Seriously, when we pulled the chicken apart we quickly had a lake of chicken juice form at the bottom of the container! The perfect chicken, laced with the deceptively spicy sweet chilli sauce, set atop of yellow biryani rice (also can be served with sticky rice) and spiked through with crispy, crunchy onion bits. The legend was true, it was fantastic. Hat Yai fried chicken really puts the Colonel to shame!
Two thighs with accompaniments cost 45 baht (£1.06 / $1.30) - 140 baht remaining!
Som Tam (Spicy Papaya Salad)
To accompany fried chicken we needed some fresh veggies.
This came in the form of a devilishly spicy Som Tam or papaya salad. Tomatoes, papaya, baby shrimp and a lot of chilli's smashed and bruised together with lime juice, peanuts and other wonderful things make the perfect salad. The portion was big enough for this to have been a main course all on its own, but what can I say, we are greedy and have big appetites! Mouths burning from chilli but with big smiles we finished the lot.
This salad set us back 40 baht (£0.94 / $1.15).
The then totally necessary bottle of water cost us another 10 baht (£0.24 / $0.29) - 90 baht remaining!
Banana Roti
We were now entering the sweet phase of our dining extravaganza. We had just come from Malaysia and we were already missing roti.
Luckily the very first stall in the Florida Night Market was a roti stand, and a popular one at that. We took our place in the queue behind an army of Grab drivers and ordered a sweet banana roti. We knew it was going to be good as the Grab driver in front of us was picking up at least 10 rotis for whoever he was delivering for. When it was finally our turn we were not disappointed. Tissue thin, crispy roti covered a pancake layer of egg and sliced sweet banana. There's something about the texture of a well cooked roti. It has a perfect balance of crispy exterior and chewy centre. This with the cooked banana and caramelised sugar topping made for a supremely satisfying desert.
This sweet treat set us back 25 baht (£0.59 / $0.72) - 65 baht remaining.
Thai Style Ice Coffee
To aid our digestion of this delicious Thai feast we thought we'd cap it all off with a coffee. The temperature was hovering around the 30 degree mark even at night so we opted for two iced lattes. Like others we've had in Thailand, they were extremely sweet but certainly hit the spot.
Two iced coffees cost 38 baht (£0.90 / $1.10).
Caffeinated, full and under budget our £5 challenge was a success!
Total Cost of Hat Yai Night Market Dinner
193 baht (£4.55)
Thanks for reading,
John & Ellie x
#adventuresofjellie
If want to see what else we got up to in Hat Yai click here!
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