Hue Hin- Beach weekend in December? why not?!

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The weekend after the King's Birthday we had another three day weekend for constitution day. Us teachers are not complaining one bit! The Mahachai gang (Lauren, Ben, Mike, Erika, and I) decided to take a trip to a popular beach destination for Bangkokians, Hue Hin. It's only about a two hour drive from Bangkok. We were excited to have a beach weekend for the first time since leaving Phuket. Our hostel was right off the road that had a nightly night market, convenient right? There were tons of older tourist there and families. Along the night market were stalls for the typical souvenir: clothes, jewlery, knock off dvds/cds, etc. After settling in our hostel we headed out to explore the area. The main area of Hue Hin is pretty compact and you can walk around easily. There are main bar areas and main restaurant areas. The bars in Hue Hin were not of the preferable kind.. More of the older white male interested in a younger Thai female kind. Many go-go bars with Thai women strutting their bodies trying to lure in the male tourists. It's pretty disgusting actually. You can never erase the image of a 70 year old man making out with a 20 something Thai woman on the street. Hands are never where they should be either. Any guy wanting to avoid this scene must take extra caution in these parts. These go-go bars are why I am going to avoid Pataya, Thailand… apparently that's the main attraction there. It's just awful. What really stinks about all this too, is it's giving interracial couples in Thailand a bad name. I've seen many interracial couples who are the same age get judged by others because of this stereotype. Most of the time though, you can tell who the sleeze bags are.



Well, while we were out in this area we found a bar that was not focused on pushing women on men and settled in for a fun night there. This is after hanging out at a live music bar and having an 80 year old hit on me and tell me I was beautiful… not in the fun loving grandpa way either. I was so mortified! This man literally starred our table down for about 45 min and come to find out it was because he was starring me down. We left very soon after that. I was the butt end of all the jokes for a good 10 minutes after that. The bar we ended up at attracted us first because there was a fire dance performer out front. This club is owned by two Dutch men who now live in Hue Hin. They were really fun guys who liked to get to know their customers. We even had a really fun game of Jenga (with drinking rules) with one of them. They even tried to teach us how to work the fireball ropes… Lauren's attempt was a massive fail when the knot in her rope untied and the tennis ball went flying into the streets! Lucky for me, I was videoing the entire time! It's a pretty funny video, probably more funny if you were there though. Surprisingly, Hue Hin is a massive college town with plenty of foreign exchange students but fate had it that we came on a weekend that everyone was preparing for finals, so not a single college student was to be seen.



The next day we were so excited to have a relaxed beach day. The beach was about a 10 minute walk from our hostel and along the way I discovered a delicious German restaurant where I had breakfast 2 times in a row. Hue Hin is apparently famous for it's horseback rides on the beach. I was excited for the prospect of seeing horses galloping down the beach but when we arrived it was not at all what I imagined. The small entrance way to the beach was packed with horses and their guides all waiting for tourists. They were all so pretty but it broke my heart because you know that those horses don't get a break all day long and I didn't see many water stations for them to drink from. Then I thought about how the horses would have to pee and poop on the beach that I was about to go lay on. I did get to experience a horse pooping past me with the tour guide not giving the poop a second glance. I used my best Thai, 'Excuse me?!" (only phrase I know that could fit the situation) and pointed for him to pick up his horses poop. He gave me one glance gave me a wait a moment finger and never came back. Go figure. We immediately got up and found another spot.



The beach was very long and narrow and the winds were strong. There were tons of people kite surfing in the ocean due to the massive waves the wind was making. They were really fun to watch as we found our sunny spot and soaked in the sun. On a stroll down the beach I found tons of trash and even chards of glass that I picked up and tossed to the side. There are never any garage cans in sight here in Thailand!



On our second beach day we ventured to another beach near Hue Hin via tuk tuk. We were driven through wine country and pineapple plantations. It was really neat seeing all the pineapples growing on their bushes. We were taken to a more Thai local beach. We were the only "forang" in sight. We found a sunny spot and got comfortable until people started coming over to take pictures of us. Not with us, but of us. In our bathing suits… awkward. We were also the only people in the sun on the beach. Funny how they try to be white and we try to get darker, grass is always greener on the other side.



After our first beach day, we grabbed dinner at a Mexican Restaurant "owned by real Mexicans" (as their sign says). Sure enough it was a guy from Brownsville, Texas who owned the restaurant. The food was delicious and he was a fun guy to get to know. It's crazy how people are brave enough to uproot their lives and start businesses in another country. Random fact: Thailand doesn't have tortilla chips available that aren't imported (aka waaaay to expensive) so he makes all their tortilla chips from scratch. You could tell! So good! Later that night, Lauren, Ben and I met a guy who is studying in Hue Hin but is from India. We are planning a trip to India in May and he offered to help us out. Such a great guy! I'm excited to see if we will actually meet him again in India. It's really a small world after all.



Hue Hin was a great escape from the busy city life of Bangkok. I am happy that we were able to experience it and have a beach weekend in December. Feels unreal when it was snowing in El Paso!

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