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Published: March 7th 2008
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At the end of my last Blog we had been staying in a resort for the night. The next morning after breakfast 8 of us headed for Hua Hin after being told that we had a free weekend - we were craving the beach and also any food other than rice and vegetables. Hua Hin is one of the closest main beach resorts to Bangkok but we hadn't reckoned on a 7 hour journey from where we were and a particularly sweaty hot 4 hour bus ride. Hence we were glad to land finally on friday afternoon. We checked into our 'Jetty' guest house at 3 pounds each a night- in Hua Hin there are many jetties or piers that have guest houses and restaurants right over the water, they are really nice but apparantly they are under threat of destruction in order to make way for the big chains of hotels etc...more on that later. Having not eaten any lunch as our journey was so long and we were unprepared for it, we went straight to find the beach and sat in a cafe right on the beach. Needless to say we all ordered chips as we were desperate to
eat some western junk!
That evening, after consulting our various guide books, we decided to go to a recommended jetty restaurant called Chao Lay which was recommended for it's reputation for seafood. IT DIDN'T DISAPPOINT!! Basically downstairs was amass with fish tanks full of the catch that was soon to be on our plates. We all ordered various seafood dishes and sat drinking wine basically on a pier over the sea, it was lovely, I finally felt I was relaxed. After our sumptuous meals we headed to find some alcoholic beverages...we found a very lively street full of bars but as we wondered we all felt there was something not quite right about it. We picked our bar (the most lively looking) and sat down at a table in the corner with cocktails...looking around more closely it was full of older men (mainly English and German) with many young Thai girls around them. We then consulted the bible guide book to discover that this was the 'seedy' street full of clientele looking for a good time...oh dear! The thing was, all these older men looked quite respectable and we fear had just stepped out of one of the 'rich'
hotels such as the Hilton and the Sofitel that were right on the beach....So we quickly drank our drinks and made a quick exit, we thought it wasn't quite such a good idea that 8 English girls would try and compete with the Thai women haggling over the men!!
The next day we all got up early and went to a place near our guest house that was just like starbucks and had continental breakfast, I loved it: toast, choccie crossaint, cereal, yoghurt, orange juice and a cup of tea!! yummy!! Then we went and sunbathed on the beach all day. Now the beach was lovely, fine white sand etc... but the water was green, quite a toxic coloured green and all along the beach there were dead fish and jellyfish so we wondered how polluted it was. Needless to say we didn't exactly swim in it, merely dipped our toes to cool down. The others headed off for burgers when it came to lunchtime, I decided to go to a local woman who was cooking corn on the cob on a BBQ on the beach, it was so delicious and I knew we were headed out for more
junk that evening....Pizza this time. It was really tasty though and we all savoured every mouthful. I asked for a glass of wine with my pizza and got it in a cardboard cup - when asked why I couldn't have a wine glass (that were hanging up at the bar) the waitress replied "its election, you have tea" meaning, during elections it is illegal to sell alcohol and I don't think you're even meant to drink it in your own home so I was to pretend I was drinking tea. When we all looked around we noticed men drinking from big mugs - we presumed disguising the beer. So we thought there wasn't any point heading to bars that evening - besides we didn't feel comfortable watching the dirty old men! So we went to the night market. There are night markets in most places in Thailand and you can generally haggle quite a lot with the traders, but as we were making our way through the stalls we discovered that these traders were not so keen to budge on their prices, presumably because they can get the high prices from all the people who had just stepped out of
the Hilton. Not that we were bitter about the people in the Hilton, not at all. (Much) Anyway after a little while of wondering we headed back to our 'pier' jetty guest house at 3 pounds a night (you can guess the standard) and all sat out on the balcony area looking up at the Hilton next door and watching as people got out of the lift and guessing which room they were going to and then seeing the light come on. After some time of doing this and dreaming that we too were staying there, we realised how sad we all were and headed to bed...I was actually pleased in the end that we stayed there - where else can you smell, see and hear the sea while you sleep - literally feel it as the whole room would move as the waves did. Bliss...
The next day, we splashed out on a minibus taxi back to the eco house. It meant we had the morning at the beach and could relax instead of getting 2 taxis and 2 buses to get back and the prospect of a 9 hour journey (the resort where we left from was
an hour closer to Bangkok that getting back to the Eco house) We arrived back just in time for tea and more rice and veg, which actually I didn't find too bad having had a weekend break from it. I had just enough time to wash out some clothes and pack again, Monday morning was the start of my trekking week!! Hua Hin was a lovely break and just what we all needed - especially the food element!!!
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claire
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Hi rach. Looks great. Glad you have had some proper food now, not just rice and veg! Loving reading your blogs, claire xx