Thai East Coast

---

For the past two weeks Nick and I have been scouting out places to take the family when they arrive in less than 2 weeks. Our first stop was Chumphon where we spent a few days; this is where you can catch boats to the islands on the East coast of Thailand (Koh Tao, Phangan and Samui). There wasn’t much to do in this small town so we moved on to the bigger town of Hua Hin up the coast.
Hua Hin was nothing like we expected, the guide book had called it a seaside town but it was more like a seaside city. There were lots of hotels, restaurants, tailors and a lot of traffic. We walked down to the beach which was near to our guesthouse and were surprised at how clean and big it was. At the start of the beach there were a few deckchairs and horse rides but once you passed those you could just lay your towel down on the sand and relax. The beach was really long and after walking for half an hour we were surprised that there weren’t any exits off the beach! In the evening we went to the night market at the end of our road and were surprised at how big it was. It was full of food and souvenir stalls and we ended up having our first Thai pancake in 2 months (they are soooo tasty and only cost 15p!). We then walked along the road to another market where Nick noticed a tattooist, we’d been wanting to get a tattoo since we’d left home but hadn’t yet found one for the right price. We went in and Nick ended up persuading me to get one done there and then! The tattooist drew an original design for me and although it was a bit bigger than I’d originally wanted it did look nice when he put the transfer on. It was a lot more painful than I remember and I think I put Nick off a little bit but he ended up getting one straight after me; again originally designed by the tattooist. I’ve got a butterfly on my ankle and Nicks got his birth sign with a tribal infill on his upper arm. They’ve both healed really nicely and we’re really happy with them. For the next few days we had to stay out of the sea so we looked around Hua Hin and relaxed at our guesthouse, we did go to the beach but it was so hot we only lasted an hour!
After 5 days we moved on to the next seaside town called Cha-Am. We got off the bus and didn’t think it would be far to the beach where all the accommodation was, as usual we were wrong and we had to walk over 1km with our 20kg backpacks on! We did end up finding a guesthouse with internet access, swimming pool, air-con and TV though for £5! On our second day there we were given a free tour of Cha-Am by our guesthouse, they took us to a Buddha statue, fishing village, temple, old Cha-Am and the Market. The temple was really cool as there was a big stairway with a serpent on either side acting as the banister and there were loads of little puppies running about the place. The next day we decided we wanted to see more of the surrounding countryside and hired a retro orange mo-ped! It cost £5 with a full tank of petrol which was well worth it. At first Nick was a bit wobbly but he soon got the hang of it and was like a kid in a candy store, you couldn’t get him off the thing! We set off North along the coastal roads, passing typical Thai scenery of green paddy fields, cows on the side of the road, herons, palm trees and shrimp farms. We eventually arrived at Puk Tian beach where there were some massive statues in the sea. One was a turtle and the other was some kind of Buddhist goddess with the face of a beast. We went to another beach a bit further up the coast but we mainly rode around the countryside taking in the stunning views. We spent most of the week lying by the pool topping up our tans before Lele arrives at the end of the week. Unfortunately half way through the week they started demolishing the building we were in so we were moved to a different room. Only problem being it had one soft bed and really hard bed, so we ended up going top to tail so we could both sleep on the soft bed!
We left Cham-Am for Petchaburi, our last stop before Bangkok, again walking the 1km to the bus stop! When we arrived we were dropped at the side of the road and no one would tell us where we were on the map, obviously we set off in completely the wrong direction and ended up wondering round town for over an hour before finding a guesthouse!! We spent two days in Petchaburi, on the first day we visited the hill temple in the centre of the city. At the bottom of the hill Nick got chased by a monkey who was after his bottle of water and after that we were really scared of all the monkeys lining the path up! One girl told us how one had jumped on her back as he was after her wet wipes! From the top the views of the surrounding area were amazing and the buildings themselves were really ornate and beautiful. On the second day we went to a local cave which had Buddha statues inside. There was a lot of natural light so it was really easy to look around, unlike our last cave experience!
We’re now in Bangkok again waiting for Lele who arrives on Thursday and we’re not sure what we’ll do with ourselves until then…but I’m sure we’ll find something.

Hope all is OK back home. Love us both xx

---