Hua Hin

Hua Hin is a small seaside resort, about 200 km south of Bangkok. To be reached in 5 to 6 hours by bus or by train. From Latkrabang, our homebase, once a day a train goes directly to Hua Hin. By train, second class without airco, or third class, is the best way to get there. You can see a lot along the track, and in the train a lot is happening. All windows are open, so the heat won't bother you.

Hua Hin is a rather small place and (still) quiet. You will not find many bars in Hua Hin, not like Pattaya or Phuket. But Hua Hin is changing, more tourists are getting there, and more hotels are being built. But we hope it is to small to get really crowded. The area with bars and souvenir-shops is limited to two or three streets. Plenty of hotels, in all price classes, during high season, it's wise to make a phone-call in advance if you want to go to a specific hotel.

When we arrive in Thailand, most of the time we go to Hua Hin for a couple of days, just to relax. Sitting on the beach for a while, a stroll across the market, have a nice meal in the evening. And if you have been on the beach long enough, the surrounding area has a lot of interesting places. We always stay in hotel Baan Boosarin, small (10 rooms), very clean (very important), and a friendly staff.

Hua Hin has a nice beach, a couple of kilometers long, and clean. At the entrance it's very crowded, a lot of chairs, close together. But if you walk for 5 or 10 minutes along the beach to the south, it's not crowded anymore, and there is more space between the chairs and umbrellas. Like everywhere in Thailand, you can buy drinks and food on the beach. When you do, sometimes you don't have to pay for your chair, but it's better to ask in advance. On some parts of the beach, there are large rocks, it's nice to see, and there is plenty of room if you want to swim.

Hua Hin has a day and a night market. On the day market you can buy fresh vegetables, fruit, fresh and dried fish and seafood, meat, houshold equipment, clothing, and much more. It's a nice experience to walk across the market, narrow and warm, but a lot of things to see.
The evening market is quite different. At five o'clock a few streets are closed for traffic, and vendors occupy the whole street, and even a little bit more, restaurants, souvenirs, but also clothing and CD's. The food is cheap and rather good, but don't get startled if a bus passes 10 centimeters from your plate. The food is prepared fresh, just in front of you, often very spectacular to see.

Do you want to eat with more comfort, go to the restaurants along the beach. You are eating above the water, nice to do. We used to go to Saeng Thai, Mister Wit always served our food. Don't ask why, but year after year we meet him there. It appeared that Piak, Pia's youngest uncle, often goes to Hua Hin, and he knows Mister Wit as well. Mae Karuna is also a nice place to eat, just like Saeng Thai above the water. For no particular reason we haven't been at Saeng Thai for a few years, so we did not see Mister Wit. But in March 2006, we were having breakfast in front of the hotel, someone started to talk to us. It was Mister Wit, who still remembered us. He is now selling fried chicken on the market, together with his two children.

A few kilometers south of Hua Hin is Khao Ta Kiab, a rock, partly in the sea. From the beach you can see it. On the rock is a temple, not very beautiful, but there are a lot of monkeys, and you can feed them.
Monkeys look nice, you want to hug them, and you can feed them. But monkeys are not nice. They tear everything apart, roofs, bags, hands, . . . As soon as they think you have food - you can buy it at one of the entrances of the temple - they want to open you bag, or your hand. And if they don't succeed, they can always use their teeth, and they do so. It doesn't matter where you come from, what language you speak, what's the color of your skin, everybody with food is alike for the monkeys.
Often visitors just don't realise this. So a group of people walks on the temple grounds near a group of monkeys, talking about the monkeys, and eating chips, large bags of chips. Loud screaming, no more monkeys, and no more chips, and the visitors are very startled. The bags were returned to them by a friendly monk, who also told the visitors where the dust-bin was.

To reach the tempel you can go to the beach below the rock by bus or by car. When you walk pass a high Buddha statue, you reach a stairway to the top, narrow and steep, you have te do something to get up. But when you're on the top you can enjoy the temple and monkeys, and also the view at the beach towards Hua Hin. If you think you can't make it by the stairs, drive around the rock, and you can get up by car. Or follow the path around the rock, you have to climb, but it's not steep, and halfway you can buy some food or a drink.

About 60 km south of Hin is Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, the park with 300 mountaintops. From Hua Hin a lot of trips are organized, often with lunches, visits to a pineapple plantation, caves, etcetera. Because we didn't have our own car, we decided to join such a tour. We were supposed to be picked up at our hotel, and make the trip, together with some other people, in a mini-bus. We were picked-up, but the driver told us the mini-bus was overloaded, if we wanted to go with a jeep and a private driver and guide. Nice, but it took awhile before the guide was found. He proposed to skip the pineapple plantation, nothing to see there for us, we agreed. So we went directly to a cave, which appeared to be closed, to another cave, closed as well. Then to the cave we should have visited, Tham Phraya Nakhon. To get there fast, you had to take a boat, and the guide was afraid we wouldn't be able to get a boat with such a few number of people, he was right.

So we started walking, a nice walk along the beach, not really that far from the place the boats hit the beach. And from there on climbing, even if you came by boat, you still had to climbe, at least half an hour, over a steep and rocky trail. It was worth it. The cave has two chambers, each one with the roof collapsed. In the second, biggest chamber is a sala, a resting place, build for King Chulalongkorn. Plants and trees are growing in that chamber, beautiful. And then down, back to the beach, which is more difficult than getting up. Climbing is the only way to reach the cave. Halfway down we met another group of weary, sweaty visitors, who asked if their bus was waiting near the cave. Unfortunately not.

The other half of the day, after lunch, the driver and the guide, who appeared to be very friendly and helpfull, took us to some nice, remote temples and at last to the hill behind Hua Hin. The trip didn't work out as planned, but we had a very nice day.