Bacchus Home Resort Hotel Pran Buri

Today we have an early flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. We ordered the taxi to come pick us up at 5:30AM since our flight was at 7AM. I would say the only draw back is the location from everything else (which is a plus sometimes), but they wanted 500Baht for the pickup (it was only 400Baht from the airport on the way over). Anyway, can't really argue ...

Poon Suk street got us thinking about Dr Prunesquallor. Was he a Mervyn Peake or a Kenneth Horne character? We think Peake.

Just back from the Thai boxing. The Brit guy won his bout. The best fight was between two 10 year olds - pure aggression, no dancing or politicking around. First time either of us have been to see ...

... a retreat to the hotel and cancellation of all plans, we got a cab (initially in the opposite direct) then a bus 3 hours down the coast to Hua Hin, where the King has a holiday palace. It's very jolly, lovely beach. My 25p Lying Planet that I bought from Andover library remarks (in 2001) that girlie bars were starting to appear. The whole street are hotel is in is wall to wall girlie bars now.

... swimming... except there are jellyfishies everywhere, in the water and washed up on shore. Not very inviting nor comforting. There is one really annoying drawback to this place: there is a vendor every 30 seconds offering their goods, selling everything from counterfeit Izod polo shirts to cigarette lighters to silk bedspreads.

We were very far from the town of Hua Hin itself so there isn't much of a choice for dining ...

monday morning i said goodbye to pencil and headed for the golf course where i met up with a cowboy from bangkok and we played nine holes of match play. he has a good drive and he is also pretty good on the green but not much in between. we see these kinds of bangkokians around here on weekends normally. they play most of their golf on driving ranges. the locals call them driving range creatures. this guy was in his twenties, wore jeans and a ten gallon hat, and ...

... got out and checked in to our hostel. Hua Hin is a cute beach town where the Royal Family has a summer palace. Lots of Thai people like to take weekend trips to Hua Hin bc its only 3 hours away. Like most beach towns there are resorts, shops and restaurants with lots of seafood. We walked along the beach at dusk and through some of the pretty resorts. For dinner we ate at different food stalls ...

he is a coach's nightmare. he does everything wrong except to hit the ball long and straight. he is tall and paunchy but not fat and pretty fit for a man well into his seventies. his (female) caddy calls him papa and he in turn calls her mama and i call them the mamas and the papas. we played a round at springfield. it was matchplay. at ...

... about 10km south of the cha-am beach traffic lights. three of us ate and drank like pigs for over an hour and the bill came to about ten dollars. pencil's neice som joined us for dinner. the food and service were just great. we got to sit in a salaa - a table with its own roof. the bright light at the top of the salaa attracted a lot of bugs but it was a truly great dining experience. the rice was perfect. soft and spongy and warm and fluffy and fragrant. just perfect. loved it.

... a technical glitch from this point on, until halfway through Dawei. A few were good ones so apologies for straight text for a while.) Later that night Ali took me on a motorbike to the bronze statue of Bayinnaung - a 16th century monarch who taught those pesky Thais a thing or two. Dressed in full battle gear and drawing a mighty big sword, he's probably not too inviting to any visiting Thai ...

... Dad's gone until he's nowhere in sight. Duncan had a lot of family holiday traits still to get used to. We discovered that shell collecting wasn't the only pastime, taking random photos of westerners was also popular. Before we knew it Duncan and I featured in an albums worth of photos for a group of Thai students on a break from a Bangkok Uni. They offered us a jellied coconut as payment for our services.