Prinz Garden Villa Hua Hin

... boxing in Thailand ( I saw an exhibition match at a Thai food festival in Battersea Park). The Bangkok venue is the size of Wembley arena and takes at least an hour to return from - a bit like seeing a west end show while living in Stoketonia. Hua Hin stadium was much more intimate. We shared a table with 3 guys from Calgary ...

... 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.

... his Thai-tai because everyone, absolutely every single Thai person we meet tells me I look Thai. I don't think I look anything other than VNese but then again, what do I know.

After Pierre acquired his customary farmer's tan, we head back to Bangkok on the 4 pm train, which was filthy (it was 2nd class, there was no 1st class train to and from Hua Hin... makes you wonder what in Heaven's name 3rd class would be like ...

... the many battleships guarding the seashore. This also affected our holiday as we got an unexpected message a couple of days ago that the Thailand government had decided that we need to change our hotel the next afternoon due to security reasons because the delegations from China, India and Brunei had "changed their mind" and were coming to our hotel. Some tourists were of course outrageous about it – they have to waste a valuable holiday day for packing up ...

... even
blink, whereas Hua Hin retains the sense of pride in it's country's
traditions.

My trip to Hua Hin started late Friday night,
because a student had given me a lovely present of an very contagious
eye infections, like pink eye. I have learned not to itch my eyes since
then. So the whole trip you will see me with my sunglasses on
preserving my looks and protecting you from a ...

... is still 130 baht, which is roughly $4USD. Still, it's the first Starbucks I've seen since I've been here (and although foreigners cannot safely eat ice or iced drinks at some places, I know that it's safe at Starbucks), so it was worth it. :) I'm halfway through my volunteering and a quarter of the way through my whole Thailand summer; it's going quite fast. We have to leave in a bit to catch our taxi to head back to the center--thanks for reading, everyone!

... and I have a cell phone and part-time internet connection. My first real adventure was shopping in a Thai supermarket, it took me ten minutes to find rubbing alcohol and the first time I asked for help I was shown to the liquor section. I kept rubbing my arm and saying "rubbing alcohol for cleaning" and in my mind the clerk probably thought I wanted to bathe in Malibu. One of my favorite things about Thailand is that the only ...

... that we did't get ripped off for 100bht a bottle or something.  It was fab. We got to choose our seats, so selected ones right near to the waves, sat at our little table and ordered a beer. Our beer was delivered along with a mosquito coil (lit and placed near our table for us) and a bottle of citronella mozquito spray to cover ourselves in (much nicer and more romantic than the smell of Deet I can tell you). We were also given  a bowl of nuts to munch (extra salt of course ...

... played the skins game. i won by four holes so gary had to buy lunch and beer. he was very generous and happy today. he had gone to bangkok over the weekend. while window shopping at thaniya plaza shopping center there he found some golf balls on sale and bought a dozen for himself and a dozen for me. we played with those balls today. thaniya plaza is a unique shopping center. it is a large building with four floors of nothing but golf ...

... of the former capitols of Thailand. Ayutthaya is a nice town, which is actually and island, as it is bound by three rivers. As it is the former capitol, it is filled w/ruins from that time period, which we biked around to see (after we spent most of the day packing up yet another box to mail to Vietnam -- our packs were simply too heavy to afford us any enjoyable travel). We didn't spend a whole lot of time in Ayutthaya, as we wanted to get to the beach for New ...