Avoid those jelly fish!
Hua Hin,
Thailand
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
We spent a couple of days In Bangkok getting stuff together for visa applications and then decided to head to Hua in while we wait for our visa to come through. We got up on Saturday morning ready to leave but then we bumped into Jen, an old friend of Ed's in the bar of our hostel. Turns out her and her husband have done the same as us and sold up to travel for a couple of years! How weird to meet them here after Ed hasn't seen her for years! As you can imagine there was lots to talk about so we sat at the hostel for a few hours catching up and trading travel stories! We eventually got moving about 2pm and headed to the bus stop. We arrived in Hua Hin about 6pm so really all we did was go for dinner that first night and listen to the live band playing in the foyer of the plaza area.
On Sunday we headed for the beach, our main reason for coming here! But we were pretty disappointed with what we found. The sand was quite dirty and when we walked along the beach by the edge of the water we saw loads of jelly fish just waiting to sting! After my experience in Penang I thought it best to give the jelly fish a wide berth so we couldn't even swim in the sea. Well actually Ed did but he had to be very careful. So I sat on the beach sweltering in the heat. After a couple of hours we decided to give up on the beach and went to a beach side bar to get cool drinks and to just watch the goings on around. Then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner and wandered around the local market to see what we could find. We watched a street artist doing some caricatures and we saw some new puppies which were very cute!
On Monday we thought better of going back to the beach so we went on a walk around Hua Hin which we had found in the guide book. We saw the train station, which is a pretty cool building, and we saw the statue of Pone Kingpeth, the first Thai boxing champion. Then we went to 2 separate lookout points where you can see Hua Hin on one side and Chaam on the other. The skyline of Hua Hin is quite impressive. And I saved a fish on the pier here - it was in a puddle on the pier wriggling around so I did my good deed and threw it back into the sea - I'm sure it was grateful! Next we wandered around the shopping area and went for ice cream to cool off! We had another Thai meal for dinner and then we went exploring the night market, which was very impressive. I really like bartering for a good deal! Tomorrow we are heading back to Bangkok to hopefully pick up our Chinese visas. We have decided that we do like Hua Hin as a town but we are not overly keen on the beach. The Lonely Planet says that this is one of the best beaches in Thailand but don't be fooled. The restaurants and markets are nice though.
