Hua Hin

  Hua Hin, Thailand
Monday, August 11, 2008

Instead of heading straight back to Bangkok, we stopped for a night in Hua Hin.  Hua Hin is the beach town that Andrew recommended to me, and it's where the king and queen vacation.  Only 3-4 hours from Bangkok, it's to Bangkokians (Bangkokers? Bangers?) what the Cape is to Bostonians.  It did have kind of a Cape Cod feel to it, gravelly sand, families shellfishing for fun, great seafood.  We found a cheap guesthouse by the water and grabbed dinner with a British woman we met on the bus to Hua Hin.  After dinner we took a walk along the beach.

Seamus look-alike

There were a bunch of stray dogs running around the beach at Hua Hin, like everywhere else in Thailand.  They're wicked friendly; I guess since they survive off the kindness of tourists.  I played with a couple that both looked like the late, great Seamus. 

Even after the walk I didn't feel like sleeping so I took a walk into town.  I was drawn into an Irish bar (yeah, yeah...) by the sound of a live band playing Highway to Hell (that was the first song my brother learned on drums and the beat will forever be engrained in my skull).  The band was a group of young Thai men that looked like they were straight out of 1970s America doing covers of 70s rock, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, etc.  They weren't particularly good, but man were they into it.  I don't think anyone has played Smoke on the Water with that kind of sincerity since that first kid in 1978 figured out that it only took three chords to do it and decided it would sound good on tuba or bari sax too.  So, I sat there at an Irish bar in the Thai royalty's vacation spot drinking Paddy Whiskey listening to a group of Thais play the songs my mother used to party to in 1970s Dorchester.  Life is strange...