Hua Hin

After 3 nights in Bangkok, we were rested enough to continue our journey. We decided to venture south because we wanted to see what Thailand’s famous beaches were like. Thailand’s eastern gulf coast has 3 islands that are famous tourist destinations, so we decided to start with the closest one – the island of Koh Tao. To get there, we could have taken an 8-hour bus ride to the ferry, but since we had time on our hands, we decided to break the trip up into more bite-sized chunks. Because the town of Hua Hin is only 3.5 hours south of Bangkok, it made sense to for us to make a pit stop there.

Hua Hin is a resort town that is the equivalent of "the Hamptons" for well-to-do Bangkok city dwellers. The town is a miniature version of Bangkok and has everything Bangkok has to offer packaged in a much more manageable size. There are 4-star hotels as well as small cheap guest houses in hidden alleys. Since we had a budget of $100 per day, we decided to splurge a little and booked the Araya Hotel. Araya turned out to be a comfy mid-range hotel within walking distance of some of the best seafood restaurants in town, an excellent night market, and lots of bars with pretty young Thai girls just hanging out looking for "action." I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised to also see an unusually large number of older white men with younger Thai women walking around town as well.

Just like in Bangkok, there was an abundant selection of amazing street food to try in Hua Hin. Every night, certain streets are transformed into a giant food fest, all set up with makeshift temporary kitchens that are dismantled by midnight. In order for regular restaurants to compete, they're forced to also bring out temporary kitchens onto the street to attract passersbys. This makes for a wonderful spectacle of street theatre every night as vendors and waiters beckon you to try their unique specialty. After 2 nights of overeating and indulgence, it was time to head for the ferry to Koh Tao.

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