Feb 22 - I had previously bought train tickets to Hua Hin, so we walk the ten minutes to the train station this morning.
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The train we take is the luxury line, cost 1200 Baht for nice chairs and air conditioning. Over half of the passengers in our car are tourists. It takes about three hours to arrive, going through flat coastal plains. Going by train is a big relief after the cramped, hot minivans.
Our hotel in Hua Hin is a five minute walk from the train station, but along a road that is nearly impossible to walk. The edge of the road is up against fences and walls, and scooters squeeze through even this tiny space every chance they get. It seems very strange to me that some streets in these towns are so unwalkable, given that not everyone has a car. Perhaps it is because everyone DOES have a scooter. If we didn’t have Odette and an extra pack, we could just take motorcycle taxis. There are always many of them hanging around, in fact this is normally the only type of taxi we see anywhere. We are on the sixth floor so have a good view of the city out to the east. Hua Hin, unlike the previous two cities, is spread out a long way north and south directly along the coast.
We go out for dinner (seafood is the normal here) and the street a block away has a lively night market. Then we go east to the coast. No beach in this part of town, just restaurants built out over the water on stilts. A lot of tourists again, over 50% of the people we see walking around. But it is a very different feel from Ao Nang. The former was geared toward families and backpackers looking for beaches and islands. Here, the demographic has shifted older, and is more about massage parlors. It has a faintly seedy aspect that we haven’t seen until now in Thailand. Groups of older foreign men sit around tables on the street, with Thai women hovering around. And the women out in front of the massage parlors have that sort of jaded, bored look, playing with their phones and disregarding us when it is clear we are walking as a family.
