Our First 2 Weeks In Hua Hin

Please enjoy this video of the Night Market

After a very comfortable 3 hour ride from Bangkok airport on the VIP bus we arrive in Hua Hin and was picked up by the owner of our condo and shown our new home for the next 3 months. We are located within a 10 minute walk to Market Village Mall and the beach is about a 5 minute walk.

We shipped 4 large boxes and had a tuk tuk driver help us bring them to the condo.

Waking up in the morning at 6:00 has been worth the sunrise pictures Vince has been taking and the peace and quiet of the beach is lovely.

If we walk the beach during the day we see kite surfers, ponies, beach dogs, food vendors, massage stands, jet skis pulling rafts and fishing boats along with all of the tourists.

 Balls of sand made by Sand Bubbler Crabs.  They filter nutrients from the balls they make during low tide and then hide deep in the sand until the next low tide when they come out to feed.

Horses going home from their day at the beach

It has been fun finding food choices near by.

Cicada Market is an artist market open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening. There are at least 50 food booths with loads of yummy things to choose from.  They have great plastic holders for your beverages.  I have seen them hanging on the handle bars of motorcycles.

We finally made it to the Hua Hin Night Market which is open every night. 

 Lin buying sweet Tamarind from this lady.  They taste like dates only better!

She noticed Lin taking video and was trying to get her to come over for a Rotee!  It is a crepe filled with banana, egg and topped with sweetened condensed milk and chocolate.  Maybe another day!

We found a lady making coconut desserts. This was before our dinner of course!

We found dinner on a side street from the night market and the food was good and at reasonable prices too. It cost us 50 baht or $1.53 for dinner for the two of us.

Seafood abounds and you can pick out exactly what you want and they will cook it for you on the spot. Prices for King Lobster was 2,000 per kilo or about $30.00 US per lb. That huge lobster probably weighed close to 4 or 5 lbs.

Looking around we spotted a cute backpacker hostel in the middle of the night market.  Great name and lovely art on the wall outside.

After dinner we stopped for a massage. Lin chose neck, shoulders and back and Vince decided on a foot massage. For 30 minutes each the cost was 99 baht or $3.04. We paid a total of 100 baht and a 20 baht tip for a total of $3.68 each. We might have to do this at least once a week!

Our transportation on the green songtheaw was 10 baht each to the market because it was before 7pm and on the way home it was 15 baht each after 7pm. For a total of 50 baht or $1.53. Compare that to the Tuk Tuk Taxis (that DO NOT budge on price).  They would have charged 150 baht each way or a total of $9.21.  We are learning our way around the city in the various songtheaws.  Green, White, Orange, and White with a red stripe.   Pretty soon we will be able to go anywhere for next to nothing in baht.

Lin had a great birthday present......moving to the beach!

I Am Addicted!

Hello, my name is Lin and I am addicted to the internet.

You can never go backwards. So I have heard, but I am here to prove that you can and it is not pretty.

I boot up my computer, sign in and then leave the room to make coffee. That is how long it takes for web pages to load on this shared connection we have at the condo we are living in for THREE MONTHS!

Having a blog, uploading photos, surfing the net or checking up on things on Facebook is a lesson in patience. I thought something was wrong with my laptop! I tried to upload a video to our YouTube channel....for two days! It kept crashing.

When I was a child the telephone “Party Line” was just a daily thing that you put up with. If you wanted to make a phone call you picked up the large heavy phone receiver and dialed the number you wanted. But more than likely as soon as you picked up the phone you would hear two or more of your neighbors having a “Cluck Fest” and they were not about to hang up from gossiping to let you have your turn. It was a shared line and sometimes you waited hours or all day for the busy bodies to get off the phone. That was 50 years ago!

I need a 12 step program and counseling to be able to deal with the emotions I am feeling! Frustration, Anger, Denial, Irritation, and sometimes on the verge of tears because I can't function without my connection!

Wow, what have I become?

Mr. Hat Says Farewell To Chiang Mai

We moved to Chiang Mai 8 months ago and what an exciting 8 months it has been. Our original plan was to live 9 months per year in Chiang Mai and then the other 3 months at the beaches to avoid the dreaded Smoky Season in Chiang Mai. Well, it's time to move to the beach. Next stop....Hua Hin.

We have experienced things in the past 8 months that we could never have expected, many things that we expected and looked forward to, and a few things that we would have preferred to miss. We have made some great friends and have seen things we now consider normal that before seemed very exotic.

Two days after we moved here Martial Law was declared in Thailand. Good timing, huh? What would that mean to us? Well, 8 months later and Thailand is still under Martial Law but it really hasn't affected us in any major way. People still go about their daily business and we are treated very well. At first there was a curfew that affected some expats but not us, as we don't normally stay out after 10 pm at night anyway.

Two days after Martial Law was declared there was the Coup d'etat. The government was overthrown peacefully by the military. There wasn't a huge uproar as you might expect. I guess the Thai people are so used to them that it was just another day in Thailand.

So, after less than one week in the country we experienced the imposition of Martial Law and a Coup d'etat. Those are two things that we never expected to experience.

Most of the rest has been wonderful and mostly expected. Chiang Mai has so much to offer in the way of spectacular scenery, deep rooted culture, traditional celebrations, crazy drivers, wild west atmosphere, fantastic food, and friendly people. It is no wonder that Chiang Mai is a huge tourist and expat destination. One minute you can be in a 600 year old Thai wet market and then 10 minutes later be in a brand new, state of the art shopping mall that makes the ones back in the US look like old, run down shopping centers.

The “semi-official” smoky season usually begins in February and gets progressively worse until the rainy season sometime around the Songkran Holiday in April. Chiang Mai sits in a bowl surrounded by mountains and when the Thai farmers begin burning their fields, forest fires begin (purposely or by nature) in the jungles surrounding the city, and farmers in Myanmar, Laos, China, and other SE Asian nations begin their field burning the smoke migrates into the bowl around Chiang Mai and concentrates so heavily that it is unhealthy to breathe the air. Luckily we are able to move away then. To The Beach!

People who have breathing difficulties of any type should definitely have an exit strategy for the Smoky Season in Chiang Mai. This year the farmers started burning in October and there have been too many days since then when it affected our health. We went through a time where the air was stagnate and there was an inversion and you could smell, taste and breathe the smoke. Not our idea of fun. That along with the incessant pollution from all the diesel fumes from the vehicles made us stay indoors.

Chiang Mai is like that black sheep uncle that every family has. Deep down you wish you could be like him. He's full of adventure, lives life to the fullest and doesn't worry about what others think. He does what he wants, when he wants. He's loud, he's obnoxious, and he's most likely the town drunk. Rules were made to be ignored and the only thing that matters in his world is himself. He's raw and unfiltered. Everyone else can go screw themselves if they don't like it. You want to spend time with this character as there are so many stories and experiences that he can show you, but he also hasn't taken a shower or bathed in years. Yeah, he's THAT uncle.

So, it's off to the beach in the Gulf of Thailand for the next 3 months. While there we are going to check out the coastline from Cha Am down to Prachuap Khiri Khan (approximately 100 km distance) looking for a place we might want to put down our roots for the next year. After the 3 months there we will be taking a short vacation and spending some time in Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. We will visit our son and daughter-in-law in Japan for several weeks before returning to Thailand.

Our next post will be from the beach in Hua Hin. Look forward to seeing what it has to offer. Stay Tuned.

8 MONTHS IN CHIANG MAI

PHOTO JOURNAL

-In no particular order-
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