Monday, May 30, 2011

Life's a Beach: Part 1


There was a national holiday here in Thailand a few weeks ago.  It was in celebration of Buddha.  The holiday is on Tuesday so many of the schools are closed Monday as well, making it a 4-day weekend.  You gotta love 4-day weekends. 

It had been 7 weeks and I had not seen a beach.  Thailand is well known for it's white-sand beaches and clear blue water, especially in the South.  And while I didn't have the time to venture so far, I got just what I was looking for: FUN IN THE SUN. 


The beach town is called Hua Hin.  It's about 3 hours south of Bangkok.  It's is a beautiful beach.  The sand is so fine that when you walk in it you can hear it squeak.  It is a popular tourist destination so you see a lot of foreigners and beach resorts. 

I went with the two other foreign teachers of our program, Tyler and Amanda.  Amanda arrived on Saturday night and found a place for us to stay.  Tyler and I took a van on Sunday evening, after my last class. 

Meeting up with Amanda that evening was quite the task.  When we entered the town of Hua Hin, Tyler and I ended up getting out of the van prematurely.  We thought we got to our final stop, but we soon found that wasn't the case. 

A misguided motorcycle taxi and a tuk tuk ride later, spending over 200 Baht to go 5 kilometers, we finally reached Amanda.  It took about another hour to find her from when we first arrived. 

This is me in the tuk tuk trying to "figure things out."  You can get a little flavor of the night life passing by.  Boy was I confused!


Finally, we found her.  She was accompanied by 2 other young Americans.  It was great to meet them.  I always love meeting Americans in Thailand.  There aren't many.  Most foreigners are from the UK, Europe, Australia or South Africa.  

These guys were so cool.  They were a couple from New York that had been traveling all over Southeast Asia doing charity work.  They worked at an elephant sanctuary for a month and did a whole bunch of other cool stuff in Cambodia and Vietnam.  

We hung out with them all night.  Hua Hin has a big night market with tons of great food, smoothies and things to buy.  We shopped, ate and shared our traveling stories.  Then Amanda informed us that the Swedish national hockey team was playing Finland for the international hockey world cup.  The only catch was the game started at 1am!  And yes, we stayed up until 4am watching it.  Sweden got crushed 2-6 by Finland.  Oh well. 

A shot of part of the night market. 


The next morning was beach day.  The American couple came with us.  We had breakfast and played a little pool near the beach.  The Thai waitress was so surprised to see young foreigners she asked to take our picture.  And she was right.  I only saw one other group of young foreigners the entire trip in Hua Hin. 

This is us. 


From left to right, that's Mike, Jess, Amanda, Tyler Capp (or Tyler 1) and me.  Good times. 

On our way to the beach. 


It was a beautiful day.  The water was very warm and the sun was right on us.  Despite what I thought was enough sunscreen, I went home quite burned on my chest.  I guess I missed a pretty obvious spot...

Laying in the sand, we had a woman approach us.  She asked if we wanted pedicures.  Seeing that there's a first for everything -- and the day was perfect -- I just had too.



And boy, did she do a great job!  My toes have never looked so good -- no joke!  For the rest of the trip, I would double-take every time I saw my own toes.  It was hilarious.

Then I went running.  I was originally going to join Tyler and Amanda in the water but it felt so good to run.  I just kept going.  I must have ran 2 or 3 kilometers.  Very liberating.

Shortly after, Tyler had the great idea to bury me in the sand.  He and Amanda were originally attempting to make me look like a mermaid (including the breasts) but I turned out looking more like a very feminine whale.

The final touches...


Completion. 


I'm going to leave it at that for now.  The next post will be Part II and will cover our escapades that evening and the following day before heading back. 

Thanks for reading ya'll.  Hope to see ya back here next week!


3 comments:

  1. Thanks again. Your blog is very entertaining to read.

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  2. Thanks Fabrice! Love your feedback!

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  3. Love to hear about the adventures and see the pictures. Makes me want to go somewhere!

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