Hua Hin, Thailand

Paradise, only 3.5 hours away from Bangkok

I had never heard of Hua Hin before, but when my friends from Canada said they would be staying at a beautiful resort in that city and asked us to join, we jumped at the opportunity. This blog post will be short because we only stayed there for a short weekend, and we spent most of the time catching up rather than taking photos.

Hua Hin is a small city, around 3.5 hours drive south from Bangkok. The city is on the east coast of Thailand and sits on the sliver of land that Thailand shares with Myanmar. The city is across the Gulf of Thailand from Pattaya City, but you cannot see it from the coast and it feels like you’re on the ocean.

The ride into Hua Hin was rather painful, having arrived at midnight in Bangkok, going through immigration and then hopping into a car for over three hours. It was clear that our driver was also not too pleased with having to take a one-way drive outside of Bangkok, likely with no return fare to make it worth his while.

While the ride down was not very fun, arriving at the Hua Hin Marriot Resort and Spa made us quickly forget about the long ride down. This place was gorgeous! We’re not usually fans of chain hotels, but this hotel really is beautiful and well designed. When we arrived on Thursday night, the resort was empty. This would change over the weekend, but for two days, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. 

The hotel has a beautiful and semi-private beach that faces east, so no sunsets on this trip. However, with some discipline, we were able to wake up at 5am to catch two sunrises. One day was especially beautiful!

After experiencing a gorgeous sunrise like that, the only thing a person could do, was go on a search for fried chicken! That’s right, some of the best fried chicken in the world is to be found in Thailand. We headed over to Krua Kannika and were lucky to get a table.

Before we were seated, we couldn’t help but fall in love with this little guy. He’s definitely living the traditional Thai life! 

The food lived up to its reputation and we headed out fully satisfied with our meal and the great service. We highly recommend a visit to Krua Kannika. 

On the way out, our little new friend was posing for a cute photo again, so I couldn’t resist.

On the way back into the hotel, we noticed that they have a nice looking bakery on-site near the entrance. We thought we’d give it a try, and we sure were glad we did! The small pastries and coffee were made to perfection. The strawberry tart was so good, I ate two by myself.

Hua Hin is all about the beach and we consumed copious amounts of time and alcohol there and enjoyed every minute of it. I wish Canada had beaches like this. Even though this is the off-season for Thailand, we didn’t find the weather a problem; perhaps we were lucky because it didn’t rain and the temperatures were in the mid 30’s.  

 

Like all of Thailand, Hua Hin has excellent night markets, several to choose from in fact. We visited the Cicada Market the first night to buy some local crafts and came away with beautiful hand-painted cups for around 950 Baht each. 

On the second night, we made our way to a more local market which is targeted towards food stalls. We had a great seafood meal followed up with an amazing dessert appropriately called Rotee, where they stuff an Indian bread with caramelized bananas and I believe Nutella. It was awesome.

Some of my friends are into durian, the fruit that you either love, or despise due to its strong odour (and perhaps spiky appearance). I fall somewhere in the middle, I can tolerate it, but I  certainly do not love it, nor seek it out.

On the final day, we only had the morning available before having to drive back to Bangkok for our flights back to Beijing, Hong Kong and Toronto. We managed to get up again for the sunrise, but were not rewarded with the wild colours of the previous day. While subdued, it was still worth the early rise.

That wraps up our first visit to Hua Hin. I think we would come back again, but we’d time the drive down from Bangkok to be at a better hour to make the longish 3.5 hour drive feel a bit shorter.

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