Jan 3[SUP]rd[/SUP]
We were up very early today to catch the sunrise – beautiful.
The Intercontinental Hua Hin is a nice property with some nice (expensive) restaurants, and pool side bars with access to a (security) guarded portion of the beach. It is only 2 levels high at the highest part, and the club rooms at ground level have a private pool that is at the foot of the veranda. The layout of the room was somewhat odd with a free standing bath in the middle of the bathroom (open plan arrangement), the bed was big and comfortable and there was a veranda which had a queen size lounger and a 2 setting table with room to spare. Our view looked out onto the pool area from a distance, and road and train noise was prevalent during the night with the sliding door open, however, with the door closed it pretty much went away.
Breakfast was served between 2 restaurants, unfortunately for me, I was limited to toast with honey as I wasn’t keeping much in at this point, and I was scoffing Imodium like they were M&Ms.
If you are looking for a hotel with sweeping ocean views, The IC isn’t that hotel and I would recommend the Hilton (although there are many more high rise hotels available), but for a relaxing resort, the IC is a winner.
Over 3 days in Hua Hin, we manager to cram in relaxing by the pool, relaxing in the veranda, relaxing on the beach, relaxing at the bar…. We also managed a Thai cooking class where we were picked up for a market excursion prior to the class, found a temple by the sea by mistake, a Buddha on a hill and some monkeys.
Having a car is the best thing in Hua Hin, and this allowed for an excursion out to Pa La U waterfall around 70km up in the hills from Hua Hin. I managed to get “taxed” by the fun police on the way there, they had a road block set up out of town (near the floating market easily reachable by scooter) and were pulling up all the round eye’s they could muster and hitting them with the “your <insert country here> licence is not valid, you need an international, that will cost you <insert amount here> to carry on – my tax was 400 Baht, I also have an international licence, but I am sure they would have just found something else wrong and taxed me higher – the 400 Baht was passed over and it went straight into the police mans pocket – tourist tax – nice one Thailand.
The waterfall isn’t exactly a waterfall as such, it is a series of small cataracts that spread out over I guess 2-3km from the entrance. It is a nice walk, the parks services start and finish with a bamboo bridge right at the beginning of the walk, and if you are going to do the walk, be prepared unlike me who was wearing “hiking thongs” instead of sturdy footwear. There is no real track and a lot of the walk is over river boulders, up dirt tracks and even jumping across river pools boulder to boulder – yes, hiking thongs were the wrong choice! In my defence, I was expecting a viewing platform at a 300m high waterfall so dressed for that occasion, not a trek!
The river was full of fish, it was hot and humid and the walk was physically taxing – I enjoyed every last minute of it. The girls stayed at level three while Mark and I carried on up to the top so we could at least say we had been there.
On the way to the waterfalls, we had glimpsed a monkey or two in the broken bamboo (from Elephants) whilst dodging Elephant stools on the road. We never saw the Elephants, however on the way back, we stopped for some picks of a family of very healthy looking monkeys and a family of Gibbons who decided to meander across the road in front of us.
All in all, a must do for anyone visiting Hua Hin – an eye opener to what the jungle is like in small dose.
Jan 5[SUP]th[/SUP]
We left Hua Hin and again I vowed to return – 6 months between visits seems too long – maybe once a year will give me my Thailand fix? I will need to talk to the boss about this – to be honest, I could go nowhere else apart from this sleepy little town south west of Bangkok for the next ten years and be happy – time will tell how it pans out.
The drive back to Bangkok was reasonably uneventful except for Hertz phoning and telling me I had to have the car back by 2pm or extra charges would apply. We scrapped in with 15 minutes to spare so all was good. A quick taxi ride to our next hotel, the Banyan Tree Bangkok where I had advance purchased the rooms months earlier. On arrival at the hotel, it dawned on me the hotel I thought was the Banyan was not in fact the Banyan so was kind of disappointed in the location, but this wasn’t going to dampen our last night in Thailand and we were looking forward to dinner with Ozmille and his extended family at the world famous Vertigo Restaurant on the roof of the Banyan Hotel which we had also booked months earlier!
I paid for an upgrade to a suite at the hotel and Oz_mark paid for executive upgrade. My suite upgrade cost an additional $160AUD, in hindsight probably not the best use of the money as the booked rooms were pretty nice anyway, but what the heck – you only live once eh?
Our room was big, it felt dated but it was luxurious and well appointed. The only letdown was it was on a lower floor with a view of the building next door – poor form for an expensive suite.
The executive lounge has an all day bar, so late afternoon saw us having a beer and a snack before heading out for some quick shopping. Back in the lounge, I was treated to a 10 minute neck and shoulder massage (so did Mrs Oz_mark) which was pretty good while sitting at the table and soon it was getting toward the prearranged meeting time with ozmille and family. Up to the top floor and not long after we were seated in a group of 9 – complimentary champagne due to a seating screw up by the restaurant – we wanted our tables at the edge – and the difficult decision of choosing started! Be warned, by Bangkok standards, Vertigo is expensive, but honestly, worth every cent paid. Kim and I chose the a l'amour set course with matched wine – a degustation menu that sampled the finest produce Thailand has to offer, I am unsure what the others had as I was so wrapped up in my little world of culinary bliss that I didn’t care. This was also the first decent food I had eaten in near a week and I was salivating as each course was delivered.
The food service I found a little fast between courses, but that was because Oz_mark and us had so many courses that the waiters carefully ensured that across our entire group, entrees were served with entrees, mains with mains so on so forth, so the courses in between came out a little faster than expected so those who didn’t have as many courses still ate at a pace fitting a silver service restaurant.
The food and wine selection were faultless and I would eat here again in a heartbeat – AFF Xmas in Bangkok anyone?
After finishing up and saying our goodbyes (and the girls having a shock when the hot chick in the ladies had dangly bits), we retired to our room with a certain melancholy knowing our adventure was nearly over.
Breakfast the next morning consisted of toast and honey (again) for me but the rest of the selection looked pretty nice. Check out was kind of painless and we arranged a private transfer to BKK. On arrival at the airport, we went to the premium counters – our Banyan greeter met us at the door and wheeled our bags, and proceeded to check in through to SYD, CX BKK/HKG, QF HKG/SYD (AND HKG/MEL for Oz_mark). My seats, the ones I had carefully chosen 4 months earlier were ignored by CX in Mumbai and someone else was thrown into the A seat.
CX had ignored the request of a OWE for seating arrangements. Direct quote from the CX check in manager – “the Mumbai staff do this a lot, if they know the PAX they will just put them anywhere they want if the seat holder hasn’t checked in…”. I was astounded. The CX staff in BKK were useless as well – they ended separating my wife and I by 6 rows(!) on this flight – crack the ****s – yes I did. I went down every channel possible to get this rectified, but alas the best I got was “we will ask the PAX in your original seat to move back to your wife’s seat so she can move forward”.
For a full service airline – a disgrace. CX promised to come back with an explanation but never did.
Anyway, we went through to the CX lounge (near the QF F Lounge) and enjoyed premade sandwiches and machine coffee (not). There could have been dancing girls on poles in front of our table and my mood wouldn’t have improved with CX, so annoyed!
Eventually the lounge manager (about 30 minutes before boarding) came up to us with a new boarding pass – it seems the Mumbai PAX was OK with moving, good on him and we got to sit together. As it stands, Kim’s points still have not credited for this flight, mine did a few days after the flight.
The A330 got us to HKG with plenty of time to spare before our next flight, so we decided to do a lounge crawl of BKK starting with the Pier F lounge.
Hua Hin Sunrise
Monkey
Go away Monkey - you can't drive the car, you are too short!
Some boats
I think I've had it before (only diagnosed by me, so prob nothing that exotic or yucky in actuality), and it's truly unpleasant, especially without the special drug months later.
