Finally at the beach

We’re in a small beach town called Prachuap, it’s on the Gulf of Siam, 4 hours south of Bangkok (289 km), staying at the Hadthong Hotel, 850 (20 bucks) baht per night, swimming pool and one of the best ocean views money can buy. This is the hidden treasure of Thailand, unlike the Tourist cities and islands of the south, it’s peaceful and quiet. Beaches are clean and the people friendly and better English speakers then you’ll find in the north. You can rent a fishing boat for the day for a thousand baht and explore the islands that dot the coast line, these islands are mean cliffs that rise out of the water hundreds of feet and covered with jungle on the top. Being hard to reach places of course those crazy Buddhist monks usually have some sort of shrine at the highest, hardest to reach point. How in the heck do they get those Buddha’s up there? Specially wearing those robes? It’s a mystery that they won’t fess up to.

There’s caves, diving, water skiing, jet skiing, museums and aquariums. Seafood is cheap and as soon as our masseuse gets up to our room, my wife and I are getting the works for 400 baht (both of us for ten bucks!)

I woke with the sunrise to take some pictures and enjoy the view. We went out to the beach at the local army base, very clean! Just watch out for the jelly fish, their sting feels like the worlds biggest mosquito bite (I found out the last time I was here 20 years ago).

Heather’s first time snorkeling, she did pretty good considering she was a non swimmer up till last week. She’s asking for pools in all of the hotels we’re staying at. I’ve unleashed a beast. To think she’s been having post traumatic stress about water for most of her life.

Many changes in twenty years, the area is a lot cleaner, almost everyone speaks some English and obviously there’s an internet caf? in the hotel. Twenty years ago, I was 13 and there was no American food to be found in the country, we got to Bangkok and the first thing I ordered was a hamburger, it looked like a crystal burger patty on a full sized bun, didn’t even taste like beef. Now there’s a McDonalds, Swenson’s and KFC in every town. Our hotel has a western menu, my wife says they make a killer ham and cheese. Me, as long as it tastes good and runs slower then me, I’ll eat it.

Ahh, we just finished our massages, I think we need to adopt one of these girls and let her live in our spare bedroom, they were certified massage therapists, 372 hours of traditional massage therapy school, maybe I need to sent my cousin Thom to the school then sponsor her to come to the US. If you come to Thailand don’t miss out on the massages.