Hello everybody and I hope you all had a great Christmas. You did? Wonderful, so did I because I spent my Christmas in Hua Hin, Thailand.
For as long as I can remember my wife and I have been promising ourselves a festive holiday in a hot and sunny destination. We have gazed longingly at internet pictures and winter sun brochures, but we have never felt confident enough to take the plunge, what with finances always seeming to be a problem and friends and family arranging Christmas festivities.
However, this year we decided that the time was right and after a huge amount of research we settled on Hua Hin as the perfect winter destination. It had everything we were looking for. The winters are warm but not ridiculously hot, the beaches are absolutely fantastic, there are enough activities to keep us occupied and the prices weren’t as scary as we were expecting. So we booked our tickets and excitedly waited for the special day to arrive.
When we arrived at our hotel we were overjoyed at the choice we had made. The beach was just in front of us and, as it was still early morning and the sun had only just risen, it was also completely deserted. So we rushed out to get some photographs to email to friends and family members back home. What is the point of an exotic Christmas holiday if you don’t take any opportunity to gloat?
After a quick nap to regain our strength from the long journey we went out to explore the surrounding area. Having never travelled to this part of the world before, the first thing we noticed was the amount of Tuk Tuk taxis buzzing through the streets. To begin with it was a little scary and we didn’t dare cross the road. But we soon realized that they might not stop, but they would at least try and avoid hitting you.
However, as we were still a little tired from our journey we decided to head back to Hua Hin Beach. It was a little bit busier now and many tourists and locals alike were enjoying the fine weather. We took a leisurely stroll along the water’s edge and before we knew it we had walked the whole 5km long beach. To our amazement we had arrived at the wonderful sight of a Buddhist temple that had been built into the cliff face. More photographs to send back home were taken and we rested for a while on the sand before starting our trek back to our hotel.
Well the days carried on perfectly and we had time to visit the statue of Luang Pu Thuat at Wat Huay Monkgol. This wonderful erection is housed in an area pretty much like a park and is the largest statue of Luang Phor Phuat in the country. I had a go at kite surfing at the beach, although compared to the huge amount of other surfers I looked an idiot as it seems that it isn’t as easy as they make it look.
There are so many things to enjoy in Hua Hin that we had a fortnight of sheer happiness and completely forgot about the bad weather and celebrations going on back home. In fact we enjoyed our time so much that we are already planning our next Christmas holiday abroad. However, this year we might try somewhere else.
