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| First stop: My Thai Teacher and I |
For several weeks now, my Thai teacher has
asked me “you go to Hua Hin for the long weekend? It’s free trip by the school.” And every day I would say no, I think I will
go somewhere with my friends. As great
as a free trip sounded I would not necessary be doing things of my choosing and
I would be with all the Thai teachers, I work with everyday. But as time passed on I kept realizing I had
no plans for the upcoming four day weekend.
It seemed like all the other foreign teachers had plans of their own and
I was on my own as far as traveling. So
I decided to go on the school trip to Hua Hin. Later on 3 other foreign
teachers decided to join me as their plans fell through. Two of them happen to be my roommates. And so it was decided we would take
everything with a grain of salt and have very low expectations for the outcome
of the trip. At the very least there
would be beach and good food.
So on Wednesday evening at 5:45pm
we walked back to the school (after a full day of teaching) with our luggage in
hand to get the bus that we are told leaves at 6:00pm. When we arrived we were informed the buses
had not arrived yet, which was expected.
So we just sit down and relax and wait for the buses.
A few days earlier we had a meeting
where all the teachers going on the trip picked a seat number out of a
hat. This is because they are all very
picky about where they want to sit on the bus.
So the seats had to be assigned.
The four of us farang's asked to not participate and to please put us
together on the bus, that we can sit anywhere.
Thankfully they were OK with this.
First a little about Hua Hin. It is a coastal city about 2 hours south of Bangkok. Thailand Royal family vacations here. It lies in the gulf of Thailand. The beach is five miles long and although it is not on of the famous foreign touristy beaches, its really nice and full of Thai's not foreigners. There is lots of shopping, seafood and clean beach.
Around 7:00pm the buses arrived. There
are probably about 60 teachers total going on this trip. And 15 of them are from Kindergarten so I
know them well.
For some reason we don’t leave the school until 8:45pm. I have no idea why, while we were sitting I
attempted in really bad Thai to ask why we were stopped and when we would be
moving but no one could understand me in English or Thai. So still to this day I have no idea why we
sat at school for 1 hour and 45 minutes.
The 4 farangs have been assigned the last seats in the back row of the
bus. We worked it out that Kira and I would
take the window seats on the way there and the others will get them on the way
back.
So
at 8:45 we are off onto the road headed to Hua Hin, we have been told it will
be about 10 hours. This is me assuming
we are headed to the hotel where we will first check in the morning. This is when I am first reminded about the
dangers of assuming things. Most of the
drive I drift in and out on sleep. The
seat is very uncomfortable and does not recline as much as the other
seats. The seats are also closest to the
speaker where a movie is playing and a light that does not turn off it shining
right in my face. I usually can sleep
anywhere, anytime; trains, planes, buses, cars included but I cannot sleep on
this bus, not even with a pillow. At
3:00am the bus stops for a bathroom break.
I have a bad crick in my neck and am quite cranky at my lack of
sleeping. I go to bus number 2 to see if
there are open spots, but its hard to
tell because some people are in the bathroom and others are sleeping. So I go ask one of the teachers if I can
switch buses because I cannot sleep.
She quickly agrees so I get my things and tell Kira (who agrees the
seats are very uncomfortable). We both
switch to better seats on the other bus.
In doing this we unknowingly wake up one teacher who is comfortably
laying in 2 seats to give up one of the seats and another teacher moves spots
to give us her seat. I do feel bad but
since I had not gotten much sleep I was just really grateful and I drifted to
sleep until about 7am.
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| Typical breakfast: fried dough rolls |
At 7am we arrived
at a small motel on the water. We have
rented rooms for just 1 hour to be able to shower and change our clothes. We squeezed 5 people into each room, where 5
packs of soap, shampoo and towels were laid out for us. We quickly showered changed and afterwards
had breakfast. Thai soup with shrimp and
squid along with fried dough. It was
very good especially the fried dough!
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| A Temple |
A few hours later
we stopped by a temple to take some pictures.
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| That is Myanmar or previously Burma |
A few hours later we arrived at the Burma border and did a little shopping
at the large market there. Many of the
stalls were closed for an unknown reason unfortunately.
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| On the boat |
Then the Karaoke started on the bus,
obnoxiously loud but of course I joined in, the teachers just love it when I
participate. Around noon we arrive at a
beach. Unfortunately I do not know the
name of the beach but it was a beautiful beach.
We had a large seafood lunch of crabs, squid, octopus, and mussels. My favorite was a dish called kao pad
pungeree which is a shrimp yellow curry dish.
After lunch we were asked if we wanted to go on a boat ride. Kira and I decided to do it. We drove around to a bunch of rocks sticking
up over the water and explored cliffs and caves and looked at coral. The water was a little murky that day so the
coral sightings were not that great. But
the boat ride was a lot of fun. When
back on shore we went for a quick swim and then walked around and got some ice
cream. We are to be back at the bus by
3:00pm which is still 30 minutes away at this point. We think we’ll walk further and explore the
shops but we get a phone call saying the bus is leaving now. Apparently all the teachers decided to change
the time without telling us so we run back to the bus and are off.
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| Jumping on the beach |
The next stop is
dinner.
As we all enter the restaurant
we are greeted by hula dancers and some other sort of dancers with green
costumes on.
We are feed my favorite
shrimp curry along with a cashew chicken dish, fried calamari, papaya salad and
a few other dishes that I can’t remember right now.
It was an amazing dinner.
We take some photos of the sunset on the
beach and head off to the hotel.
The bus
is starting to step up the karaoke and adds flashing red and green disco lights
for the rest of the drive.
It got crazy
with the Thai teachers!
We finally arrive
at our hotel around 8pm. There is a
large night market happening in what seems like the parking lot of the
hotel. This makes me extremely
happy. I rush inside to get my key, take
my bags up to the 12th floor and run straight back down, rushing the
others to hurry up and come to. We shop
from a little after 8pm until 11pm. It
was great. I got 2 shirts and a pair of
black jeans along with a ton of really cheap earrings! The next morning breakfast was a 7:30am and we
were leaving the hotel at 8am.
The four of us thought we were still staying
the night here and therefore did pack up are things. We just came downstairs for breakfast and the
teachers looked at us very worried and said where are your things. So back upstairs- 9 flights- to pack everything
up before we could eat our glorious breakfast.
The hotel had western food for breakfast meaning cereal, eggs and wheat
bread. Usually in Thailand you only get Thai food for breakfast which sounds great but that means spicy fish, shrimp,
with noodles or rice. It’s just not
ideal for a breakfast. It was great
having a western breakfast. We then all
packed into the buses around 8am.
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| Group farang shot at the railway station |
We first stopped at the royal railway station. This is what the Royal family used to go from Bangkok to Hua Hin. It claims to be "Thailand's most beautiful train station". The main staion is made of wooden building
used to be a royal pavilion in Sanamchan Palace, Nakhon Pathom province.
It was rebuilt at Hua Hin in 1968.
After the railway we drove to a beach in Petchaburi. It's about 50 miles from Hua Hin. Along the journey we stopped at a lot of places
mostly markets and specialty food stores. We were told we were going to a "floating market" but it was just a really nice set of shops around a man-made lake. The Hua Hin floating market in Prachuap Khiri Khan. It was like an outdoor mall or something. It was really nice with lots of great non-touristy things to buy. I got 2 pair of sandals and a cool city scene necklace there. We arrived early at our hotel in Petchaburi. We are excited because its beach front! It's not as nice as the other hotel but we arrived early enough to spend the rest of the day swimming. At 7:00pm we are expected to be ready for a retirement party. This retirement party was a typical thai party. There was Karaoke set up and people already singing as we walked in 10 minutes late. Dinner was set up on each table ready to eat. After dinner there were performances from many of the teachers. They were so ridiculous and funny we decided to do our own. I made up a wuick dance routine for the 4 of us to the song "The Show" by Lenka, a favorite in Thailand, and we went up onstage and performed. It was great and the teachers were so excited.
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| Our synchronized dance! |
The next and last day we
were off to what we thought was some temples and a visit to another
school. In reality we found out the things
scheduled on our itinerary had been cancelled and we went shopping in lots of
markets and high class food stores.
(Thai people seem to love these over priced specialty foods.)
We arrived home in Surin around 8:00pm on
Saturday night.
I would definitely go on
another trip with these teachers!
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| Its a BEACH!! |
Our boat trip to Railay Beach was
slightly delayed. We thought it would be
easy to get a boat but because it is low season there are few people leaving
from this particular dock. We needed at
least 6 people to get a reasonable price so we had to wait until about 1 o’clock
before 2 more people showed up and the boat staff decided to take us with just
4. 
