Heather's Thairy

Heather's journey to Bangkok, Thailand: a year of adventure!

Friday, September 08, 2006

Hua Hin: Take Three

We went to Hua Hin again, marking the third trip to Hua Hin thus far for me. This time we did a few different things than the previous two outings, which concentrated mostly on sitting on the beach. The weather wasn’t fabulous- it was cloudy and drizzled a lot of the time- so we checked out a few of the local attractions.


On Saturday we DID spend most of our time on the beach, which was nice even though it wasn’t bright out. It was still very warm and truly, it was almost perfect, had we not been interested in getting a tan.

It was Darcy’s first time to Hua Hin, and I think he enjoyed it, despite the weather.
He certainly seemed to enjoy lounging on the beach, enjoying a coconut drink…



Wait…that’s just a beer stuck in a coconut!!! Fraud!

On Sunday, it was still sort of cloudy out so we hired a driver to take us to the giant standing Buddha and the Monkey Temple.

The Monkey Temple is different than I expected- I thought that it would be something like the Tiger Temple, with admission gates and handlers and a sort of commercial feel. It’s really a large, impressive temple at the top of a small mountain where monkeys happen to live. You can buy food to feed to the monkeys but the monkeys are “wild”- they are not kept or trained or anything like that. You are pretty much on your own with these monkeys…and there are hundreds of them.



I’m not really sure what kind of monkeys they are- I dropped that terrible primate anthropology course, guess that horrible prof had the last laugh- but they range in size from about eight inches tall to almost two feet tall when sitting. Some are really large when stretched out. They are a bit intimidating because they are very greedy, but they really only fought with each other.


Darcy bought a mixed basket of food for the monkeys which included corn, bananas and peanuts. It was funny because Darcy is so nice he would let the monkeys rifle through the basket and choose what they wanted- they would chuck all the fruit and vegetables on the ground and go for the peanuts. One really large male monkey stuffed about eight peanuts into his mouth without chewing and swallowed them all before finally letting go of the basket.















I was watching Darcy feed one of the monkeys, and apparently I was taking up the best feeding spot, because before I knew it…







Ha ha ha, we (that is, everyone WITHOUT a wild animal crawling all over them) sure made a lot of jokes about the monkey on my back. He was kind of hard to get rid of, although he wasn’t hurting me or anything. I was just surprised. He hardly weighed anything and his hands and feet were remarkably soft. I was mostly afraid he would pull my hair or poop on me. Luckily I escaped poop and bald-spot free.



The actual temple is at the top of a daunting staircase. Going up was quite the task, but the view was definitely worth it…







After a slow decent (I always get vertigo or something when going down stairs- I get all disoriented and am convinced I am going to fall to my death) we got back in our car and drove to the standing Buddha.


The Hua Hin standing Buddha is enormous and quite impressive. He is in a serene location, looking out over the beach and the town.





















The view from the cliffs where the Buddha stands is also very beautiful. Hua Hin has some very nice looking hotels and resorts along the beachfront, and the beach itself is long and clean-looking.





In the menu we were given when we were on the beach, there were advertisements for property in Hua Hin. I was amazed at how inexpensive it is to buy a house- complete with furnishings, landscaping and a huge chunk of land- in Hua Hin. Apparently there is a resident-only stipulation on purchasing property in Thailand, but there is a fee of some kind that you can pay if you do not have resident status. I think it would be worth it- a beautiful, beach-front mansion in Hua Hin costs less than my parents’ house in Calgary. Not to say that our house isn’t great- but how far away is the nearest beach?!?

It was another nice weekend in Hua Hin. It’s so convenient and relaxing- I’m sure I’ll be back soon.

Until next time,
Heather

1 Comments:

  • At 12:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Hi Heather,
    Well, nothing like getting up close with nature! Lucky the little guy(girl?) didn't bite. The baby monkey is so cute! Looks like the beaches there are not invaded by fast talking real estate people yet. (unlike here). What a relief! Love, Auntie Bonnie
    p.s. Your burger looks super yummy!

     

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