Hua Hin, Thailand Mini Trip Report
I found the information in the book, Mandarin Optional very useful while in Bangkok, so much so, that I even did a crib-sheet for the tracker where I downloaded it. Following the author's advice, we headed down to the beach. There was very little info online about PU in Huan Hin, so I decided to compile a little information myself. I also felt inspired by the book's writing style, and wanted to have a go myself. Some of the original book is now a little out of date, but generally speaking most of the advice was still solid, and we used it to devastating effect.
A little background first. Hua Hin is most famous for being home to the Royal Family's beachfront Summer Palace, known as Klai Klang Wan (Free from Worries) where the late King would go to escape the blistering Bangkok heat.
What used to be a sleepy fishing village has now become one of the most expensive resort towns in all of Thailand, coming in a close second to the ridiculous prices down on Phuket. Hordes of snowbird Scandis have driven prices up through the roof in the last ten years, and now Hisos from Bangkok, looking for a weekend retreat, are driving prices up even further. That being said, there are still plenty of budget opportunities for savvy global nomads like us.
Hua Hin (pronounced Hua Xing in Mandarin) has always had a very active Chinese diaspora. Anybody familiar with the history of Thailand will know that the Monarchy has long relied on the support of the Chinese merchant class, and what was true for Bangkok was equally true for Hua Hin. Many of the Chinese elite established summer homes, in what has now become the biggest city in the province of Prachuap Khirikhan. Because of this, it now attracts large numbers of Mainland tourists, still well behind Chiang Mai, but quickly catching up with Pattaya.
Because it is slightly off the beaten track, the Chinese that come here are much more your independent traveller, rather than the locust-like tourist groups that plague other destinations. Girls far outnumber guys, as usual, and just about everything written in Mandarin Optional also applies down here. We even met a couple of cute Chengdu girls on the mini bus down from Mo Chit.
As for your fellow farang is concerned (as Gweillos and Lao Wai are referred to in the Land of Smiles), Hua Hin's reputation keeps away most of the cheap charlies that are so prevalent in Pattaya and Kom Pong Som. The vast majority of westerners here are in the over fifty group (with many looking more like over ninety), all here on retirement visas. There are some couples, but most are single guys here for the night life and liberal attitudes. Most are well to do, often divorced and living what they consider to be the red pill lifestyle. Even so, they have zero game and are here exclusively for the hookers, so if you are targeting Chinese girls you will have next-to-no competition. There are no Arabs or pestering Igbo Nigerians like there are up in filthy Nana. In fact, the nightlife in Hua Hin is far lower profile that anyway else in Thailand. Gogo bars were forbidden, as a sign of respect for the late King, There is a small and seedy selection of beer bars filled with mongers, (mostly chasing Nakhon mingers) but we will come back to that later.
Let's start at the beginning. Most of the Chinese gals arrive on the minibus, which drops them off next to the clock tower, outside Wat Hua Hin, the city's main temple. This is a good spot to hang out with a coffee in the morning, and check out the latest arrivals. You can either choose to sit outside the Starbucks, with all the obese coffin dodgers who are too afraid to interact with the locals, or get a really good quality iced coffee, at about a tenth of the price from the sidecar vendor, right outside the temple gate. This is a hugely popular local choice and is a great place to shoot the breeze and practice your Thai. From here, I like to sit in the shade under the new King's portrait and joke with the moto's. Commenting on the fresh talent arriving needs very little shared language and is always good for a laugh. The big airport bus, also has a shuttle bus that drops Chinese girls here.
Chinese girls tend to head back along Naebkehardt Road, where there is plenty of familiar Chinese food on display. As I said earlier, there has always been a large Chinese population here, so a fair few of the guest house owners speak at least one dialect of Mandarin.
For daygamers, take the same route back along Naebkehardt Road to the junction of Night Market street. On the SE corner, you will not be able to miss a Thai restaurant that will be jammed packed at almost every hour of the day. Usually you will be the only westerner in there, so dress smart, put on your best smile and bow a lot. This is one of the oldest establishments in town, and is incredibly popular with Bangkok Thais, as well as locals. If you have read any of the Mandarin series, that you should be able to spot Chinese girls at 200 yards by now. Have lunch here by yourself a couple of times to get to know the menu, and then use the place as an insta-date for Mainland girls that you meet nearby. White guys with Chinese girls are treated with a level of respect that mongers with Thai hookers will never ever experience. Master a few useful phrases in advance and by the second or third time, you will be treated like a visiting VIP. We have even had them kick out other tourists to make sure that we could sit down at a table. When you see how busy this place can be, you will understand how valuable this kind of treatment really is.
Once lunch is over, it is really too hot to do much more that go and have a nap. By five o'clock, the heat will have cooled off considerably, so it is a good time to go out and continue building sino-western international relations.
We trolled up and down the Night Market street, looking for fisherman's pants and floppy hats, and were never off target. These two items of clothing alone were an instant give away. My wing man did not speak a word of Chinese, but we opened with a confident Ni Hao, and never had any problems continuing in English. From here, we avoided all the tourist tack and took girls up to the beautiful railway station, so that they could take their pictures on the Kalamazoo and outside the King's waiting room.
Sometimes we would head to the local night markets on the outskirts of town. Cicada and Tamarind are strictly for tourists and well worth avoiding, but Pi Mai, Dinosaur and even Cha-Am are all great fun. These are the kinds of places where you can find pumpkin in syrup and deep fried tarantulas, two of my new favourites. Chinese girls are not squeamish when it comes to local delicacies like western girls are, so we had some great times trying out new and exotic snacks.
For example, we took Molly and Sophia, two recent biology grads from Huagong up to the Wednesday evening Cha Am night market, and they loved every minute of it. There were other tourists there, but they mainly German snowbirds all concentrated in one spot, the Number 9 Restaurant. The girls could not believe their eyes, and never have I seen such a mass of burnt-out old relics in one place either. It seemed that they were all there for the knockwurst hot dogs and frikadellen burgers. No matter that they were three times the price of the local Thai fare. Most German pensions are more that the rest of us make in a month. These are the kind of people that rant about Europe being full of Muslim immigrants who make no attempt to integrate themselves in German culture. This was while they sat in shade, drinking Heineken and chomping on Bratwurst.
Away from little Berlin, the two girls did what Chinese girls do best – shop. Apart from wanting to sample every exotic new fruit that they spotted, they were also on the hunt for interesting souvenirs. In between munching sapadillos, snake fruit and green tamarinds, we took them to a stall that sold local football kits. Molly got a navy blue Buriram jersey, emblazoned with a pair of Chang Elephants and Sophia took home a white Ratchaburi Dragons top with a bright red Chinese-style fire-breather emblazoned across the front. This was another trick that we had picked up from Messrs Jones and Taulkinghorn, and the girls were amazed with the impact they made. Suddenly they had gone from being Chinese tourists to be fleeced at every opportunity, to the most popular girls in town. Tuk Tuks would cheer as the girls walked by, and strangers would stop and shake their hands giving them double thumbs up, simply because they were wearing Thai football team colours.
Back down on Naebkahardt Road, which runs parallel to the beach, there are lots of places catering to Chinese tourists. It is very different from the area around the Sofitel which is more like a visit to sea world, with all the obese German walruses and Brits that look like morbid manatees, spilling out of their tatty wifebeaters.
Up at the next junction past Jek Bier (Zheng Sheng in Chinese), the first restaurant I mentioned, there is an open air food court with prices that are very reasonable for the downtown area.
Sometimes we would even walk up the beach as far as Chutima Bakery, which does really tasty dumplings and Chinese buns. We would park ourselves on the veranda with a ten baht cup of coffee and play spot the Mainlander. It was pretty easy because all the locals have cars or motorbikes. Tourists are the only one out walking, and so they stand out a mile. Braelyn and Jade, two office girls from Shenzhen were coming from the Beach Guest House heading down town, when my wing went over and accosted them with a customary Ni hao. Braelyn was wearing bright red baggy pants that we could have seen coming a mile away. Jade had a hippy chick kaftan, and bright red babouche slippers with gold embroidered sunbursts. She was clutching a sheaf of A4 printouts, that clearly served as their guidebook, although her sunglasses were so huge and so dark that I was surprised that she could see hand in front of her face. Fred (my wing) said that we were having baozi for breakfast and would they care to join us. We apologized that there was no soy milk and dough sticks, but they graciously accepted our offer and sat down anyway. They were planning to take a trip down to see the seven giant statues down a Rajabhakti Park, but we gently talked them out of this idea. These girls are exposed to enough brainwashing at home without being subjected blatant Royalist propaganda down here too. That great concrete expanse overlooked by the forty foot Ramas gets hotter that Tiananmen in July, and I wanted something a bit more interesting than a completely bised history lesson. I heard that it was good when they first opened a couple of years ago, and that they had full battle re-enctments with squads of armoured elephants, but these days it is just a big car park with a monolithic statues. I would have gone down to Sai Noi beach, which is also next to the Army Camp, but you know what Chinese girls and beaches are like. They would rather die the death of a thousand cuts than expose their bare flesh to the sun's rays. They also wanted to see the pachyderms at Hutsadin Elephant Foundation, but that place is a rip off and the poor beasts are kept in right sorry conditions.
A little light quizzing revealed that they had not even seen the local wet market, so rather than drag ourselves all the way out of town we finished our coffees and took a slow stroll down to Chat Chai market. Their eyes about popped out on stalks when they saw the enormous tiger prawns, and the prehistoric looking horsehoe crabs. I selected a pair of juicy looking specimens that were laden down with golden roe (so much for protecting the environment...), and we took them up to a nearby food stall who served them up for us with a big platter of fragrant fried rice. The market is great fun once a few of the vendors start to recognise you. We helped the girls choose some pumpkin stuffed with coconut, and a box of coconut squares, both of which went down a treat. Finally we went up to a vegetable stall where the owner has a pet gibbon, on the way to get some doughnuts from the best little bakery in town. Deliciously doughy, home made jam and dipped in icing sugar. Most dougnuts are all crunchy from being fried too long and then dropped in granulated sugar, but these are thick and stodgey, but smooth as silk.
While it is true we were not being extravagant, the girls very graciously paid for everything. As a special treat, we took them up to Big C to get some take out for later. Not only is it the cheapest supermarket in town, but they also have the best prepared food counter. Whole roast chickens, grilled mackerel and the tastiest steamed egg surprise this side of Fukuoka. Fresh fruit prices are inexplicably exorbitant, but the deli has all kinds of pre-cooked dishes that taste amazing. The basket soon filled up with dumplings, french fries and styrofoam boxes full of noodles. It was like they were stocking up for winter. Like most Chinese tourists they were enthusiastic about trying things, but were afraid of losing face by not being able to speak Thai. They were almost giddy that we had taken them to a place where they could buy as much as they like without risking any embarrassment in the process.
One morning we persuaded two girls from Changchun to hire a songtaew to take us all up to the animal sanctuary which was a massive hit. We stopped off on the way and bought two huge bunches of bananas. We then spent a couple of wonderful hours first feeding the deer, and then all of the baboons. This little known animal park lies around 10km north of Hua Hin. It is setup as a government funded "deer research center." Take Soi Huay Sai about a kilometer after Palm Hills on the left heading north and then it's on the right around 4km down this soi. Entrance is free.
Some of the girls wanted to treat us to dinner and so we introduced them to You Yen and the Navy Club just up the road. The landscaped gardens of You Yen present a glimpse into the Hua Hin of yesteryear. The restaurant is set in an elegant, restored wooden Thai house, built in 1920s, with a sweeping beachfront that doubles as an al fresco dining area. The Navy Phirom has recently been renovated and is almost unknown to most tourists. These two places never fail to impress, much more so that overpriced nouveau resorts like Putahracsa. They also fit in nicely with our secret agenda. The fact was that cute Chinese tourists were simply our bait for much bigger fish. Young girls are fun, but not really worth a long term investment, and here in Hua Hin there is much bigger game on offer, if you move in the right circles. For me, the real prizes were older Hisos and Japanese golf girls. Hua Hin has both of these in abundance, but you really need to know where to look. Chinese girls were really just the first step in our social game. Most westerners immediately hook up with a Thai girl, usually some recently arrived Isaan peasant girl with chicken shit in her toes and skin as dark as buffalo hide. These can be spotted a mile off by old Asia hands, and while they might indeed bang like a barn door, having one in tow immediately slams shut all the other more upmarket entrances. Chinese girls are blanched white and much less incriminating. As such, they make ideal pivots. At You Yen for example, we invited ourselves over to a table of super elegant thirty-something locals, that would have made Croesus look like a penniless mendicant. We brazenly introduced ourselves and our two Chinese friends, and when asked if the Mainlanders were our girlfriends, we simply explained that we had only just met and were showing them a few of Hua Hin's highlights. The Thai girls eyes lit up. We would not even have been given the time of day if we had turned up with a couple of bar girls. Plus, there was the added advantage that bar girls are always looking for a free feed. Chinese girls on the other hand never let us pay, even in the most expensive places, which are still cheap by Shanghai standards.
We oh-so-chivalrously let our Mainlanders take us for a round of cocktails and then met up later with Jiriporn and her two millionairess girlfriends later. Together we got the VIP treatment at the Brewery in the Hilton, which was a great place to party. Some guys might turn their noses up at girls in their thirties, forties and fifties, but as far as I am concerned, the older the violin, the sweeter the music. And these girls turned out to virtuoso concert soloists, as opposed to the two poor Chinese girls that would barely know one end of a cock from the other. Nor did they come with top of the range Mercs to ferry us around from one venue to another. In Mandarin Optional, Darby talked about hanging out with the local army bigwigs, and while we did not meet any of those, we did make friends with officials from the local Thesabaan, as well as some more murky looking mafia types. It sure beat the shit out of playing Connect Four with illiterate bargirls, who could only speak about three words of English.
Having a selection of smart looking Chinese girls in tow meant that everybody around us saw us as social and non-threatening. Two single guys can look dangerously predatory, so we always kept a few girls on hand, to give us that confident playboy vibe. Over the first few days, this technique gave us countless ins with rich locals. We had only planned to hang around for a few nights, but ended up getting apartments just out of town and staying nearly the full month. One of the girls we met had her own beachside hotel complete with tailors, salon and restaurant. Another had a big Condo up on Sukhumvit, but spent most of her time down by the beach, living the high life. We had seen hisos in places like RCA in Bangkok but they were snotty, self absorbed rich kids, interested in nothing but themselves. What was worse, there were guys falling over themselves to fawn on them, while down in Hua Hin we seemed to be just about the only gamers in town. It might just have been me, but all the other westerners looked like they were trying to do impressions of Vin Diesel. Most looked more like overly-muscled pub landlords. Half the time you could practically smell the imminent 'roid rage. The atmosphere down in the beach resort was altogether calmer and more civilised.
We found some apartments on the internet that proved to be great. Tawsang Loft was a brand new five story condo about fifteen minutes north of the town in one of the surrounding villages. A Chinese Thai couple had just sold their condo in Bangkok and built this one here. It was not on the beach, but we still had great ocean views one way, and then out across the Acacia treetops of the wat next door on the other. There were a couple of other residents, an Aussie couple who did little but sit around drinking beer all day, and a rich Thai guy with a monster Ducati. The neighbours were a mix of Thais and retired Euros. Most seemed nice, but apart from the English lady next day who spoke fluent Thai, the nationalities did not seem to mix very much. It was supposed to be eight thousand a month, but we managed to settle on two thousand a week for three weeks. Not bad for a place that had its own lift. Downtown prices were more like a thousand a night. Places like Putracsa were taking the piss at 6k a night. Our place did not have a pool, but we would usually go and hang out with tourist girls in the day time, and they invariably had massive Olympic size facilities in their hotels. There was so much choice that we soon started selecting girls by the hotels they were staying at. Lots seemed to go for places that had Chinese Thai owners. Those girls got extremely short shrift. Anantara was popular for this reason, but the place was a dump, badly in need of renovation. A more up to date choice was Rest Detail, but the owner was a really racist asshole. I would not have spit down his throat if his head was on fire, let alone stayed at his hotel.
Most Chinese seem to have pretty much the same schedule. They all know about rip off places like Venezia and Santorini, but were pretty much clueless about anything else. This meant that it was dead easy to impress the socks of them with a few well chosen spots that we had discovered ourselves. Other items of underwear followed very easily after that.
We met some interesting expats as well as some really lacklustre losers. Perhaps the most fascinating was an Aussie at the Navy Club who had invested a couple of hundred thousand in a run down resort on the Barrier Reef back in the nineties. He tarted it up a bit and sold it to a Chinese investor for a cool ten mill. Then he started telling us stories about his life in Papua New Guinea back in the seventies. He was pals with the President and the Archbishop, and was even a Papuan citizen for a while before going back to being an Aussie again. Now he has a big beachfront condo near Hua Hin, and it was him who introduced us to our Chinese Thai landlords. Guys like that are really good value, both in terms of connections and conversation.
Down on Soi Bonkabint, the pickings were scarce and the customers worn out sacks of lard. I distinctly remember one guy sporting Bandido colours, explaining to us that having a Thai wife was a tremendous asset. He continued that she always made sure he never paid Farang prices for food, because she had the balls to stand up to dual pricing street vendors. This is definitely the only time that you want to have a Thai wife with balls! My French wingman suggested that it might have been easier to try learning the language rather than marrying a full-time translator. That did not go down well at all.
We later met his other half, who turned out to be more like his other ten percent. Not only was she half his age, but she was half his size. No wonder everybody back in the UK thinks that we are all pedos over here. She sure knew about balls, especially when it came to breaking his, which she did almost incessantly. I thought that biker molls were treated like property, practically chattels. And here was this pint-sized passport-hunter almost lording it over a big burly biker.
We did meet one Brit bar owner who told us a very touching story about how he got started in Hua Hin. Just over a decade ago, he invested his life savings to open a diving school down in Sulu. About a month after he opened, local Abu Sayef militants kidnapped and beheaded a couple of Americans, dumping their decapitated heads at a public market in Jolo. The Brit's scuba shop immediately died the same death, and he lost everything. About a week earlier, he had taken another Hua Hin bar owner who was on holiday in the PI out to explore the reefs. This was a novice diver, and he suffered a major panic attack when he spotted a conger stick it's gnarly head out of the coral. The Brit instructor managed to calm him down and get him back up to the surface without any real difficulty, but the shaken tourist truly believed that the guy had saved his life. When news of the beheadings hit the press, he was straight on the phone to make sure that his holiday saviour and new best friend was safe and sound. By that time the Brit was almost penniless and he used his last bit of cash to get a flight over to LOS. For next six months, the bar owner he had rescued let him work for food and board, sweeping up and serving drinks. After a while he was able to get back on his feet (mostly selling Thai Stick to tourists!) and eventually managed to open his own bar. That was a story that completely renewed our faith in human nature.
Apart from Hiso beauties, I was also hoping to track down an even rarer and more exotic prey. Hua Hin is a magnet for Japanese golf junkies but they are difficult to spot away from the tees, and my swing is about as lousy as my Swahili. Plus there is the fact that I would die of boredom if I had to play nine holes, let alone eighteen. I am one of those philistines who would describe the game of golf as a good walk spoiled. Even so, I have heard a rumour that there was this secret community of Tokyo bombshells, all with glorious caramel skintones from spending all day out of the links. I like rich sun tans just as much as the next guy, just not when they adorn LBFMs that have been burned black in the paddy fields. I had a massive crush on a bleached Kogaru back in the nineties and the fascination with bronzed Japanese beauties has simply never worn off.
Eventually, we managed to find a pair of older Osaka girls who were window shopping at Blueport. Their classic Burberry elegance immediately gave them away, and I knew that I was going have to give it my A game to have any impact at all. As usual, we had a couple of Shantou sweethearts in tow, so we ever so politely ditched them at the main entrance. Chinese do not mix well with their Nipponese cousins, especially when these girls were barely into their twenties, and the J girls were probably retirees. There is an entire world of difference between Tesco chardonnay and a vintage Dom Perignon, and these two girls were a vintage that was guaranteed to impress. It never fails to amaze me how the Japanese age so well. Han girls have a tendency to shrivel up once they hit forty, but these girls had skin that was as smooth as silk, and not a single sign of tell-tale surgery.
We immediately bounced Aiko and Kaoru up to a deserted cafe up on the second floor, behind the waterfall, nicely tucked awy from prying eyes. It was a small place with a special offer of croissants and coffee for 150 baht, extortionate for Thailand but cheap as chips for Blueport Shopping Mall. The centre itself is not my kind of place at all. Directly across from the Intercontinental, it sells itself on all this resort lifestyle shopping bullshit. There again, I do not much like tropical jungle either but you can't stay on the beach if you want to bag a tiger. The upshot was that they blew us out. They were very polite about it but we still crashed and burned. Fortunately, the very next morning I met another member of the tribe in the copy shop. Still, this a trip report not a sleazy lay report.
Overall, we really enjoyed everything that Hua Hin had to offer and would definitely go again. Try some the places that I have mentioned above, and I am sure that you will have a great time too.
I found the information in the book, Mandarin Optional very useful while in Bangkok, so much so, that I even did a crib-sheet for the tracker where I downloaded it. Following the author's advice, we headed down to the beach. There was very little info online about PU in Huan Hin, so I decided to compile a little information myself. I also felt inspired by the book's writing style, and wanted to have a go myself. Some of the original book is now a little out of date, but generally speaking most of the advice was still solid, and we used it to devastating effect.
A little background first. Hua Hin is most famous for being home to the Royal Family's beachfront Summer Palace, known as Klai Klang Wan (Free from Worries) where the late King would go to escape the blistering Bangkok heat.
What used to be a sleepy fishing village has now become one of the most expensive resort towns in all of Thailand, coming in a close second to the ridiculous prices down on Phuket. Hordes of snowbird Scandis have driven prices up through the roof in the last ten years, and now Hisos from Bangkok, looking for a weekend retreat, are driving prices up even further. That being said, there are still plenty of budget opportunities for savvy global nomads like us.
Hua Hin (pronounced Hua Xing in Mandarin) has always had a very active Chinese diaspora. Anybody familiar with the history of Thailand will know that the Monarchy has long relied on the support of the Chinese merchant class, and what was true for Bangkok was equally true for Hua Hin. Many of the Chinese elite established summer homes, in what has now become the biggest city in the province of Prachuap Khirikhan. Because of this, it now attracts large numbers of Mainland tourists, still well behind Chiang Mai, but quickly catching up with Pattaya.
Because it is slightly off the beaten track, the Chinese that come here are much more your independent traveller, rather than the locust-like tourist groups that plague other destinations. Girls far outnumber guys, as usual, and just about everything written in Mandarin Optional also applies down here. We even met a couple of cute Chengdu girls on the mini bus down from Mo Chit.
As for your fellow farang is concerned (as Gweillos and Lao Wai are referred to in the Land of Smiles), Hua Hin's reputation keeps away most of the cheap charlies that are so prevalent in Pattaya and Kom Pong Som. The vast majority of westerners here are in the over fifty group (with many looking more like over ninety), all here on retirement visas. There are some couples, but most are single guys here for the night life and liberal attitudes. Most are well to do, often divorced and living what they consider to be the red pill lifestyle. Even so, they have zero game and are here exclusively for the hookers, so if you are targeting Chinese girls you will have next-to-no competition. There are no Arabs or pestering Igbo Nigerians like there are up in filthy Nana. In fact, the nightlife in Hua Hin is far lower profile that anyway else in Thailand. Gogo bars were forbidden, as a sign of respect for the late King, There is a small and seedy selection of beer bars filled with mongers, (mostly chasing Nakhon mingers) but we will come back to that later.
Let's start at the beginning. Most of the Chinese gals arrive on the minibus, which drops them off next to the clock tower, outside Wat Hua Hin, the city's main temple. This is a good spot to hang out with a coffee in the morning, and check out the latest arrivals. You can either choose to sit outside the Starbucks, with all the obese coffin dodgers who are too afraid to interact with the locals, or get a really good quality iced coffee, at about a tenth of the price from the sidecar vendor, right outside the temple gate. This is a hugely popular local choice and is a great place to shoot the breeze and practice your Thai. From here, I like to sit in the shade under the new King's portrait and joke with the moto's. Commenting on the fresh talent arriving needs very little shared language and is always good for a laugh. The big airport bus, also has a shuttle bus that drops Chinese girls here.
Chinese girls tend to head back along Naebkehardt Road, where there is plenty of familiar Chinese food on display. As I said earlier, there has always been a large Chinese population here, so a fair few of the guest house owners speak at least one dialect of Mandarin.
For daygamers, take the same route back along Naebkehardt Road to the junction of Night Market street. On the SE corner, you will not be able to miss a Thai restaurant that will be jammed packed at almost every hour of the day. Usually you will be the only westerner in there, so dress smart, put on your best smile and bow a lot. This is one of the oldest establishments in town, and is incredibly popular with Bangkok Thais, as well as locals. If you have read any of the Mandarin series, that you should be able to spot Chinese girls at 200 yards by now. Have lunch here by yourself a couple of times to get to know the menu, and then use the place as an insta-date for Mainland girls that you meet nearby. White guys with Chinese girls are treated with a level of respect that mongers with Thai hookers will never ever experience. Master a few useful phrases in advance and by the second or third time, you will be treated like a visiting VIP. We have even had them kick out other tourists to make sure that we could sit down at a table. When you see how busy this place can be, you will understand how valuable this kind of treatment really is.
Once lunch is over, it is really too hot to do much more that go and have a nap. By five o'clock, the heat will have cooled off considerably, so it is a good time to go out and continue building sino-western international relations.
We trolled up and down the Night Market street, looking for fisherman's pants and floppy hats, and were never off target. These two items of clothing alone were an instant give away. My wing man did not speak a word of Chinese, but we opened with a confident Ni Hao, and never had any problems continuing in English. From here, we avoided all the tourist tack and took girls up to the beautiful railway station, so that they could take their pictures on the Kalamazoo and outside the King's waiting room.
Sometimes we would head to the local night markets on the outskirts of town. Cicada and Tamarind are strictly for tourists and well worth avoiding, but Pi Mai, Dinosaur and even Cha-Am are all great fun. These are the kinds of places where you can find pumpkin in syrup and deep fried tarantulas, two of my new favourites. Chinese girls are not squeamish when it comes to local delicacies like western girls are, so we had some great times trying out new and exotic snacks.
For example, we took Molly and Sophia, two recent biology grads from Huagong up to the Wednesday evening Cha Am night market, and they loved every minute of it. There were other tourists there, but they mainly German snowbirds all concentrated in one spot, the Number 9 Restaurant. The girls could not believe their eyes, and never have I seen such a mass of burnt-out old relics in one place either. It seemed that they were all there for the knockwurst hot dogs and frikadellen burgers. No matter that they were three times the price of the local Thai fare. Most German pensions are more that the rest of us make in a month. These are the kind of people that rant about Europe being full of Muslim immigrants who make no attempt to integrate themselves in German culture. This was while they sat in shade, drinking Heineken and chomping on Bratwurst.
Away from little Berlin, the two girls did what Chinese girls do best – shop. Apart from wanting to sample every exotic new fruit that they spotted, they were also on the hunt for interesting souvenirs. In between munching sapadillos, snake fruit and green tamarinds, we took them to a stall that sold local football kits. Molly got a navy blue Buriram jersey, emblazoned with a pair of Chang Elephants and Sophia took home a white Ratchaburi Dragons top with a bright red Chinese-style fire-breather emblazoned across the front. This was another trick that we had picked up from Messrs Jones and Taulkinghorn, and the girls were amazed with the impact they made. Suddenly they had gone from being Chinese tourists to be fleeced at every opportunity, to the most popular girls in town. Tuk Tuks would cheer as the girls walked by, and strangers would stop and shake their hands giving them double thumbs up, simply because they were wearing Thai football team colours.
Back down on Naebkahardt Road, which runs parallel to the beach, there are lots of places catering to Chinese tourists. It is very different from the area around the Sofitel which is more like a visit to sea world, with all the obese German walruses and Brits that look like morbid manatees, spilling out of their tatty wifebeaters.
Up at the next junction past Jek Bier (Zheng Sheng in Chinese), the first restaurant I mentioned, there is an open air food court with prices that are very reasonable for the downtown area.
Sometimes we would even walk up the beach as far as Chutima Bakery, which does really tasty dumplings and Chinese buns. We would park ourselves on the veranda with a ten baht cup of coffee and play spot the Mainlander. It was pretty easy because all the locals have cars or motorbikes. Tourists are the only one out walking, and so they stand out a mile. Braelyn and Jade, two office girls from Shenzhen were coming from the Beach Guest House heading down town, when my wing went over and accosted them with a customary Ni hao. Braelyn was wearing bright red baggy pants that we could have seen coming a mile away. Jade had a hippy chick kaftan, and bright red babouche slippers with gold embroidered sunbursts. She was clutching a sheaf of A4 printouts, that clearly served as their guidebook, although her sunglasses were so huge and so dark that I was surprised that she could see hand in front of her face. Fred (my wing) said that we were having baozi for breakfast and would they care to join us. We apologized that there was no soy milk and dough sticks, but they graciously accepted our offer and sat down anyway. They were planning to take a trip down to see the seven giant statues down a Rajabhakti Park, but we gently talked them out of this idea. These girls are exposed to enough brainwashing at home without being subjected blatant Royalist propaganda down here too. That great concrete expanse overlooked by the forty foot Ramas gets hotter that Tiananmen in July, and I wanted something a bit more interesting than a completely bised history lesson. I heard that it was good when they first opened a couple of years ago, and that they had full battle re-enctments with squads of armoured elephants, but these days it is just a big car park with a monolithic statues. I would have gone down to Sai Noi beach, which is also next to the Army Camp, but you know what Chinese girls and beaches are like. They would rather die the death of a thousand cuts than expose their bare flesh to the sun's rays. They also wanted to see the pachyderms at Hutsadin Elephant Foundation, but that place is a rip off and the poor beasts are kept in right sorry conditions.
A little light quizzing revealed that they had not even seen the local wet market, so rather than drag ourselves all the way out of town we finished our coffees and took a slow stroll down to Chat Chai market. Their eyes about popped out on stalks when they saw the enormous tiger prawns, and the prehistoric looking horsehoe crabs. I selected a pair of juicy looking specimens that were laden down with golden roe (so much for protecting the environment...), and we took them up to a nearby food stall who served them up for us with a big platter of fragrant fried rice. The market is great fun once a few of the vendors start to recognise you. We helped the girls choose some pumpkin stuffed with coconut, and a box of coconut squares, both of which went down a treat. Finally we went up to a vegetable stall where the owner has a pet gibbon, on the way to get some doughnuts from the best little bakery in town. Deliciously doughy, home made jam and dipped in icing sugar. Most dougnuts are all crunchy from being fried too long and then dropped in granulated sugar, but these are thick and stodgey, but smooth as silk.
While it is true we were not being extravagant, the girls very graciously paid for everything. As a special treat, we took them up to Big C to get some take out for later. Not only is it the cheapest supermarket in town, but they also have the best prepared food counter. Whole roast chickens, grilled mackerel and the tastiest steamed egg surprise this side of Fukuoka. Fresh fruit prices are inexplicably exorbitant, but the deli has all kinds of pre-cooked dishes that taste amazing. The basket soon filled up with dumplings, french fries and styrofoam boxes full of noodles. It was like they were stocking up for winter. Like most Chinese tourists they were enthusiastic about trying things, but were afraid of losing face by not being able to speak Thai. They were almost giddy that we had taken them to a place where they could buy as much as they like without risking any embarrassment in the process.
One morning we persuaded two girls from Changchun to hire a songtaew to take us all up to the animal sanctuary which was a massive hit. We stopped off on the way and bought two huge bunches of bananas. We then spent a couple of wonderful hours first feeding the deer, and then all of the baboons. This little known animal park lies around 10km north of Hua Hin. It is setup as a government funded "deer research center." Take Soi Huay Sai about a kilometer after Palm Hills on the left heading north and then it's on the right around 4km down this soi. Entrance is free.
Some of the girls wanted to treat us to dinner and so we introduced them to You Yen and the Navy Club just up the road. The landscaped gardens of You Yen present a glimpse into the Hua Hin of yesteryear. The restaurant is set in an elegant, restored wooden Thai house, built in 1920s, with a sweeping beachfront that doubles as an al fresco dining area. The Navy Phirom has recently been renovated and is almost unknown to most tourists. These two places never fail to impress, much more so that overpriced nouveau resorts like Putahracsa. They also fit in nicely with our secret agenda. The fact was that cute Chinese tourists were simply our bait for much bigger fish. Young girls are fun, but not really worth a long term investment, and here in Hua Hin there is much bigger game on offer, if you move in the right circles. For me, the real prizes were older Hisos and Japanese golf girls. Hua Hin has both of these in abundance, but you really need to know where to look. Chinese girls were really just the first step in our social game. Most westerners immediately hook up with a Thai girl, usually some recently arrived Isaan peasant girl with chicken shit in her toes and skin as dark as buffalo hide. These can be spotted a mile off by old Asia hands, and while they might indeed bang like a barn door, having one in tow immediately slams shut all the other more upmarket entrances. Chinese girls are blanched white and much less incriminating. As such, they make ideal pivots. At You Yen for example, we invited ourselves over to a table of super elegant thirty-something locals, that would have made Croesus look like a penniless mendicant. We brazenly introduced ourselves and our two Chinese friends, and when asked if the Mainlanders were our girlfriends, we simply explained that we had only just met and were showing them a few of Hua Hin's highlights. The Thai girls eyes lit up. We would not even have been given the time of day if we had turned up with a couple of bar girls. Plus, there was the added advantage that bar girls are always looking for a free feed. Chinese girls on the other hand never let us pay, even in the most expensive places, which are still cheap by Shanghai standards.
We oh-so-chivalrously let our Mainlanders take us for a round of cocktails and then met up later with Jiriporn and her two millionairess girlfriends later. Together we got the VIP treatment at the Brewery in the Hilton, which was a great place to party. Some guys might turn their noses up at girls in their thirties, forties and fifties, but as far as I am concerned, the older the violin, the sweeter the music. And these girls turned out to virtuoso concert soloists, as opposed to the two poor Chinese girls that would barely know one end of a cock from the other. Nor did they come with top of the range Mercs to ferry us around from one venue to another. In Mandarin Optional, Darby talked about hanging out with the local army bigwigs, and while we did not meet any of those, we did make friends with officials from the local Thesabaan, as well as some more murky looking mafia types. It sure beat the shit out of playing Connect Four with illiterate bargirls, who could only speak about three words of English.
Having a selection of smart looking Chinese girls in tow meant that everybody around us saw us as social and non-threatening. Two single guys can look dangerously predatory, so we always kept a few girls on hand, to give us that confident playboy vibe. Over the first few days, this technique gave us countless ins with rich locals. We had only planned to hang around for a few nights, but ended up getting apartments just out of town and staying nearly the full month. One of the girls we met had her own beachside hotel complete with tailors, salon and restaurant. Another had a big Condo up on Sukhumvit, but spent most of her time down by the beach, living the high life. We had seen hisos in places like RCA in Bangkok but they were snotty, self absorbed rich kids, interested in nothing but themselves. What was worse, there were guys falling over themselves to fawn on them, while down in Hua Hin we seemed to be just about the only gamers in town. It might just have been me, but all the other westerners looked like they were trying to do impressions of Vin Diesel. Most looked more like overly-muscled pub landlords. Half the time you could practically smell the imminent 'roid rage. The atmosphere down in the beach resort was altogether calmer and more civilised.
We found some apartments on the internet that proved to be great. Tawsang Loft was a brand new five story condo about fifteen minutes north of the town in one of the surrounding villages. A Chinese Thai couple had just sold their condo in Bangkok and built this one here. It was not on the beach, but we still had great ocean views one way, and then out across the Acacia treetops of the wat next door on the other. There were a couple of other residents, an Aussie couple who did little but sit around drinking beer all day, and a rich Thai guy with a monster Ducati. The neighbours were a mix of Thais and retired Euros. Most seemed nice, but apart from the English lady next day who spoke fluent Thai, the nationalities did not seem to mix very much. It was supposed to be eight thousand a month, but we managed to settle on two thousand a week for three weeks. Not bad for a place that had its own lift. Downtown prices were more like a thousand a night. Places like Putracsa were taking the piss at 6k a night. Our place did not have a pool, but we would usually go and hang out with tourist girls in the day time, and they invariably had massive Olympic size facilities in their hotels. There was so much choice that we soon started selecting girls by the hotels they were staying at. Lots seemed to go for places that had Chinese Thai owners. Those girls got extremely short shrift. Anantara was popular for this reason, but the place was a dump, badly in need of renovation. A more up to date choice was Rest Detail, but the owner was a really racist asshole. I would not have spit down his throat if his head was on fire, let alone stayed at his hotel.
Most Chinese seem to have pretty much the same schedule. They all know about rip off places like Venezia and Santorini, but were pretty much clueless about anything else. This meant that it was dead easy to impress the socks of them with a few well chosen spots that we had discovered ourselves. Other items of underwear followed very easily after that.
We met some interesting expats as well as some really lacklustre losers. Perhaps the most fascinating was an Aussie at the Navy Club who had invested a couple of hundred thousand in a run down resort on the Barrier Reef back in the nineties. He tarted it up a bit and sold it to a Chinese investor for a cool ten mill. Then he started telling us stories about his life in Papua New Guinea back in the seventies. He was pals with the President and the Archbishop, and was even a Papuan citizen for a while before going back to being an Aussie again. Now he has a big beachfront condo near Hua Hin, and it was him who introduced us to our Chinese Thai landlords. Guys like that are really good value, both in terms of connections and conversation.
Down on Soi Bonkabint, the pickings were scarce and the customers worn out sacks of lard. I distinctly remember one guy sporting Bandido colours, explaining to us that having a Thai wife was a tremendous asset. He continued that she always made sure he never paid Farang prices for food, because she had the balls to stand up to dual pricing street vendors. This is definitely the only time that you want to have a Thai wife with balls! My French wingman suggested that it might have been easier to try learning the language rather than marrying a full-time translator. That did not go down well at all.
We later met his other half, who turned out to be more like his other ten percent. Not only was she half his age, but she was half his size. No wonder everybody back in the UK thinks that we are all pedos over here. She sure knew about balls, especially when it came to breaking his, which she did almost incessantly. I thought that biker molls were treated like property, practically chattels. And here was this pint-sized passport-hunter almost lording it over a big burly biker.
We did meet one Brit bar owner who told us a very touching story about how he got started in Hua Hin. Just over a decade ago, he invested his life savings to open a diving school down in Sulu. About a month after he opened, local Abu Sayef militants kidnapped and beheaded a couple of Americans, dumping their decapitated heads at a public market in Jolo. The Brit's scuba shop immediately died the same death, and he lost everything. About a week earlier, he had taken another Hua Hin bar owner who was on holiday in the PI out to explore the reefs. This was a novice diver, and he suffered a major panic attack when he spotted a conger stick it's gnarly head out of the coral. The Brit instructor managed to calm him down and get him back up to the surface without any real difficulty, but the shaken tourist truly believed that the guy had saved his life. When news of the beheadings hit the press, he was straight on the phone to make sure that his holiday saviour and new best friend was safe and sound. By that time the Brit was almost penniless and he used his last bit of cash to get a flight over to LOS. For next six months, the bar owner he had rescued let him work for food and board, sweeping up and serving drinks. After a while he was able to get back on his feet (mostly selling Thai Stick to tourists!) and eventually managed to open his own bar. That was a story that completely renewed our faith in human nature.
Apart from Hiso beauties, I was also hoping to track down an even rarer and more exotic prey. Hua Hin is a magnet for Japanese golf junkies but they are difficult to spot away from the tees, and my swing is about as lousy as my Swahili. Plus there is the fact that I would die of boredom if I had to play nine holes, let alone eighteen. I am one of those philistines who would describe the game of golf as a good walk spoiled. Even so, I have heard a rumour that there was this secret community of Tokyo bombshells, all with glorious caramel skintones from spending all day out of the links. I like rich sun tans just as much as the next guy, just not when they adorn LBFMs that have been burned black in the paddy fields. I had a massive crush on a bleached Kogaru back in the nineties and the fascination with bronzed Japanese beauties has simply never worn off.
Eventually, we managed to find a pair of older Osaka girls who were window shopping at Blueport. Their classic Burberry elegance immediately gave them away, and I knew that I was going have to give it my A game to have any impact at all. As usual, we had a couple of Shantou sweethearts in tow, so we ever so politely ditched them at the main entrance. Chinese do not mix well with their Nipponese cousins, especially when these girls were barely into their twenties, and the J girls were probably retirees. There is an entire world of difference between Tesco chardonnay and a vintage Dom Perignon, and these two girls were a vintage that was guaranteed to impress. It never fails to amaze me how the Japanese age so well. Han girls have a tendency to shrivel up once they hit forty, but these girls had skin that was as smooth as silk, and not a single sign of tell-tale surgery.
We immediately bounced Aiko and Kaoru up to a deserted cafe up on the second floor, behind the waterfall, nicely tucked awy from prying eyes. It was a small place with a special offer of croissants and coffee for 150 baht, extortionate for Thailand but cheap as chips for Blueport Shopping Mall. The centre itself is not my kind of place at all. Directly across from the Intercontinental, it sells itself on all this resort lifestyle shopping bullshit. There again, I do not much like tropical jungle either but you can't stay on the beach if you want to bag a tiger. The upshot was that they blew us out. They were very polite about it but we still crashed and burned. Fortunately, the very next morning I met another member of the tribe in the copy shop. Still, this a trip report not a sleazy lay report.
Overall, we really enjoyed everything that Hua Hin had to offer and would definitely go again. Try some the places that I have mentioned above, and I am sure that you will have a great time too.
