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Hua Hin, Thailand
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Hua Hin - Far From Worries:
 Each
season sees the discovery of yet another dream resort, but Thailand
continues to find favour with tourists. Surprisingly, the current
favourite is not an idyllic island like Phuket, but the country’s oldest
resort, Hua-Hin on the Gulf of Thailand, which rose to fame in the
1920’s when engineers punched a railway through jungle to connect it
with Bangkok. The Thai royal family built their Summer Palace on the
beach, aristocrats followed and built villas, and the town became a
Mecca for Thai High Society.
The revered Thai King has more or less retired to
Hua Hin now, and this, together with the increasing number of five-star
hotels opening in the resort is boosting Hua Hin’s image. All the major
hotels lead directly on to white sandy beaches, the Sheraton being the
latest to join the Dusit Resort & Polo Club, the Evason (sister hotel of
the Award winning Soneva in the Maldives), the Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott,
Sofitel, and the internationally acclaimed health resort of Chiva- Som.
All these hotels have state-of-the art East-meets-West Spas: Hua Hin is
now the Spa Capital of Thailand.
I visited it recently – mainly to play golf on one
of its five championship courses and fell in love with it all over
again. My favourite Club is probably the oldest one, the lush Royal Hua
Hin where players first teed off in 1924 but Springfield, the course
designed by Jack Nicklaus is favoured by the really serious players and
was named as one of the top five courses in Thailand by Australian Golf
Digest in 2002.
Just two hours by car from Bangkok, Hua Hin lies on
the sunrise coast of the Gulf of Thailand and it could be defined not by
what it is but by what it isn’t. It isn’t overdeveloped, nor is it
overrun, and despite its cosmopolitan restaurants and 5* hotels, its
energetic nightlife and bars, it still retains that authentic provincial
flavour.
Mid-20th
century wooden cottages are still to be found along the maze of streets
leading to the seafront and the old-fashioned striped deck-chairs on the
beach will remind you of long ago summers on English sands. Hua Hin
offers a “Thai-style” holiday without the brashness of Pattaya or Chiang
Mai.
 Steeped in history and dotted with palaces and
temples, this is a sophisticated resort with eateries to rival those in
Bangkok. Along the beach are seafood restaurants serving everything from
local lobsters and crabs to the daily catch cooked in banana leaves, but
dotted around the town are Italian, French, Swedish, Vietnamese, German,
Japanese, and even English restaurants to cater for every taste.
You could accuse Hua Hin of being too quiet. I’ll
admit it is, blissfully so in fact, but that is its appeal. Everyday we
did the same thing, got up, had a gigantic breakfast which included
fresh pineapple, papayas, mangoes and rambusteens, took the hotel’s car
to the Club to play golf before the sun got too hot, returned to the
hotel for lunch followed by a siesta, followed by a massage either on
the lawns of the hotel or in the spa, trotted along the beach on ponies
from the stable of 12 at our hotel as the evening cooled (we stayed at
the Dusit Resort & Polo Club which has the only stable in the country I
believe), then either ate in the hotel or in town before a night-cap at
the beach restaurant of the hotel.
Well, not every day. Once we made a dawn visit to
the beach to join the locals who come to sit at the water’s edge to
enjoy the beauty of the sunrise. We bowed to a group of orange-robed
monks as they walked along the sands, saw the fishing fleet unload the
night’s catch, and marvelled at how the sands turned an opaline pink as
the sun rose higher in the sky.
We
spaced our sight-seeing out, one day making the trip to the Bridge on
the River Kwai, a half-day was spent on Khao Takiab (Monkey Mountain)
the temple complex guarded by monkeys where local people were busily
pressing 24-crt. gold leaf on to dozens of Buddist statues, and spent a
very full day on the smooth varnished decks of the Mai Thai, a restored
fishing junk available for charter that took us through the Marine
National Park of Sam Roi Yod before stopping for a fantastic lunch on
one of the islands. With dozens of tailor shops working day and night to
offer 24-hour tailoring , and shopping for carvings, silks, cottons,
buffalo skin pictures, carved soaps and intricately worked chopsticks,
there was little free time.
No beach parties, no raves, just the quiet
sophistication that the stressed out workaholic needs. The royal Summer
Palace on the beach is known as “Klai Kangwon”: the name means “Far From
Worries”. It could be Hua Hin’s motto, for nowhere else in Thailand is
quite sooooooo far from worries.
Click here for a few suggestions from our
extensive portfolio of hotels.
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