Hua Hin

To thank us all for our hard work and dedication, the owners of my school treated us all to a weekend in a nearby beach town called Hua Hin (pronounced like Wa Heen). The trip included vans down, a night at a hotel on the beach, dinner, drinks, and transport to markets, temples, etc. All employees got to go for free, and any additions had to pay 1500 Baht (45$). Ryan came as did three British ladies who are down visiting Ms. Chris.
As this was probably our last stay at a Thai beach, Ryan and I were a little nostalgic, but got over that pretty quick cause its also our first anniversary so we had to fit in some fun too!
On the way down we stopped in a town called Petchaburi to take the train up the mountain to see the King's Temple. There were monkeys running around and one stole Ryan's water bottle while he was reloading batteries into our camera! The poor thing was just a baby and could hardly even lift the bottle let alone carry it off anywhere!

The rest of the tour included panaramic views of the town, the King's house atop the hill and views of the temples.


We arrived at our hotel around 2 or so and quickly threw on our bathing suits and grabbed our towels to catch the sun while it was still out (its winter here now so the sun is setting around 5). The beach in Hua Hin stretches out for miles of white sand and is dotted with resorts. Our hotel had a private beach so we all got really nice beach chairs and served right at the ocean's edge!
For dinner we went to a nearby seafood restaurant (I told you I was eating seafood now!) that overlooked the ocean and down the beach. It was fantastic food and we were visited by Mr. Brenden and his beautiful little boy, Finnan.

(Brenden's parents were visiting from England and had been down in Hua Hin for a week so Brenden had already planned on being down there before he learned of our school trip).
After dinner we were off to the night market and then back to our hotel where we sat by the ocean for drinks and laughter well into the night.
I woke Ryan up bright and early in the morning as I knew our crew was due to check out at noon and I wanted some more sun and surf before we left. We had a tasty breakfast overlooking the ocean and then moved down onto our beach chairs.


It was a windy day and the ocean was nice and warm so Ryan and I enjoyed some giant waves (although we were fighting a pretty strong current) and caught as much sun as we could before checking out. We had one last meal by the ocean before saying goodbye to the Andaman Sea and heading off to our first market of the day.
I won't bore you with the multiple stops we made that day, but our final stop would prove to be the most memorable and deserves a story.
Our last stop was the floating market. It was a little quieter at night but we weren't there for shopping.

This is the time of year in Thailand when all the fireflies come out, so we hired a boat and set off in search of fireflies. Expecting the North American firefly, we were pleasantly surprised when our driver turned off the engine and we noticed the trees twinkling like someone was flashing tiny Christmas lights off and on. It was breathtaking! There were millions of tiny little fireflies twinkling in the trees, it was really magical.

The little tiny bug is one that we caught! (look along the finger with the ring on it)
We tried to take a video, but the lights are so tiny you can't make them out. You can hear us all Ooh and Aah though!!

Well, it's not much to look out, but we have about 6 more videos just like this one!