Hau Hin is a beach town 3 hours south of Bangkok by bus which offer foreigners everything Bangkok has to offer but in a concentrated area and does so without any of red light stigma associated with Pattaya. Hau Hin parallels the ocean beaches of the area for near 10 km and is a narrow strip of a city of near 2 KM wide at it's widest.
The bus to Hau Hin from Bangkok's southern bus terminal runs near every other hour and the bus station offers a variety of food options while you wait for your bus for boarding (10 minutes before departing). Do note It has become either illegal or socially unacceptable to drink alcohol on public bus.
Hau HIn is host to Thailand’s king’s favorite palace and as such has 5 naval ships in the bay at any one time offering a certain special level of protection to Hau Hin.
Previously I wrote about the pluses of Hau Hin like; half a dozen world class golf courses, 3 or 4 malls, waterpark, quading, offshore fishing and snorkeling or scuba, hostels for 200 baht a night to 5 star international hotels and much more. It has become a foreigner’s choice for retirement with homes and condos starting from $75,000.
The beaches however, are disappointing. Hau Hin’s beaches (like all mainland Thailand beaches) were, throughout 2013, totally littered with human brought in garbage (plastic straws, bottle caps, cups, cans, bottles, plastic bags of horse shit and horse shit not in bags, broken bottles, metal rusted cans, styrofoam containers, paint cans, oil bottles, anchor ropes, and the garbage list goes on and on and includes horse shit stained ocean water draining from low tide pools in an unnatural brown colour you know isn’t ocean natural. It is important for you to know our research on horse shit carried disease transferable to humans found nothing transferable to humans leaving horse shit on the beach being an unnecessary unsightly, stinky, objectionable mess.
Moving about in Hau Hin can be done by (no meter) taxi, or tuk tuk or the cheapest ride, 10 baht per ride, baht busses.
Today May 30, 2014 we were extremely surprised and pleased to find Hau Hin’s beaches reconstructed with new white sand (from where?) and only minor scattering of human garbage and no visible bags of horse shit! Well done Hau Hin!
We hope Hau HIn can keep it clean but we expect the beaches will return to their previous garbage strewn state in the near future as no extra measures like posting signage teaching Thai’s to carry out what they brought to the beach including their trash and enforcing the littering laws and the fact that no additional trash cans have been placed on the beaches we expect the garbage will return to the beaches on mass the next school break!
Both Jing’s Guest House and Bistro and Cool Relax restaurant, Chef LeeZ two favorite places in Hau Hin, and our newest recommendation
all advise us that Hau Hin has suffered a reduction of tourists all of 2014 as a direct result of the Bangkok political demonstrations and the now Thailand military coup. Most every tourist dependent Bangkok business including Chef LeeZ Thai Cooking School BKK report a 50% + reduction in customers compared to the same time period (January through May 2013)!
For you, the tourist, it means most businesses only charged high season rates for December 2013 and as of January 2014 switched back to low season rates. The demonstrations meant you needed to allow more time than prior to the demonstrations to travel from location to location. The military coup has returned vehicular traffic to normal (normal being traffic as it was before the demonstrations) and the military coup also means there is, at this time, a curfew in place and there are lots of highly visible machine gun toting military in Bangkok but no extra military presence is here in Hau Hin.
Most tourist related businesses do not have a contingency plan for financing unexpected and unusual turn of events such as a Guiness book record for the longest peaceful demonstration (longer than 6 months) and military coups and unfortunately they won’t be in business come next year!
All in all Chef LeeZ says: “When In Thailand you should plan a minimum of a 3 to 7 days to discover what you like best of BKK’s fastest growing foreigner reliant Bangkok satellite city, Hau Hin, Thailand!” “ We wish you a safe and wondrous Travel experience!
