Hua Hin is a smallish beach town renowned because the king himself resides here. As a matter of fact I even caught a glimpse of the monarch’s beige Rolls Royce today, but as far as I could tell through the darkened windows, my wave was not returned. Although the city has a nice beach, I wouldn’t really recommend this place to anyone unless you want to kite-board. The prices for everything are high due to the proximity to Bangkok, and the city has the worst Scandinavian infestation I’ve seen yet, with some tailors even advertising in Finnish! Is that supposed to lull me into some sense of security regarding their tailoring skills or what?
The kite-boarding itself was surprisingly easy to get a hang of and I’m really looking forward to the last day of the course tomorrow. I always thought you would only have limited control over the kite, but actually with just a few hours practise you become near- surgically precise with it. For the course, I was paired up with a bloke from Azerbaijan, whom I disliked immediately. Within five minutes of introducing himself, he was wondering out loud where he could find the best prostitutes in town. Now, I’m actually not very athletic by nature, so whenever I learn a new sport, I have to work pretty hard at it. But honestly, compared to this guy, I was like the love-child of Carl Lewis and Michael Jordan. The sleaze-ball had the concentration of a drunken four-year old, the athleticism of a tub of lard and the sense of balance of a one-legged possum. I swear sometimes his ineptitude even contradicted the laws of physics, and even though the wind was pushing the kite up, he managed to bring it crashing down. Still, seeing him get smacked face-first into wet sand by his out-of-control kite was pretty amusing, so it wasn’t like he was a complete waste of space. Also, to be honest he wasn’t getting all that much support from our teacher, an ice-cold Israeli guy whose teaching method was pretty much: “Grab on to this, I’ll be back in an hour”. I would’ve been angry about this, but in my case it worked like a charm, so kudos to him! I guess sometimes too much hand-holding just makes things seem harder than they are.
The festivities for Songkran, i.e. Thai New Year are picking up here, meaning that it is absolutely impossible to venture anywhere outside without being soaked to the bone. Kids and adults alike use hoses, buckets and water pistols to drench everyone walking by, and foreigners are of course especially attractive targets. It’s a real warzone out there, and on the way back from the beach I was ambushed several times by what seemed like pretty sophisticatedly planned attacks! Some people even load up water tanks on their pick-up trucks and get the whole family on board to man the guns, turning the vehicle into an effective drive-by-soaking-mobile! If this sounds like fun, that’s because it is, and the showers are a welcome relief from the stifling heat. Nevertheless, at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, the whole being soaked thing does get... well... a little old. In my case, it’s just the clothes getting wet, but I’ve also heard of heaps of people losing their cameras and mobile phones because of overzealous water dumping. My advice would be to keep everything in plastic bags and wear clothes that can be smeared in the white powder that often accompanies the soakings.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to buy a Super Soaker from the 7-11 and get some ice cold payback for earlier! Death before dishonour :)
P. S. Hadn’t heard this in ages till a little old lady played it in her CD shack in Bangkok. Great, great song.
Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBRdet5Ehyo
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