Days 17-19: Hua Hin

After getting situated in Bangkok, Chatchai and his friend Chin picked us up and we all drove about 2.5 hours from Bangkok to the seaside city of Hua Hin.   We stayed at the YaiYa Resort right on the Bay of Thailand.  The place was beautiful and boutique-like as it only had 40 rooms and bungalows.  YaiYa is Thai for grandmother, so much of the charm of the hotel was based around one's grandmother and the things one might remember from childhood.

The view from our room

The restaurant, pool, and swim-up bar

We decided to find the best view of Hua Hin, so we took Chatchai's Mercedes WAY UP the mountain (not always a simple feat) to locate the temple at the top of the mountain which overlooks Hua Hin.  

At the bottom of the steps, heading up

The view form the top

The bells that surround the temple top

Most temples that I've been to in Thailand seem to have their share of monkeys, and this one was no different.  There were probably a thousand monkeys living wild around the temple.. and they weren't the slightest bit shy of humans.

We then drove around Hua Hin to experience all of its highlights.. including a 1950's period shopping area (which was probably built in the 60's and has been operating exactly the same way since..)

Then we went to get some dinner..  The usual "pick your dinner from the livestock on ice" plus several other awesome classic Thai dishes..

As usual, very (wonderfully) spicy, and with a bill that sometimes leaves one guessing..  It's no problem though, it only came to about $75 for WAAAAY too much fresh food & drinks for 4 people!

While we were there we also checked out the beach and got in some cardio..

The next morning we got up and drove about 30 minutes to one of Thailand's most successful wineries!  I was a little skeptical as I had never actually seen a bottle of wine produced in Thailand, but then again I'm just a very novice wine drinker.  (at least novice at the SCIENCE of it!)

Hua Hin Hills Vineyards produces Monsoon Valley wines which were actually quite good.. especially their dessert wines and lighter white wines.  It looked like a page right out of Napa Valley.. except for the elephants being used to give rides to tourists.  They don't have too many of those in California.

And with that, we enjoyed another beautiful night at our resort, drank way too much local wine and slept for 12 hours..  Well, I did.  Christian got up at 5:30 to take pictures of the sun rising over the Bay of Thailand..  Tune in tomorrow for our halfway mark, day 21!