Days 45-49 - Killing time before Nepal

With 5 days before our flight to Nepal, we have taken ourselves by train to Hua Hin, the Gold Coast of Thailand 3-4 hours south of Bangkok.




A string of high rises and condominiums dot the beach and adjoining landscape, but there's plenty of traditional dusty, noisy, urban Thailand joining the dots.




Thai families, loving couples, partying teenagers, they all head here for weekends to enjoy the decent beach and great seafood. Mid-week, we see lots of large over-priced restaurants with 20 staff lolling around for one or two tables of customers and hotels with many empty rooms. The alternative weekend get-away from Bangkok is Pattaya and Ko Samet. We chose Hua Hin because it's on the train line and is largely free of the girlie bars and prostitution synonymous with Pattaya.




The kids chose the hotel we're in, using agoda.com. The Hin Nam Sai Suay is perfect for families: fabulous pool in the shade with slippery dips (hoorah!), viewable from our room (double hoorah!). Four nights in a 4 star with breakfast for $200.








The room itself is really bright and comfortable and comes with a spare bed for Rosie and a cute corner area-come-bed for Tom.








This means, for the first time in FIVE WEEKS Shane and I have a king size bed to ourselves :-) Nearly all the double beds in Asia are king size, making it easy (and affordable) to have one child share with us, while the other sleeps on one of the fabulous Thermarest Ultra-Lite beds we brought with us.
Right now the kids are both in homeschool, writing diaries. Formal homeschool has been really inconsistent, largely due to the lack of consistent routine in any day. We know we won't be homeschooling in the formal sense while we're trekking in Nepal so we're getting some credits while we can.
Our time here has felt like a great way to just ease ourselves out of hot and humid Asia and to get our heads around the colder Asia we're about to head into.
Note: great stopover in Bangkok. Our usual joint, The Atlanta, could only offer their enormous and run down suites at $80, so we searched for something on the same soi and came up with Aspen Suites around thirty metres down the road from the Atlanta, really swish and only $60.
Shane, Helen, Rosie and Tom

Location:Hua Hin 7,Hua Hin,Thailand