Hua Hin

I just got back from an amazing weekend. We went to Hua Hin, which is about three hours away by bus. The bus that you take to get there literally stops right outside the school, so we just clock out at 4:30, and hop on the 4:45 bus which takes us directly to our hotel. We spent the weekend relaxing at the beach and by the pool. On Saturday night a few of us went to see some moi tai, which is thai boxing, while some others went to watch a doi boy show, which is a show where lady boys (as the transvestites are called here) dance and perform. I haven't seen a show yet, but we're planning on going next weekend, apparently they're pretty funny.

We also experienced our first attempted scam. We were playing pool at a bar, when this woman came over and asked Xavier, one of the guys from Lertlah who I was there with, if he wanted to play pool against her. He said ok, and she said that if she won, he had to buy her a beer. He didn't really care, because it was only 60 baht, so he agreed. They played, and it was pretty close game, but she beat him and so he said that he would go buy her that beer. So she went to the bar, ordered a drink, and said "140 baht". We said, no, and Xavier held out 60 baht and said that she could take it if she wanted, but that was all she was getting. Then she started saying that we had to pay for it because it was more expensive for her because she worked at the bar (we knew the whole time that she worked there, that wasn't a surprise), and started getting mad and saying that we had to pay for it. So we just kept saying no, and Xavier held out the money and said, "last chance, you can take it if you want" and she said no, then she looked at me and said, "I don't ever want to see you in here again." To which I replied, "that's fine" because there were probably 20 other bars on that same soi. And then we ran away.

The funniest part about it was, we had been at this bar earlier that evening, and I had had a drink, and walked out without paying for it (I obviously didn't mean to do this, but there was a big group of us and I just honestly forgot to pay), so we had come back to this bar so that I could pay them for my earlier drink. When I tried to do this, they had no idea what I was saying and wouldn't take my money for the earlier drink. So although they tried to scam us, we actually ended up scamming them and I got a free drink out of the deal.

Other than that, the weekend was fairly uneventful. We've been really lucky because, although this is the rainy season, there hasn't been all that much rain yet. I know, I'm sure it's coming, but apparently it has been unusually dry. The nice thing about being at the beach during the rainy season is that it is blue skies until about 2 minutes before the rain. Then you have just enough time to find cover for your stuff before the downpour starts. When it did start to rain, we would just throw our stuff under the umbrellas, and hang out in the ocean, we were wet anyway and it was much warmer in there than it was huddling under the umbrellas. The Thais all looked at us like we were crazy, but we didn't care.

Now I'm back at school for the week. I like work and everything, but it's hard to be inside when you know that the beach is so close and accessible! Oh well, I guess I'll just have to settle for every weekend!

I'm going to try to bring my computer to work tomorrow so that I can upload some more pictures. I tried to do it through the school computers, but they are slow and annoying and it wasn't working. Hopefully I'll figure something out soon...