We’ve finally made it to the seaside for the last 5 weeks of our trip.

We’ve put all our negotiation skills to good use and bagged a very, very large room with Jacuzzi bath, TV, wifi and private balcony for 600 Baht/night (about £12!!) including a free upgrade that we weren’t expecting.

The hotel also has a fabulous pool and we’ve been in twice a day to try and get a little fitter before we come home. There is also a “fitness corner” with some “interesting” machines. We’re swimming early a.m. and late p.m. and have the pool pretty much to ourselves. You can see from the pics that the pool is between 25 and 30 meters long so we’ve been able to do some serious training…..about 500 meters a session or 1km/day.

Hua Hin has really exceeded our expectations. We anticipated lots of high rise condo’s and hotels and for it to be really busy….it’s not!!  It’s very clean, not at all Thai!!, and very well kept with an extremely long and clean beach which goes for miles and miles, All the development has been done quite tastefully and so far we think we may come back for a longer time.

There’s a shopping mall not too far away with a large Tesco Lotus where we can get some healthy foods and, in the mall, a number of eateries varying from food court pricing to top end restaurants. Alex, note the pic of the Jappy Hot Quick Restaurant including the classic plastic food display in the window. We haven’t tried it yet but we will report back after we’ve popped in for a setto.

As we’re back in beach mode we’re not doing very much other than eating wisely and trying to get lots of exercise when it’s cool. The hotel has a free shuttle bus which allows us to explore and the main road is 5 minutes walk away which us allows us to catch local buses to go further a field.

We have discovered that long stay in relative luxury can be extremely cheap so we’re using our time here to look into long term Condo rental for next winter. So far, it looks like a good quality apartment with sea view balcony, full kitchen etc can cost as little as 12,000 baht a month (£240). With the cost of daily living being so cheap here you can easily live very well, including some expensive wine, on £10,000/annum for two of you.