We arrived at Trat bus station early for our 9am departure and in good time as there was a torrential downpour after we arrived. This was very welcome and cooled us down no end. The bus left on time, but it took longer than the expected 5 hours, it ended up being almost 6 hours in total, just what we needed! So, at just before 3pm we arrived at Bangkoks Ekami bus terminal and after a few moments of stretching our aching legs, we jumped into a taxi to take us to the Southern bus terminal. Our driver was good and seemed to know all the back roads, but it still took us about an hour to reach the bus terminal.
As soon as we arrived we wended our way up all the escalators at the terminal and quickly found the correct desk to buy a ticket from. The next available bus wasn't until 5pm, which was useful as it gave us time to grab a naughty KFC for our lunch. 5pm soon came and after the usual confusion on seat numbers (the seats are always numbered differently to the tickets!), our luggage was on board and we were heading to our destination of Hua Hin.
In almost exactly three hours we arrived at Hua Hin and were dropped off only a few steps from our hotel, Cha-Ba Chalet. We had finally done it, we were at our final destination after 19 hours of buses over 2 days, we are getting pros at this travelling business!
After a few language difficulties we managed to check into our hotel and we were soon shown to our room. Unfortunately our memories of our first stay here had been a little on the wrong side, the aircon was very smelly (and didn't appear to work very well), the bed uncomfortable, and to top it all off, the TV was all in Thai! We were far too tired to do anything about it, so we quickly showered and headed to our favourite street food vendor, 'Top Restaurant', which was just up the road. We had some delicious food here, washed down with a few welcome beers, this made us glad to be back and helped us forget about all those buses.
After dinner, on our way to the 7-11, we noticed a new hotel with a swimming pool. We went in and inquired about their prices, they were very reasonable and the rooms looked new, so we decided to return the following morning to have a look at the rooms. We headed back to our hotel for a well deserved sleep, but unfortunately for us it didn't really happen. Alternating between the pungent aircon smell and the humidity without it, proved a fairly restless night all in all!
The following morning we had an early breakfast and headed to Baan Manthana Hotel to have a look at their rooms. They showed us a room in the new block, it was very nice, no nasty aroma, had a lovely bathroom and even a balcony. We bargained them down on their asking price and headed back to Cha-Ba Chalet to pick up our belongings. We settled our bill at reception much to the staffs surprise, we think they presumed we were going to be staying longer, after all we had booked 7 nights! We headed straight back to Baan Manthana luggage in hand, it was much nicer there, more comfortable, the staff were friendlier, we felt much more at home already!
We spent another six nights in Hua Hin, our days were spent walking on the beach and swimming in the pool and our nights were spent eating great food at 'Top Restaurant', exploring the night market and playing cards and drinking beer on our balcony. We had also booked ourselves flights to Kuala Lumpur leaving on the 2nd May as we wanted to explore a little more of Malaysia.
Two days before we were due to leave for Bangkok to catch our flights, Clare decided to visit a hair salon and have her hair high lights re-coloured, as she thougt she would save some money having it done here in Asia. She managed to find a reputable one in town and nervously she made her way to the salon with Adam in tow for moral support. We enterted the salon and Clare tried to make herself clear in what she wanted doing, she chose a colour from a set of examples and was led to a waiting chair. Her stylist for today was a ladyboy, which raised some eyebrows to say the least. It all seemed to start very well as they were applying the colour and they seemed to know what they were doing. After about an hour, boredom had set in for Adam and he decided to get his hair shaved. They did a good job and he even had a nice head massage.
A little later and it was time for Clares big reveal. The ladyboy stylist unravelled the towel from Clares head and as she looked into the mirror, all Clare could say was "Woah!". The colour of her hair was bright yellow all over, apart from the underneath back part which was still brown. Clare did well to hold back the tears at this point as it looked truly awful, as she looked over to Adam, his expression confirmed that it was far from good. All this was compounded by the fact that they ladyboy stylist kept repeating "very beautiful madam", when it obviously was not.
Very quickly we left the salon and Clare could no longer hold back the tears, not surprisingly as they had completely butchered her hair! We went straight back to the hotel and both of us were in need of a beer in the light of this trauma. There were no two ways about it, it was terrible and it needed sorting out. It's hard to describle how bad it actually was, but we think a blind stylist could have done a much better job! Clare quickly found a hair band, which thanfully hid the worst of it and we got straight onto the Internet to find a decent hair salon that could fix this mess. We found a Toni & Guy salon in Bangkok, so we decided to leave early on the Friday so Clare could pay them a visit. But after a little more research, it seemed that even Toni & Guy in Bangkok were damaging and mis-colouring western hair, so we quickly abandoned that idea. Luckily Adam found a top hair salon at the Suria shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur called 'Saw' and this was a top notch salon and very used to western hair. Clare emailed them and managed to get an appointment for the Sunday, good news, as we were flying in on Saturday! Hopefully they'll be able to fix it!
The remainder of our time in Hua Hin went very quickly and Clare got her moneys worth from her hair band, but before we knew it our bus was booked to take us back to Bangkok in preparation for our flight to Kuala Lumpur.
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