We have friends in Hua Hin and, as it was also Janet's birthday, we decided to throw caution to the wind and go out of season.
We picked up an excellent deal on flights and at the Anantara in Hua Hin (where we have stayed many times before).
We flew Thai Economy (never have flown economy to Bangkok before) and were not overly impressed with the outbound flight. No seatback entertainment, little in the way of fluids provided through the night - although you could go to the galley for refreshment. Despite the aircrafy being about 2/3rds full, people wandering about to get drinks caused disturbances and little sleep could be had. The food however was quite reasonable.
Suvarnabhumi airport seems to be getting its act together and we were through immigration and had our cases in under 40 minutes. We had pre-booked transfer through Diethelm travel and this went very smoothly - we arrived at the Anantara over an hour earlier than we had expected - great we could meet up with our friends on the first night!
Hua Hin is becoming very built up with new developments everywhere, but the town centre has changed very little - bright lights, seedy bars and a good night market.
With the exception of one 10 minute shower in the evening on our third day, the weather was extremely good - varying from partly cloudy to full sunshine, with the temperature in the 90s!
I will do a review of the Anantara in the hotel section, but we were provided with a complementary upgrade to a Lagoon Room (very nice!) and wine and flowers for Janet's birthday. As usual the combination of service, food, gardens, pool and beach made us realise why we returned to this hotel in preference to others. Whilst the restaurants are on the expensive side we did eat in both the Italian restaurant (Baan Thalia) and Thai restaurant (Rim Nam) on two occasions each. The food was excellent.
One restaurant that was new to me in Hua Hin was Coco51 (Soi 51). It was by far the best meal we have had (outside of hotels) in many visits to HH.
All too soon our couple of weeks were over and we were travelling back to Bangkok. Transfer once again very smooth and we decided to go for an upgrade on our seats (Thai allow a standby Business Class upgrade for USD 750 per person per sector). On enquiring we found that the returning flight was approx 25% full - so we didn't bother. We both had a row of 3 seats each, the food and service was excellent and I actually managed to sleep - heaven
We may have been extremely lucky with the weather, but I would definitely consider October in future. Excellent prices on flights, rooms half the price of February and many fewer tourists than in the peak season (although this may also be because of the political and civil unrest). Numbers were bolstered in our first week by people who had visited the Singapore Grand Prix and then taken a vacation in South East Asia, following the event.
We returned, batteries fully recharged, to the chaos that is Heathrow T3 (2 whole immigration desks open for UK passport holders - slower than Bangkok!) and traffic moving at a snails pace on the M25! - There's nothing like England, is there?
Peter
