Category Archives: Travel

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 2012: Part 3

We didn’t do any sightseeing as such (temples etc) for some days into our time at PKK. We were content to just absorb the sights in our immediate surrounds.

After ‘breakfast’ (ie: 10.30am or later), we might wander along the seafront promenade and look out on that irresistible bay, in between sizing up the restaurants in advance of lunch or dinner. We’d rarely last long traipsing about out in the sun before retreating to a premises with fans or aircon for a cold(ish) Singha. At 70 baht per 650ml bottle (53 in the supermarkets – about $1.75), other choices of beverage didn’t seem like choices at all.

Or we would amble uptown to change money, taking in the routines of the town as we went. You had to amble. It was too bloody hot to do otherwise. The heat is intruding on my recollections, just as it intruded on our days in PKK! Although the temperature was only low-mid 30s, it was a glaring sun and a relentless, humid and enervating heat. In the afternoons, a breeze would arrive to stir the soup but it was too warm to give much relief, apart from fanning sweat-soaked clothes and glistening necks and faces. Continue reading Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 2012: Part 3

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 2012: Part 2

“Prachuap Khiri Khan.” The very name fires the imagination! Its utterance rhythmic, musical, skipping off the palate. Its resonance mysterious, sensual, like an intimate phrase of endearment in an exotic tongue. But it’s just a fishing town in southern Thailand. And I’m a man overboard, floundering in nostalgia.

Travelling is so subjective. Take no notice of me. I don’t do travel advice. This is simply a personal piece I’m banging out to preserve memories I want to hold on to. Disingenuous? Of course. Who could make such a claim of a piece that is to be posted to the web? Do you need more proof that I cannot be trusted? Continue reading Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 2012: Part 2

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand, 2012: Part 1

Researching Thailand as a travel destination was disturbing. So many accounts online gave the impression that the place was ruined, literally overrun by tourists. I knew that was the case in Phuket, which is why I’ve never bothered going there, but the entire country? Surely not.

Of course, there would be many towns, many places, with nary a farang in sight – probably because there was nothing much to see. Yes, we were after a glimpse beneath the bonnet of Thai society (and no traveller gets more than a glimpse, to which anyone who has lived in a foreign country initially travelled through will attest). But we’re not anthropologists! We wanted to do our glimpsing in locales with more going for them than mere ‘authenticity’! A gorgeous coastal town, perhaps. Sites of historical interest. Regions famed for speciality dishes. The usual tourist stuff, in other words – but without hordes of tourists. Continue reading Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand, 2012: Part 1