Thailand train travel

We were loving getting the train so far in Thailand, it was reliable, clean and incredibly cheap. Especially for the ordinary 3rd class fan seating. But we were starting to feel the pull of the ocean, since we haven’t worn any of our snorkelling gear, rash vests or swimwear for about 6 weeks now (not since Maldives), and it has been weighing down our bags, shouting at us to be used! So we started a journey south, by train, in search of the sea.

We decided to break the journey up and stay in some of the towns along the way. In my opinion, these towns are some of the best in Thailand for experiencing real Thai culture. They are quite quiet, with far fewer tourists, lovely night markets, and some beautiful nature and wildlife living alongside the towns.

So the first stop was Phetchaburi. I’ve been here before and visited Kaeng Krachan National park previously, which was great. But since we’d already visited Khao Yai, and planned to visit another park soon in Prachuap, we gave it a miss this time.

We got the train from Pak Tho, which was a short tuk tuk ride from our place in Amphawa. The ticket from Pak Tho to Phetchaburi was only 7 baht each!!!!

Phetchaburi is a nice town, in the state of the same name. It has a hill in the centre with some chedis and temples on top, but it is also home to a lot of macaques, which are pretty cheeky and are guaranteed to steal any food or drinks if you have them on show, as I experienced last time!!

We checked into our hostel, Chedi View Hostel and we were the only people staying here the whole time. But the room was nice, and the rooftop terrace did indeed have a great chedi view!

It was so hot during our 2 nights here, and both days we went out to explore, we lasted only a few hours before sweltering in the heat and having to come back to the AC. I think in part due to the exceptionally high humidity, likely caused by the epic storms we got every night…. Which actually, was probably our favourite thing here during these 2 nights, as we just went to the roof top and watched the storms around us!!

On the 2nd day, we did attempt to hike up the hill (Khao Wang), and we did see a lot of monkeys (which were actually well behaved this time), but the heat was too intense, we turned around and came back, both of us drenched in sweat.

We did instead venture out in the evening (when it was a lot cooler) to the local temples and night markets, but I think because of the days of the week we were there, there wasn’t much going on in the town and the night markets were very small and quiet.

The only interesting things we saw were some macaws (yes, parrots! Both scarlet and blue ones, we think someone’s pets), a swiftlet farm with hundreds of swifts (which is what they do to harvest the birds’ nests to sell for birds nest soup), and the main temple, Wat Mahathat (which was actually really cool).

From Phetchaburi, we continued South and decided to stop at Hua Hin. I skipped this town last time as it’s known for being mostly an ex-pat town for Europeans. But I thought this time we should have a look and see, and apparently the beaches here are very nice, it’s the home of one of the royal residences for a reason, I guess!

The train was super cheap again, and only took us about an hour. We checked into Captain Joe’s hostel, and again, we were seemingly the only ones staying here, but it was probably the nicest and most comfortable hostel we stayed at so far. Very clean bathrooms and a nice large bedroom with a comfy (soft) bed with nice soft pillows…. Finally! 🥳

Speaking of which… I think this must be an age thing, as I’m pretty sure when I was backpacking 10 years ago I didn’t notice anything or have any trouble, but this time, we are both noticing that the beds here mostly seem to be incredibly firm (like concrete, firm), both the mattress AND the pillows. We have been struggling with sleep because of it actually… and generally both wake-up aching, either our hips or our necks, from how firm the bed/pillow is!!! Haha, is it just us getting old?!?!? And fussy about our beds?

Anyway, shortly after we arrived, we headed down to the beach, but it was sadly not as nice as we’d hoped and actually reminded us a bit of back home haha, we joked it was like Blackpool beach (but a lot hotter), with the colour of the water and the long beach with shallow sea. Bizarrely, there was literally nobody in the water too, as far as we could see north and south (and the beach is very long). So we didn’t feel comfortable getting in it at all… It was pretty creepy actually, we wondered what was wrong with the water!!

That night, the owner of the hostel told us about a light show at the railway station, so we walked over there. It was interesting enough, and very quirky! There were light performances which were cool though, and everyone was nice and happy. We even found a little veggie pad thai stand.

We walked back through the town to the hostel via one of the many night markets here and got a little roti for desserts before trying to find somewhere to have a drink. Instead we ended up on a street lined with lots of open empty bars and women dressed up waiting patiently for customers… We just headed back.

The next day we got a grab taxi out to Wat Khao Takiap, which is a temple on a hill, next to a nice beach. We planned to visit the temple then walk back to Hua Hin along the beach, but there were 2 issues once we got there… The first was that it was INSANE hot today, we thought it was hot before, but I think this day was probably the hottest one we’d had so far, and we had accidentally left the suncream in the room… Ooops! And second, there were also lots of macaques here too. We both got a little spooked when we went to walk down a road to main Buddha, and a monkey ran towards us… We turned and ran the opposite direction haha, and unfortunately didn’t see the Buddha! We called a taxi…. Tail between our legs.

In the evening, we went out to the pier and saw a moon halo, before trying again to find a bar for a few drinks and pool which didn’t look dodgy. We found the town of Hua Hin to be a little seedy actually… It was mainly European/American older single men on their own, and seemingly a LOT of prostitute bars. There weren’t many younger people or couples (although one other couple did check in the day we checked out) but oddly, there were also a lot of families with kids. It had a weird vibe really… And I don’t think either of us were sad to leave (despite the amazing bed).

We left Hua Hin after just 2 nights, to continue south on the train to possibly my favourite Thai town on the mainland; Prachuap Khiri Khan. To be continued…