The laundry is finally dry, so we can squeeze it into the remaining room in our suitcases. It feels like our Thailand stay is over too soon, but also – there’s adventure up ahead! How are we going to get all our stuff on an airplane tomorrow morning…???
Our driver arrives shortly before 10am, and when he opens the door, our collective hearts sink. Where’s the gold and leather interior? Where’t the luxurious carriage of our Bangkok to Hua Hin transport? Luckily, we’re not usually gold and leather type people, and we have plenty of room for both people and bags in this van as well.
The drive is expected to be about 3.5 hours today, and we wave goodbye to all our familiar sights from our month by the ocean. We drive along highways that are super flat and fairly straight, and we make some observations along the way:
Notice how the above picture has two red umbrellas fairly close? Whenever there’s one vendor, there will be another. At one extremely dry and dusty stretch there were THREE kite vendors along the side of the highway. I mean, if I was looking for a kite, would I stop on the shoulder of the highway to shop? Maybe in Thailand? I think the red umbrella vendors were selling either food, drink or both, kind of like a drive-through.
We had asked the driver, through both his and my translation apps, to stop halfway. After almost two hours, Joe asked him where we were stopping, so we finally pulled over. We bought a quick snack at the convenience store, and were back on the road after maybe 10 minutes.
At 1.30pm, we arrived at @ Suvarnabhumi Residences, our airport hotel for the evening. Check in is usually at 2pm, but our room was ready early. It’s such a cute hotel! Five smaller buildings, connected with 2nd floor walkways, surround a pool and courtyard area. There’s even a small restaurant, where we could have planned breakfast, if it wasn’t for our extremely early shuttle to the airport. We book our shuttle for 5am.
Inside our room, two giant beds greet us. The walls are papered with fake bricks, and it looks so cute! There’s a kitchenette as well, along with free bottles of water and free cup noodles!
After dropping our bags in our room, we were ready for lunch. The lady at the front desk told us there was a mall “right around the corner”, so we took her word for it, and ventured outside. We found the main road, turned left, and walked. And walked. Then we walked some more. Then we found a small mall with an open air food market with maybe 5 stalls open. Joe said “this can’t be the one she meant”, and so we walk some more. One of us (might have been the smallest of us) is too hot and too tired and is letting us hear it. I carry her the rest of the way, which luckily, because we walked SO SO SO SO far, is suddenly not so much further. I have rarely been more grateful to feel the cold air of AC as when we arrived at the actual, real-deal mall!
First stop: lunch! We pick a Thai restaurant (you would actually be shocked to see how few mall restaurants are actually Thai, there are SO MANY Japanese and American chains all over) and take a seat.
After lunch, we walk around the mall. When we find the massage chairs, Joe puts 20 Bhat in and takes a 10 minute break while I walk around with the girls.
When Joe’s 10 minute massage is over, we head back, and Joe says “why don’t you try it”, and so of course I did! 20 Baht and 10 minutes later, my arms and legs have been properly squeezed, but my favourite was the upper back and neck massage. I really enjoyed my 10 minute massage, and wish we had tried these out a lot sooner in our Thai experience!
We aren’t really ready to head back to the hotel, and we’re too far out of the city to really explore other areas, so we hang out at the mall, looking around and grabbing little bits and pieces as we need them. And of course, posing with anything fun along the way!
We went back to Tops to finish off our mall exploration, as we needed a few breakfast items (we vetoed cup noodles at 4am). We picked up some savoury pastries for breakfast, and a large fruit tray for dessert for tonight. Then we ordered a Bolt taxi.
Back at the hotel, we decided to make it as simple as possible for ourselves, and went to the hotel restaurant for dinner.
We headed back to the hotel room and called it an early night. Both girls were asleep by 9pm, and I set my alarm for 3.30am to shower before waking them up…
When I had an early start like that I would end up not sleeping because I would check the clock every few minutes, afraid that I would sleep late. Lol
Always, right! I was also sleeping next to our family kicker (Maylin), so there was that waking me up hourly as well…