Miami Beach, Thailand

Still life with ripening bananas.
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All we wanted was a couple days of sun before heading back home, so we didn't really care where we went.  Rhian had a few days to kill before her friend arrived.  We heard Hua Hin was nice.  A big weekend/summer spot for the citizens of Bangkok.  We expected Fire Island, or maybe the Jersey shore.  What we got was Miami Beach.

Huge condos and hotels made up the landscape, buildings taller than most we'd seen in nearly 10 months.  The beach was a 10 minute walk from our hotel, past rows of bars that were always empty, except for the groups of Thai girls in matching pink mini skirts (employees?).  It was a bit strange to see this huge tourism center nearly empty, but we all agreed it would be much much scarier to see it when it was full.  Strangely, many of the other tourists who were here in the low season were families, and not a whole lot of native English speakers.

Our favorite patch of beach.
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To ease our transition into this culture we spoiled ourselves with a super fancy hotel room.  This means aircon, TV, and lukewarm water in the shower.  Heck, it's our last hotel in Thailand, so why not splurge?  We totally got the most out of it, after hours of card games and many bilingual cartoon programs.

The town had a decent night market, although completely for tourists, and a local day market that we never made it to b/c we spent all day at the beach.  (Correction - Ben made it to the day market one morning when he woke up before the girls, got a haircut, and brought us back snacks and coffee.  Not bad.)

Mousehead's favorite phone booth.
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In summary: The overly built up hotels were scary, but the overly built up shopping centers were kind of fun.  The beach was nice, but there were too many jellyfish in the ocean.  We ate candied tomatoes and pickled mango, which were good but not sure I'll have them ever again.  The markets had so-so shopping but delicious food, and the shower we had in that hotel was the last shower we will have before arriving in New York City, 42 hours later.