Musings of a Massage Therapist: Road trip!

We decided to get our own wheels and tour around Hua Hin and Pranburi for a couple of days. I had wanted to see the teakwood palace that was about an hour away and we figured we would get our own moped, save the price of an excursion and enjoy the sights along the way. The teakwood palace was the home of King Rama the 6th I believe, who only lived there for a year before he sadly died. But he obviously started a trend because King Rama the 7th built a home here as well and it is the regular residence of the current King, King Rama the 9th, who lives in Hua Hin most of the time.

We got lost almost right away, of course, and ended up having to take several detours and at one point turn back. But eventually we made it to the general area of the teakwood palace. You would think it would be easy to find right? Of course not! I saw one tiny sign pointing us in the right direction otherwise there wasn't a clue around. We did happen to find a parking lot full of packs and machine guns though! Apparently the palace is also inside a military base, and here we were just wandering around on our own. We were soooo close but still couldn't find the place, even though we kept asking anyone we saw.

I did find this random tiger sculpture though! Finally we narrowed it down and figured out where it was, but we still couldn't figure out how to get in. Nobody seemed to be around. We managed to talk to a security guard who told us that the palace was "closed today, come back tomorrow." Of course! It seems that is the rule of our trip - nothing will go as planned! No way were we coming back tomorrow after several hours wasted already on the bike. I managed to convince someone to let us in to the grounds but we were only able to see the palace from the outside and see the gardens, no matter how much I asked and begged to be let in!

THIS is as close to the palace as I got... you just have to shake your head and laugh!

I was tempted to sneak in, but then remembered the machine guns...

Thankfully there was a bit to see outside of the main grounds so we wandered around for quite a bit. There was a wooden walkway through a mangrove forest that was pretty neat, I even got to see a real life Mudskipper! Anyone remember "Muddy the Mudskipper"??? They DO exist! There was one house outside that we could at least look at, but couldn't go into. Very pretty and so was the beach. As we were heading back to see the sculpture of King Rama VI a big group of soldiers started walking our way, machine guns in hand. For a moment we wondered if we weren't really supposed to be there but realized they were doing a drill, complete with Thai, I don't even know what to call it... military chanting? You know, the old "I don't know and I don't care" type of shouting? It was kind of neat to see! Still not as cool as seeing the actual teakwood palace but close enough....

Mangrove forest/swamp.

Walkway through the mangrove forest.

Thought these pencil-like roots sticking out looked cool.

Can you spot the mudskipper??

Muddy!

Looking for more mudskippers.

Mangrove roots.

Mangrove roots and the river.

Interesting...

The one house we could look at, from the outside that is...

It certainly is impressive though! Imagine how nice the real residence is..

Beach outside the palace.

Military troops inside the grounds.

I didn't want to get too close, but this was really cool to witness!

King Rama VI monument.

Apparently he liked Rottweilers too, these reminded me of our old dog Cassie.

Who climbed up there to place those flowers I wonder...

Flower offerings for King Rama VI.

Flower arrangement at the entrance to the palace.

This helped stop me from sneaking in! I was tempted... we came all this way.

Once we saw all there was to see we headed back to Hua Hin city to have lunch and find a travel agent so we could book a snorkelling day trip for the next day. We managed to do both and went back to the resort to call it a night. Our butts were sore and we had to be up really, really early the next day to swim with the fishes.