Christmas Eve in Hua Hin
What do you do on Christmas Eve in Hua Hin? It's the first time for me to spend this one in the royal seaside resort.
I used to live in a suburb of Bangkok and there was little or no sign of Christmas there. Except for some decorated and illuminated trees and a single tree in the house or garden. But Hua Hin?
I have left Midnight Mass behind me for decades, as well as belief in anyone or anything. Maybe even in myself. Staying at home is not an option, for lack of family. Christmas in the tropics causes a psychic itch and where it itches, you have to scratch. So off to the city for some chatter with others in the same circumstances.
Small problem is that my car is at the paint shop to touch up some scratches. Then on the Honda Click, despite the cool weather. The target is the London Bar. The owner, Paul, is my neighbour. It turns out that his birthday is December 25 and he celebrates it on Christmas Eve in his shop, with sandwiches, live music and drinks, lots and lots of drinks.
Friends, acquaintances and casual guests hang out with their legs, so to speak. Hua Hin presents a strange sight at Christmas. The bar girls are usually dressed in red dresses, with on their Thai heads such a ridiculous hat with flickering lights. This is the peak of the high season Thailand. The hotels are full, as are the restaurants and often the bars in the center. The audience consists (of course) of couples with children, but also a striking number of single men. They move around in groups, hunting for young game. Which, by the way, is abundantly available. This is also the high season for them.
Paul (in the past six years a British professional soldier in Germany) is a member of the Badgers Brotherhood, a motorcycle club of dangerous looking (older) men with even more dangerous looking motorcycles. They make an appearance and mingle with the general public. There is also a young Dutchman, who makes the silly remark to another young man - also Dutchman - that he is not a full member of the Badgers. Suddenly they are fighting on the street in front of the bar. It's a lot of pushing and beating and I have to save my bottle of beer from grabbing hands that see my alcoholic snack as a club. The ladies scream and the members of the Badgers present try to appease the matter. Excitement and sensation on Christmas Eve, what more could a person wish for? And there were no injuries.
Hans,
Tonight, Christmas Day, I am still in the northernmost tip of Thailand, near Mae Sai on the border with Myanmar. There is really nothing to do in this village. This morning at 6am we were awakened, as so often, by the local public address system, those megaphones every 100 meters above the road. The message was that a few monks will soon come to collect money and rice! Good morning! That's waking up again! Real Christmas atmosphere… .. Monks who use Christmas to collect money and food for this special occasion.
The rest of this day was just a working day like every day, the heavy truck traffic just rumbles through here. No Christmas! No tree, no ball, no snow…
By the way, Hans, I will be in Hua Hin tomorrow evening, Tuesday and Wednesday. I would really like to meet you somewhere in Hua Hin. Would you please let me know by email if you want that too? I assume that you as an editor have my email address. If not, please post a comment here. Thanks in advance for that.
Merry Christmas Eve and hope to see you very soon. Sincerely,
Robbie
Folks, if you miss Christmas so much, come back to the Netherlands or Europe to celebrate Christmas there, without all that kitsch that passes for Christmas. Christmas should not be celebrated there at all, in a part of the world where Buddhism is the religion. Christmas in Thailand is to knock the farangs out of the stock market. Merry Christmas from beautiful snowy Garmisch Partenkirchen!
Fortunately, Christmas in the Netherlands is not used to knock the consumer out of the stock market 😉
Apart from unfortunately also a bit of commercialism, I traditionally see Christmas also a party that was celebrated during the winter solstice, long before Christianity was introduced, why else the Christmas tree? In German-speaking countries, being together with family and friends is the core, I know from German friends. That whole thing with
gifts is mainly American after all. Everyone is free for Christmas (except for a very small part), in Thailand everyone continues to work and the kitschy Christmas decorations are meant to boost commerce. And actually Christmas should not be celebrated there at all in that part of the world where Buddhism is the main religion. Maybe we should get rid of this American idea that the whole world should celebrate Christmas, eat hamburgers and drink coke while there are regional parties that belong to that part of the world, local cuisine that is 10x tastier than McDonalds. I, and many around me, don't buy anything or only a few small things at Christmas, but Christmas is celebrated with friends. When I hear a story about a brothel in Hua Hin, with prostitutes in red dresses with Christmas hats, the kitschyness of this whole thing drips off and I still get a feeling that many expats see as a prejudice. It strikes me every time how many of those expats in places like Pattaya or Hua Hin, then a certain feeling comes over me (I know that I will kick many sore shins now). Sorry, but Christmas is celebrated very differently in German-speaking countries than in a brothel anywhere in southern Thailand. The overkill of sex tourism in the south of Thailand was also the reason for me to first go to China, then Vietnam and Cambodia, and only 2 years ago to Thailand for the first time, avoiding the south but mainly being in the North . Has nothing to do with being a prude, but I think it's a great pity that Thailand and sex are mentioned in the same breath, really a pity! When I first flew to Thailand via Frankfurt, I got certain stories confirmed that mainly older, single men go to Thailand and mainly not for nature. Most of the passengers on the plane were men over the age of 40-50. In countries such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, you generally find a different kind of tourist than in Thailand. Again, a real shame, Thailand should have much more to offer than just sex tourism.
Thailand also has that, but you have to be in (or on) the right place, if you go to Pattaya, etc., then you look it up yourself, Sex tourism is only a small part of the goal for which most people go to Thailand.
It is just a pity that the negative experiences always receive so much attention and to say that Pattaya is representative of Thailand is very short-sighted, you are not obliged to go there, you go of your own free will, You can't be blamed for ignorance because enough is known about it..
I disagree with you, Jan. But maybe that's because I'm not religious, and you might be, which makes us look at it a little differently. The kitschy Christmas decorations (is it just me or do the Christmas trees at the shopping malls get bigger every year?) are also quite dominant in the Netherlands, according to my memory. And then there are those terrible Christmas carols in the Dutch catering industry, supermarkets, etc. Christmas is still celebrated on a fairly limited scale in Thailand. In places where many tourists come (such as the bar Hans writes about), the catering industry does indeed try to create a Christmas atmosphere. That makes sense from a business point of view and I don't see what's so wrong with that. It doesn't go further than wearing some Christmas clothes. I'm not a Christmas celebrant myself, but I think it's so thoughtful of the Thai that they wish farang a Merry Christmas. Not only in bars where they want to earn money from you, but also at the bank or in the food court, for example, I was wished merry X-mas. (I also think it's kind of weird to call a bar with bargirls a brothel. A large part of the guests just come for a beer). It is not the case that Christmas is a purely commercial event here. In Bangkok, Christmas is becoming increasingly popular among the Thai, but I dispute that they are purely about gifts. The Thai people I know who I see celebrating Christmas around me understand that it's all about feeling together, not about expensive gifts. At the apartment complex next to me, where only Thai people live, they had a Christmas party yesterday where no gifts were involved, but people enjoyed a Thai meal together (no hamburgers). My company, where I am the only farang, has a Christmas party every year, where the emphasis is on togetherness and fun and where some cheap gifts are raffled just for fun. More and more Thais in Bangkok are taking advantage of Christmas to go back to their relatives in the country for a few days. It is therefore remarkably quiet on the roads in Bangkok these days.
What the Thai do not understand is that in the West they close the shops for Christmas and that everyone is indoors. Not sanook. I think the climate difference is to blame for this. If Christmas in the Netherlands fell in the summer, I think it would be celebrated differently. Thais are used to celebrating social festivities away from home. I don't blame them.
You have a strong opinion about sex tourism in Thailand, but also say you avoid it like the plague, so I don't think you know what you're talking about. If you come by again, take a look around you in the immigration line. Then you will see that today's tourist is more versatile than you indicate. The profile of the Thailand tourist and expat is now younger, more feminine and more multi-national. The image of the fat German pervert is outdated, but it's just what you want to see.
Let us strip Christmas of its commercial and religious bandages. It is the Festival of Light. For Europeans, the hope that after the winter there will be a new “hope”.
the 1st time with Christmas in TH was also in Hua Hin for me. Days before Christmas, every restaurant I visited advised me to reserve a place for Christmas dinner because there was already little room left.
the opposite turned out; all restaurants were virtually empty.
so that's different now?
Young (and apparently aggressive) Dutchman, member of a motorcycle club in Thailand. Hmm, that raises questions for me...
Thank you for this informative piece. Now we know where we shouldn't be in Hua Hin.
Hua Hin is even worse than Pattaya. Losers Paradise, especially in Soi 80. And it was once the nicest seaside resort in Thailand, a real shame.
Rob you dare to claim quite a lot without listing just 1 fact.
You're talking about 1 soi and compare that all of Hua Hin is worse than all of Pattaya.
If you ever come forward with your story, there must have been drink again,
Soon someone will claim that 1 street in Pattaya is worse than the whole of Bangkok.
come to bkk, hugely busy at the malls, live music, Christmas decorations everywhere, etc. English pub huge buffet 800 baht. People from india japan china europe etc etc. Christmas discounts up to 50 percent everywhere. And suddenly you can only withdraw 10k baht at all banks, isn't it smart!