It might be because we stay, for the first time, at Baan Kang Mung, in a part of Hua Hin,  where Khao Takiap is, where we’ve never been before. Because then things to do and see in Hua Hin are more or less every time the same: the beautiful peculiar train station, the night market, the recently built Plearn Wan (but that recalls the 60s) and the elegant Sofitel Hotel, for the usual tea or coffee. It’s this repetitiveness that always makes me think of Hua Hin as an ideal destination for the middle-aged, with tourist offers mostly concentrated on them: Italian restaurants and tailor shops are now almost countless! Therefore the best thing of staying in a white wooden two-floor-house in an area far from the centre (but well connected with songteaw and tuk-tuk) is to find yourself suddenly in a street where only Thais are passing by. With the exception of three farangs drinking the same can of Chang beer since the day before, and will probably continue also the day after, around a small table in front of 7/11. While under the terrace where I’m trying to put Sofia to sleep, once that the sea water in the distance has already retreated, I visualize a scene that I think I’ve already seen at Jim Thompson Art Centre some days ago, in one of the videos of Apichatpong Weerasethakul where silence, art, beauty and Thailand get muddled, most of the time, incomprehensibly: three men sitting at a table, in a courtyard that end where the palm trees are more ruined, are spending their time without speaking, just eating, drinking beer and shooting gum bullets at empty beer cans. And silence between one shot and the other is what someone would call art.

Too bad that the beach near where we stay is not so beautiful, due to the heavy rains that in these day reached the South. Khao Takiap, with its temple on the top of a hill from where you can have a good view of the coast of the city, offers sunbeds for 50 bath and nice restaurants (let Sky, a friendly Thai with dread-locks help you) but for something better one has to move to Hat Sai Noi, not far from Khao Tao. Also here the sea is rough but the beach, full of shells, is the best alternative for who is tired of horses and old people on the beach. And if you also think that you saw a couple sat on the rocks, don’t worry, it’s not the heat, but two statues put there to confuse us. The last bath, the last shower and, with bags and Sofia on our backs, we go back where our small holiday started: the train station.

While waiting for our third class train, there’s still time for a coffee at the new Hua Hin Coffee Station, full of those gadgets and little things that make Hua Hin famous and I’d always want to buy them, although I already have such a magnet on my fridge and it’s not exactly the first time that I’m around here. I settle for a simple stamp almost as to put a seal on yet another mini-holiday in Hua Hin. Convinced that surely it’s not be the last one.

What does exist in this island (and were also the very first places where Tam took us with his tuk-tuk upon arriving from Sriracha with the 5 o’clock boat) are the restaurant owned by Pan&David (1) and a guest house called Rim Talee (2): the first, in the absence of competitors, is probably the best restaurant the island can offer, as David who welcomes us tends to underline. The second is the typical hotel you’ll find anywhere in Thailand, overpriced for what it is (650 bath double room, 1500 bath to sleep in a boat turned into mini-apartment) in a location with no beach where you could swim. For that, we have to go to the opposite side of the island and  it’s just what we do the next morning.

Once we understand where the sights are and how small the island actually is, we take off, carrying luggage together with my daughter in my arms and pass in front of the main gate of the Royal Palace (3), ascend a small hill, meeting on our left a palace that seems to come from some fairy tale or some movie set, such as “The Fall” – later we discover it to be Hotel Malee Blue (4) - and we arrive to the Ao Atsadang  beach, or at least that’s what the road signs state, since on the maps it’s called Tham Phang Beach (5). Once we get there, it’s enough to ask for a bungalow and we are given a hut, half cement and half wood, with a big terrace and 3 double beds for 1500 bath, perfect for our specific case; we only have to ask for a menu and they serve us a superb dish of kung thoot, a spicy yam talee and there’s also the possibility to use the sun-beds, 20 bath each. In front of us lies a bay full of colourful fishing boats and, a bit further away, huge cargo ships waiting to enter to Bangkok that could easily be confused with islands. The water is beautiful and clean, the beach quiet.

But the real spirit of Koh Si Chang comes out only the next morning, after having spent late afternoon of the previous day around the remains of the Royal Palace complex (most of them “used to accommodate members of the royal family”) and a temple, Wat Atsadangnimit, that looks like a church on the lower elevation and like a temple on the floor above. But, as I was saying, here is the real Koh Si Chang: groups of young Thais that just arrived (it’s Saturday) are taking photos and playing in the water, fully dressed. A do-it-yourself barbecues are waiting to be filled with squid and shrimps. I-Phone and BB taking place of the guitars. We leave all this behind us, get in the tuk-tuk (they use motorbike in the front here in Koh Si Chang) that brings us to the pier; passing once again in front of that oniric building, too strange to be true. This makes me think that probably I’ll not come back to Koh Si Chang but that, in the end, I’m not even sure to have ever been there.

In this case, the free magazine BANG! gave me the occasion to write an article about a secret place connected with the celebrations of the 84th birthday of HM King Bhumibol and I choose the Princess Mother Memorial in Thonburi.

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