After Mission Institute we made our way down to Hua Hin. This is a pretty place on the beach about three hours south of Bangkok. Because the King has a palace there it is considered to be more of a family destination, without the slease that other coastal places in Thailand can have. We stayed in Baan Bayan, a lovely house that was once the summer home of a wealthy Thai family. It is now a boutique hotel, right on the beach. We stayed in the old house and enjoyed a few days of luxury.
The room we had was huge, so we could spread out (unlike our stay in Bangkok, where Keira was in a baby cot, Alesia on the couch cushions on the floor and Chris and I in the bed next to her). It also had its own back entrance stairs, which was great when we were covered with sand and wet and didn't want to drip through the main part of the building. The other nice thing was that the whole place was really quiet at night.
In the evenings it was nice to put the girls to bed and then settle into the chairs on the veranda and read, chat or enjoy a fruit punch from the pool-side bar. Because we arrived at the end of the weekend and stayed the first few days of the week we basically had the place to ourselves. You can get more information about Baan Bayan here:
http://www.beachfronthotelhuahin.com/gallery_Baan_Bayan_Beach_Hotel.html
Our routine was very stressful. Breakfast, pool/beach/pool, lunch, shops/pool, dinner, market/wandering/reading.
For those of you interested in more photos of our idleness, you can find them at: http://picasaweb.google.com/mabel.jensen
You will also find albums there of more photos from our month in Thailand.
