Serenity descended on Hua Hin once more following last weekend’s Bangkok teenage party at the Honda Summer Music Fest on the beach in Khao Takiab. As expected organisation was shocking and the roads in and out of Hua Hin were gridlocked, there were reports of journeys of a couple of kilometers taking as many hours, even on a bike!

Takiab beach the following day looked like the Lebanon and the sad fact is that a lot of the plastic discarded by revellers the night before will end up washed out to sea. Thai fishermen are bad enough with their polystyrene contributions to marine habitats, and teenagers with plastic bottles just compound a problem that nobody seems to care about.

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The annual Red Cross Fair has been going on down Naebkehardt road in central Hua Hin this week. The gathering of hundreds of local stalls and attractions selling all manner of commodities occurs every April however it doesn’t feel like it was there that long ago. This is because there was one in November last year also.

Live music, thumping speakers and raucous fairgrounds are a great attraction to anyone that doesn’t live within a 2 kilometer radius of the event but for those that live and operate businesses down Naebkehardt road it has been a week of misery.

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One of Hua Hin’s biggest stories in recent times reared its head again this week as the shooting of Donald Whiting sparked more discussion. A number of suspicious looking user accounts and doppelgangers materialised on the forum to have a poke at each other leaving the rest of us still with no clue how this case is proceeding. Getting information from the local plod is harder than finding a parking spot in Hua Hin at the weekend so we’ll just leave those with too much time on their hands to it for now.

Many public forums fall foul to trouble makers and time wasters who have little better to do than hide behind pseudonyms on the internet and have a go at other people. This is the nature of the beast and often explains why forums are so popular, in a virtual world someone can say what they like without any comeback. Just as well HHAD is well moderated and the spurious among its membership are easily spotted and exposed … Hua Hin is still a small town.

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Well the wet week is now over and as expected the death toll on the roads made the violence in Bangkok look like a Sunday picnic on the beach. Alcohol, water fights and motorbikes don’t mix and never will so we trust you all were sensible and never left the safe confines of your local bar!

Many expats have grown a little tarnished over the years and avoid Songkran at all costs; we still find it a great day out providing it doesn’t get out of control. Hua Hin only celebrates the 13th but as you read this people will still be flinging cold water at each other in different provinces around the country.

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The real estate discussion section was bought back to life this week with the same conundrums on buying and leasing property in Thailand. Apparently there are some not-so-honest property developers in Hua Hin (yes we were amazed too) that have been selling houses with a 90 year lease disguised as three renewable thirty year leases. Some local legal advisors and officials in the land office have also been supporting this spurious practice and allowing buyers to be bamboozled by bureaucracy.

A 90 year lease does not exist as one inopportune home buyer later discovered following consultations with a Bangkok lawyer. Only the first 30 years of a property lease in Thailand is covered by law so the rest is just a loose agreement which is probably not worth the paper it is drafted on. The company route to buy property as a foreigner is pretty much a dead end also since the last wave of government restrictions included the enforcement of checks on operational, tax paying, companies with Thai shareholders – who will all be investigated. Not the most welcoming option for a retired couple seeking a holiday home in the tropics.

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Finally, after seven years of last minute scrambling for information, we have been contacted by the organizers of the Hua Hin Jazz Festival with confirmed dates of June 12-14. The official signing ceremony of the 8th Hua Hin Jazz Festival took place on March 23 at Municipality office. No lineup details have been released yet but they did state that there will be two stage locations this year which will alleviate some of the overcrowding at previous festivals.

The jazz festival is always a spectacular event regardless of your tastes in music; you can’t beat the carnival atmosphere on the beach and a cold beer (providing it is on sale). For those that can’t wait until June there will be another music festival on the beach in Khao Takiab though it will attract the younger crowd from Bangkok. The Honda Summer Music Fest 2 kicks off at midday on Saturday May 2 and runs into the night, the lineup will feature a number of Thai ska and reggae bands including T-Bone. News updates and photos for both events can be found on the forum – don’t forget to get online and book your accommodation early if you need somewhere to stay for either weekend, it will be jammed.

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We have a golfing bonanza to look forward to over the weekend as the Black Mountain Masters kicks off and runs from the 26th to the 29th. There is no entrance fee to the tournament so we expect it to be popular despite the heat. A new beer company called Federbrau will be one of the sponsors there so we hope that some bright spark in the government doesn’t decide to ban alcohol sales for it – there will be some thirsty people there.

Watch out for Hua Hin local Prom Meesawat who has been blasting balls down the range at Royal Hua Hin all week in preparation, the home favourite is Tongchai Jaidee but we’ll be rooting for Prom, the Hua Hin talent. Photos and reports from the event will be available on HHAD following the final day of play on Sunday.

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Price comparisons have always been hot topics of contention especially when that comparison is between Hua Hin and Pattaya. The two resorts are constantly being compared but the one that comes up on top in terms of value for money has always been Pattaya. From the cost of a room to the price of a beer, to anything else that you may indulge in the ‘Big P’ beats ‘Double H’ pretty much hands down.

In Hua Hin’s favour, and for many something that is worth the additional expense of living here, is the relative safety, lower crime rate and lack of unadulterated sleaze and generally dodgy characters (although the latter are definitely on the increase in Hua Hin). Pattaya has always been the place for those seeking a little more vivacity in their lives, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea which is why we chose to live in Hua Hin!

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Talk of a new theme park for the Hua Hin/Cha-am area has been heating up again as a story in the Bangkok Post last week stated that the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand (IEAT) and TCC Property Development of Thai Beverage tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi have agreed to launch a mega tourism project in Phetchaburi province.

The ten year project covering 13,335 rai and costing over 60 billion baht is expected to get underway this month following the signing of an agreement between the two investors. Critics of the proposed amusement park voiced concerns over giant rats and six foot ducks wandering around the complex as the area turns into Cha-America. Supporters praised the plan claiming that it would boost the local economy and give parents somewhere to drop off their kids for the day (or week).

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Now that the ASEAN hullabaloo is over, the brown uniforms have slinked off to count their takings, the road mayhem is back to its regular chaos level, the internet has been turned back on, and Hua Hin returns to a state of normality once again. The only lasting benefit we can see is the shiny new widened railway crossing at the G-supermarket, it certainly is a pleasure to navigate!

The local immigration saga is getting more attention, especially as not one of Hua Hin’s estimated 3,000 resident foreigners is looking forward to wasting the best part of a day making a 200 kilometer round trip to Prachuab every 3 months only to be told the ink on their forms is the wrong shade of blue, go back to Hua Hin!

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The hot topic of the week on the forum in Hua Hin is golf. A number of discussions have been raging over golf courses in and around the town, with the major concern to many being the prices. It is well known that Hua Hin isn’t the most wallet friendly destination in Thailand so it comes as no surprise that many expats have been grumbling about green fees on the major golf courses.

Nearly all of the ‘big eight’ around town have been reported to have a dual pricing system, one for Thais and one for foreigners, the cost to play some courses can be up to 200% more than the non-advertised local price. Naturally the societies can play cheaper and there is always the option of buying a lifetime membership but isn’t it about time the permanent expats of Hua Hin are given a break and no longer treated like rich tourists?

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The forum rumour mill has calmed down a little this week as the keyboard cops returned to their corners and the shooting story got brushed under the virtual carpet. This doesn’t mean that anyone of the moderators and staff at HHAD has forgotten about the suffering that Don and Dolly are still enduring. The hope is that the real mastermind behind this attempted murder in Hua Hin is apprehended without further delay. Since the arrests it has all gone quiet and many are still left wondering and, of course, blaming and accusing.

More rants were aired about the lack of English soundtrack movies at the Hua Hin Market Village Cineplex. It seems like the MV management have no interest or inclination in catering to non-Thai customers, the marketing department has already been contacted by several people from the forum and, without surprise, has refused to reply to any of them. It does seem rather perplexing that a cinema in a tourist town doesn’t even have one theatre showing soundtrack movies when Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and Samui have no problems with them or farang customers.

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With over 120,000 views at the time of writing the news of the arrests of four people in connection with the attempted murder of Hua Hin resident Don Whiting was broken to the English language media on HHAD and Hua Hin Report following its release on the Thai language media website Thairath last Tuesday.

Since then a flurry of armchair detectives, bar stool rumour mongers, and property developer pundits have flooded the board with their own version of events and opinions mostly derived from the writings of a few so called ‘investigators’ on other websites.

The big question is the whereabouts of a Mr Darren Oxley, the owner of the development and farang husband of the woman arrested for the planning and paying for the shooting. UK media have also picked up on this story and have reported on some of Mr Oxley’s not so spotless past just to add a bit of spice to the story.

The attention shown on HHAD from people with otherwise very little interest in Hua Hin has been quite inexplicable. Also strangely baffling are the ludicrous accusations some of them have been making regarding the forum’s involvement in all of this. This comes about from one of the websites advertisers, a real estate agency, that severed ties with the accused in the middle of last year, well before the incident took place.

Some not so bright sparks have even made a fabricated connection between the colour schemes used for the agency and the website which only displays the galloping stupidity of individuals with too much time on their hands. HHAD was established in 2002 and the agency several years later in 2006, these keyboard cops could at least do a little research. They’ll be blaming local weekly paper AWOL next for carrying a HHAD logo on its front page!

Naturally other websites that have nothing to do with Hua Hin will open their doors (or web servers) to all kinds of rumour, hearsay, gossip, scandal and online bitch-fights to bump their own readership up and belittle their competitors who, being based in the town in question, need to show a little more consideration when publishing anything regarding local crimes that could be used in a court of law at a later date.

It is good to see that the police have finally swung into action following directives from the new PM (and three months of thumb twiddling) however as the law dictates everyone should be entitled to a fair trial, guilty or not … whether they show up for that trial remains the hot topic. Find out more: HHAD

HHAD would like to thank all of our readers and forum contributors for sticking with us during 2008. We took a glance through our annual readership statistics and are pleased to report a growth of almost 20% from the previous year; we now average almost 1,900 readers per day and totaled approximately 690,000 on the website and forum for the year. We do have a number of new services and will be expanding the site in 2009 so hope you will carry on logging on to see what is happening in Hua Hin on the town’s only active web board.

Hot topics were actually of a cooler nature last month as a cold spell hit Hua Hin and Thailand. Some amusing observations around town were noted as foreign tourists from cooler parts of the globe reveled in the sun as their expat and resident counterparts were buried under several layers of clothing.

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HHAD staff and moderators would like to wish all of our readers and forum contributors a happy new year. Now should be the time to put those problems that are largely beyond our control behind us and look forward to better times ahead. We would also like to thank our sponsors for sticking by us in 2008 and we look forward to HHAD being bigger and better in 2009.

Hua Hin has been hit hard by recent political events and the resultant drop in tourist arrivals. Many hotels are at well below normal occupancy levels for this time of year and the town definitely has less foot traffic (although we can’t say the same for the roads)! All we can say is that Hua Hin has not changed in the slightest, it is still one of the best places in Asia to come for a holiday, the sun is still out, the sky is still blue and the beaches, golf courses, and swimming pools still await you!

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