Hua Hin, Thailand: the railway resort the court built first

Hua Hin exists as a resort because of a train line. When the southern railway pushed down the peninsula in the early twentieth century it made a fishing village suddenly reachable from the capital in a day, the royal family established a summer residence here, and Bangkok's social season acquired a seaside address. A grand railway hotel followed to house the arrivals. The evidence is still standing and is genuinely worth an hour: the town's railway station is one of the most photographed in the country, a wooden building in red and cream with an ornate detached pavilion on the platform that was a royal waiting room, moved here from a palace and reassembled. The old hotel survives too, much extended, its colonial-era frontage and topiary gardens still facing the sea. What makes this more than architectural trivia is that it explains the town's whole character — Hua Hin was designed as a place for people from Bangkok to be comfortable in, and a century later that is still the job it does. The royal residence remains an active residence; its grounds open to visitors only at certain times and are closed entirely when in official use, so treat access as something to check locally on the day rather than to plan a trip around.

The most useful thing to understand about Hua Hin is that its primary market is Thai, not foreign. The consequences are everywhere. The week has a shape — quiet from Monday, busier from Friday afternoon as cars come down from Bangkok, and properly full on long weekends and public holidays, when hotel availability tightens sharply and the night markets are shoulder to shoulder. Prices and menus are pitched at domestic visitors, which generally means better and cheaper seafood than an international resort strip would offer. The beach behaves accordingly: it is long, flat and shallow, safe for children, and used for walking and eating rather than for the postcard swimming that the islands sell. Horses have been offered for rides along the sand here for generations and remain a fixture. None of this makes Hua Hin better or worse than an island — it makes it different, and the difference is the reason to come. Travellers who want turquoise water and dramatic headlands should go elsewhere; travellers who want a comfortable, walkable, well-fed coastal town that is easy to reach and does not require a boat will find Hua Hin unusually satisfying.

Evening is when this town is at its best, and the markets are the reason. The long-running night market in the centre closes a street with stalls of grilled seafood, noodles and souvenirs and is the busiest, most obvious version; a second market built around a railway theme trades on atmosphere and craft stalls; and a third, more food-focused market draws local families rather than visitors and is the one worth seeking out if you only do one. Across all of them the offer is the same in the best way: fish, prawns and squid displayed on ice and cooked to order, som tam pounded in front of you, and sweets sold by the bag. The town's restaurant scene benefits from that resident foreign population — bakeries, long-running Italian and German places, and coffee that is better than a beach town of this size would otherwise sustain. For a sense of the older working coast, the fishing pier and the shophouse lanes behind it still land and sell the catch, and several of the plainest and best seafood restaurants sit out on stilts over the water there, which is where locals take visiting relatives.

Two activities have given Hua Hin a reputation beyond its beach. The first is kitesurfing: the seasonal winds along this coast are steady and the water is shallow and forgiving a long way out, which makes it one of the best places in Asia to learn, with a cluster of schools operating along the beach through the windy months. The second is golf — the hills immediately inland hold a concentration of courses, several of them long-established, and the sport is a large part of why the town draws the long-stay visitors it does. Inland the landscape rises quickly into dry hills that are a surprise if you have only seen the seafront: viewpoint temples on rocky outcrops, vineyards that have made a genuine local industry out of tropical winemaking, and small farms. The temple built into a headland cave south of town, reached through a monkey-populated forecourt, is the most-visited of the outlying sites and a reminder that this coast is limestone country. For a half-day the hills give a completely different landscape from the beach without a long drive, which is a rare thing on Thai coasts.

Hua Hin's own beach is only the middle of a longer coastline that repays exploring. North, Cha-am is an older and more thoroughly domestic resort with a broad flat beach and rows of deckchairs and beach kitchens, which is where you go to see what a Thai family beach day looks like at full volume. South, the coast quietens quickly: Khao Takiab marks the end of the main strip with its hilltop temple, and beyond it Pranburi's beaches are longer, emptier and increasingly lined with small design-led hotels rather than towers. Further south again is the reason many people base themselves here — a coastal national park of limestone hills rising straight out of rice flats and shrimp ponds, containing salt marsh, mangrove boardwalks, and the sea cave that is the region's signature image, where a collapsed roof drops a shaft of light onto a royal pavilion built inside the cavern. Reaching it involves a boat hop or a steep walk and then a climb, so it is a morning's commitment rather than a casual stop, and the light in the cave is best earlier in the day. All of this sits within an easy drive of the town, which is what makes Hua Hin a base rather than a single beach.

Hua Hin's accessibility is central to its identity: it is one of the few Thai beach destinations that needs neither a flight nor a ferry. The drive from Bangkok is a straightforward run of a few hours down the coast road, which is why the town lives on a weekend rhythm; buses and minivans run the same route frequently from the capital's southern terminals, and the train remains the atmospheric option, arriving at that famous station. The airfield outside town sees only intermittent scheduled service, so air arrival is not something to build a plan around. Within the town, the centre is walkable and the beach road is the spine; songthaews and motorbike taxis cover the rest, and app-based cars operate. For the outlying sights — the national park, the vineyards, the hill temples — a car with a driver for the day is the efficient choice, since public transport thins out quickly beyond the town limits and the distances are longer than they look on a map of the coast. Scooters are widely rented, with the standard caution: the main highway carries heavy fast traffic, and it is not a road for inexperienced riders.