Huahin for Digital Nomads

Along with Pattaya, Huahin is the best known beach destination within easy reach of Bangkok. That's where the similarities end.

While Pattaya is well known as a sexed-up party town with various guises of prostitution on every street, Huahin is famous for being the favoured holiday destination of the late king Rama IX. It was once considered the beach destination in Thailand that locals go to. That's no longer the case and there are many foreigners here now, but compared to Pattaya, coming to Huahin is like going to an old people's home.

Most of the foreigners that live here are retirement-aged men. And while there is obvious evidence of businesses to satisfy them, prostitution here is definitely not at the forefront. It's still a relatively sleepy beach town where you have to go out of your way to visit any of the three main bar areas.

If you want to party, go to Pattaya. Your main motivation for coming to Huahin should be that it's a nice, relaxed place to be, without much going on.

It's known for its beach, which is very overrated. It's not an especially nice beach to begin with, and it gets ruined by the incessant noise of the jet skis that pollute it. Just come here if you want a few uneventful days to unwind.

Most sois in Huahin run east to west meaning you can get some nice views at the right time of day. This is on soi 98.

Who is Huahin suitable for?

You should come to Huahin if you're either old or boring. Perhaps that's a little simplistic, but what I mean is if you want to party, there are better places to go.

While there is plenty of beer to be drunk in Huahin, and you can have a good night and spend way too much money just like anywhere else, partying in Huahin is more incidental than intentional.

Come here if you want to relax, to sit by the pool, and have a wholly unremarkable time.

How affordable is Huahin?

Huahin is a little cheaper than Bangkok, but the difference nowadays is pretty negligible. I've paid around 1,400 baht per night for my very nice room on my last couple of visits (cheaper rooms are available). Expect to pay at least 150 baht for a plate of food in a western restaurant. A small bottle of beer costs around 80 baht.

Is Huahin safe?

Huahin is bisected by a very busy main road that doesn't have many bridges. Crossing this road is about as dangerous as Huahin gets.

Being so much more relaxed, you won't see the bar fights that you see in Pattaya, and I've felt safe walking around at all hours of the night here.

Is it easy to get by with English in Huahin?

Very. Like any touristy city in Thailand, all menus are in English and all people you're likely to interact with speak English. It's not a good place to come if you want to practice Thai.

How is the Internet in Huahin?

I've stayed in two different places in Huahin. In the first the Internet was arse. In the second it was commendably fast. The infrastructure certainly exists for fast Internet, just do your research on the place you're staying to know whether they make the most of it.

Getting around Huahin

Green songthaews run along the main road that bisects Huahin, but they only run every 30 minutes and don't run at night, so aren't really worth waiting for. Huahin is a perfectly walkable city. You can go walk the main road or even along the beach if you fancy it, so I'd suggest that's how you get around.

If you're being lazy or you need to get somewhere quickly, Grab is the simplest option. You will find taxis, tuk-tuks and motorcycles for hire on the roads, but expect to get tourist prices.

Going to immigration in Huahin

The Huahin immigration office is on the basement floor of the Bluport shopping mall. If you do need to attend an immigration office at any point (for a visa extension or a 90-day report, for example) then I recommend doing it in Huahin.

I've done two visa extensions here. On the first I arrived with no documents other than my passport - I only came here to ask them what documents I needed to do the extension the next day. Instead I left after less than 20 minutes with my extension already completed.

It was so easy that next time I needed to do a visa extension, I came to Huahin just to do it. It's a far cry from what you experience in Bangkok or Pattaya.

Where to run in Huahin

Huahin isn't an especially running-friendly town. Being uneven and in places crowded, running along the pavements here isn't especially enjoyable. The beach is much better, but only at low tide.

My first time running on the beach in Huahin I did so barefoot. I only ran 5km, but even that left me with some pretty nasty blisters. That's never happened to me when I've run on beaches before, so I guess that the granularity of the sand here isn't great for running. Henceforth I've always run in trainers, but when it's not low tide the sea can come all the way up the beach and block your path, which isn't ideal while wearing trainers - salt water being one of the best ways to ruin them.

That can lead you to either running back and forth along the beach like a muppet, or going back up to run along the road, neither of which are ideal. So my suggestion is run along the beach but wear trainers, and try to time your runs for low tide.

Apparently the mountains you can see from town can be run up, but I haven't made it out to them to try.

While running on the beach, be aware that it's not very kind to your feet if you run barefoot, and that water will block your path at high tide.

Being sociable in Huahin

There are no organised social events that I've ever come across in Huahin, so my social life here has always been limited to sitting in bars and talking to people, of which there are three main bar areas in Huahin.

The most well known of these is soi Bintabaht, which marks the city centre and is where you're going to find the most tourists and hence the highest prices. In my experience it has far more bars than it does customers to satisfy them, so it's not a place you can really enjoy a beer without being hassled. It's worth going to once just to check it out, but you probably won't want to return.

Quite nearby to this is soi 80, which has become an entire street of bars. It can be fun, but like Bintabaht half the bars seem to lack any customers, which is never enjoyable.

My favourite area is soi 94. It centres around this one structure housing a dozen or so open bars, but don't make the mistake of thinking this is it. Behind this building and in the surrounding sois there are many others, so you'll be able to find something to keep you happy. For example Wild Hawks Sportsbar is a great place to watch football as they even have the commentary on.

Most bars close by 2am, but as with anywhere, search around and you'll find places that'll stay open for as long as you're drinking.

If you go down soi 88 far enough that you cross the railway tracks you get to Chang Market. I don't recommend it, the music was terrible when I went and it was so loud that you wouldn't be able to have a conversation with your friends even if you had any, I just thought this was a nice picture.

Getting vegan food in Huahin

There's a tradition in Huahin that as soon as I recommend a restaurant as being vegan-friendly in this article, they immediately move to a new location. It's musical restaurants in this city.

The best place to get vegan food in Huahin, by far, is the imaginatively named 'Huahin Vegan' (below). In the event that you've gone mental and decide to eat somewhere else, there are a few restaurants dotted around with vegan options on the menu.

S and S Indian Restaurant is perhaps my favourite, or at least it used to be. They started from humble beginnings with a small premises on soi 94. I visited in 2016 and frankly it wasn't very good. Then they moved to a huge building in an amazing location on the main road and were open all day. I'd come here every other day for lunch, and often be the only customer. It was great. Not for them obviously, because they moved yet again to their current location, a side road off soi 94, and very regrettably scaled-back their hours to only open at 3pm each day.

As I typically only eat one meal per day, often in the late morning, it makes it quite unfriendly to me, but if you can make it, their food is really, really good. There are several Indian restaurants in Huahin, but this is the best.

There are 25 vegetarian curries on the menu, and all barring those with paneer can be made vegan. Each one is 175 baht, rice starts at 70 baht, and the two vegan breads on the menu cost 40 baht. That means curry, rice and bread for 285 baht.

Just around the corner from S and S is Ogen, a Middle Eastern restaurant in their second location on soi 94. They moved slightly further down the road just to annoy me, but now have a large premises with a really small indoor area. It's a bit strange because only the indoor area is air conditioned, so everyone tries to cram in there.

There are a small number of vegan options which are marked on the menu, including hummus (from 160 baht), falafel (150 baht for six), three types of salad, and a spinach and mushroom shakshuka, and it's really good food.

Also on soi 94 is Fresh, a poke bowl shop. They only have one vegan item on the menu, the 'fresh and clean' poke bowl for 290 baht, but you can also make your own bowl. This is a great place to come for something healthy.

Way up in the north end of Huahin is Veggie Tales, a garden restaurant in what feels like a family home, which slightly confusingly isn't vegan or even vegetarian - they serve fish, but most of the menu is vegan, with items split into pesco vegetarian, lacto-ovo vegetarian and vegan. Or to use normal words, fish, vegetarian and vegan. It's better value than the other restaurants I've recommended here, and some of the proceeds of what you spend go to Rescue Paws Thailand, which provides treatment to soi dogs.

S and S has 25 vegetarian curries on the menu, like the vegetable jalfrezi. They all cost 175 baht.

Huahin Vegan

178/221 soi 82

By far the best place to get vegan food in Huahin is Huahin Vegan. Also in their second location having been previously located in the now defunct Huahin Shopping Mall, Huahin Vegan have a large menu of really good, and really good value food.

That's the good news. The bad news is that they seem to be perennially understaffed, and if you come at the wrong time, service can be infuriatingly slow.

They often only have one front-of-house member of staff. Not only are they taking orders and carrying food, but they're also responsible for making all drinks, including the extensive list of smoothies. So if you happen to get here just after a family of five decided to order five different smoothies, don't be surprised if you have to wait 20 minutes to put your order in.

Come here when you're relaxed and when a long wait time isn't going to ruin your day, and enjoy the excellent food when it finally comes. Don't come here on your lunch break or when you've got a bus to catch.

Huahin Vegan do the best vegan tuna I've ever had, made from jackfruit. Here it is as a tuna melt sandwich for 190 baht.

Where I stayed

Baan Yokmhanee

250/199 Soi 90 Petchkasem Rd

The Internet here is dog shit. I love everything else about this place.

The location of Baan Yokmhanee is really good. You're a short walk from the beach (albeit across a main road) so if you fancy a morning run or to sit on the beach for some reason, you really don't have to go far. There are several restaurants not more than a few minutes away, with a 7-11 and the soi 94 bar area not much farther.

The bars are almost dangerously close actually. When it's that easy to get to a bar, you often find yourself going to a bar, so treat that as a positive or a negative depending on your outlook.

You're about a five minute walk from the Market Village shopping mall, which has a Lotus's supermarket among other shops, and from there you can catch a minibus to Mo Chit in Bangkok. Blueport shopping mall is about a 10-15 minute walk in the other direction and is home to Huahin immigration in case you need to extend your visa, and that's where you can catch minibuses to Ekkamai in Bangkok, so you have a lot of useful things within easy walking distance.

There is a gym in Market Village (Jetts Fitness) but it's very overpriced for short-term visitors; a day pass costs 500 baht. A little further away, down soi 88, is Body Fit 88 which has any equipment you need for a good workout, and only costs 190 baht for a day pass. To walk to the centre of town from the room takes about 25 minutes.

As for the hotel itself, the room is huge. It has a double bed, a sofa, a desk and a separate dining table, a bathroom, a sort of kitchen, and a tonne of empty space, which is great for exercising.

I say a 'sort of kitchen' because it's more just the space where a kitchen would be. You have a surface, a sink, a refrigerator, some cutlery, a couple of bowls and a hot water dispenser, but there isn't actually any cooking equipment. No oven, no stove and no microwave.

The staff are consistently friendly and attentive. Despite booking through a different platform, come my second stay they'd remembered my name and saved me the same room as my first (408) to stay in again, which was a nice touch. You don't often get remembered as a digital nomad.

The room is made-up daily, which is useful if you get sand everywhere. For all of these things the room is perfect, particularly for the price (although there are cheaper rooms in Huahin). The downside is that the Internet is shocking. It's a connection that you have to sign-into through a login page, of which you get logged-out everytime you put your phone or laptop down. Seriously, you put down your phone to go to the toilet and by the time you come back you have to go through the login page again. And it doesn't remember your username or password so you have to type them every time.

When you are logged-in the speeds are perfectly respectable, with download and upload speeds of roughly 50mbps, but it's just a pain to have to login every time. The saving grace is that I was able to get a very strong 5G signal in my room (AIS), so most of the time I wouldn't bother connecting to the wifi and would just use my data.

Apart from that, this room is close to perfect. Some cooking equipment would be welcome, otherwise the location and the facilities are really spot-on. It's hard to recommend a room to digital nomads when the Internet is so bad, but I do really like it. It's worth putting-up with the shitty Internet in order to stay here.

The room is huge. Loads of space for exercise.

Sky Villa Hua Hin Guesthouse - Adults-Only

8/67 Soi Hua Hin 98

I love Sky Villa - I really don't have a bad word to say about it.

For a start, they're so adamant that no children stay here that they have 'Adults-Only' in the hotel name.

How many times have you been happily relaxing by the pool or reading your book in a coffee shop or enjoying a meal in a restaurant, only for someone to show up with their screaming shit-bags and ruin it? It's so nice to stay somewhere that you know that isn't going to be an issue. I wish more businesses did that. I'd be ten times more likely to eat at a restaurant that said 'adults-only'. They should ban people on laptops too.

And while I understand that children are a necessary evil in the continuation of humanity, we could at least keep them out of public until they're old enough to be less annoying. Fritzl had the right idea.

As for the facilities that you can peacefully enjoy, the pool here is absolutely lovely. It's only 12m long, so you're going to be going back-and-forth a lot when you go for a swim, but it rarely ever has anyone else in it. It gets a lot of sun from early morning until after midday, so is perfect for a morning swim, or if you want something a bit bigger, the beach is only a five-minute walk. The pool is also a nice place to just sit and relax, with many chairs and loungers.

There are only two room sizes in the hotel; 32m² and 42m², which makes it extra confusing that there are seven different room types listed on booking.com. On each of my stays I've chosen the 42m² the Deluxe Double Room with Balcony.

Is that better than the Deluxe Double Room?

It's more expensive, but when the Deluxe Double Room includes a balcony as one of its features then I'm really not sure what the difference is. Irrespective, it is worth the money. So much natural light gets into the room that waking-up every morning is a joy with the sun streaming through the windows. Or there are blackout curtains for weird people. The 42m² rooms have loads of space to exercise, a big double bed, the balcony is really comfortable to sit on, the AC's cool, the wifi is fast and very stable (up to 426mbps download and 220mbps upload speeds), you have a desk to do video calls at, as well as a sofa and extra chair which are also great to work from, a usable (if not great) TV, a fridge, kettle, and even some basic kitchenware.

The kettle has a 1.7l capacity, and as well as giving you a couple of small bottles of water everyday, the housekeepers fill-up the kettle with drinking water, which saves you having to source your own as often as you otherwise would. The nearest 7-11 is about a ten-minute walk.

The reception desk is seldom manned, so it's perhaps not a place if you're very needy, otherwise that's not an issue. The location on soi 98 is a bit out of the centre of Huahin (roughly a 30 minute walk) but I love this area. You're between Market Village Shopping Mall (which includes a branch of Lotus's) and Blueport Shopping Centre (which includes a branch of Big C), so there's not much you can't get nearby. Soi 94, which has a tonne of bars and a couple of vegan-friendly eateries is an easy walk too, so being away from the city centre really isn't an issue. Minivans to Ekkamai and Mo Chit leave from Blueport and Market Village respectively.

And just to mention the sterling work that the housekeepers do here - this hotel is absolutely spotless. One of the reasons that it remains consistently spotless, is they don't allow outdoor shoes to be worn indoors. I find that marginally annoying.

When you arrive back dripping in sweat because you've walked from the town centre, and you have your hands full with water bottles or groceries, then having to take-off and carry your shoes upstairs with you can be a bit of a pain. But that is honestly the worst thing I have to say. This is a really, really lovely, well-run hotel. I have every intention of staying here again when I next come to Huahin.

My favourite thing about this hotel is how much natural light gets in. As well as the glass balcony doors, this east-facing window behind the bed is a joy in the morning.

Summary of Huahin

Do I want to come back again?

Not especially. I found Huahin to be a nice destination to come to when I was spending a lot of time in Bangkok and wanted somewhere relaxing nearby to get away to. When I didn't speak Thai, coming to a town where all the locals speak English made things much easier too.

Now that I am far less fond of Bangkok than I used to be, the allure of a nearby holiday destination is lost. And as I actively seek places with low levels of English so that I can practice my Thai, I really find myself with little reason to visit Huahin.

It's not an especially exiciting place, and there are many other not exciting places in Thailand that are more suited for what I'm looking for.