Hua Hin Fishing Pier

*Caution: Due to the storm earlier, visitors are not allowed to walk on the pier. 

For your safety, please stay around the area.

Undaunted by this ambiguous guidebook warning, we visited the fishing pier at the north end of town.

At the tail end of a streetful of small businesses, the crumbling pier still reaches optimistically out into the Gulf of Thailand. Old-Thai-style buildings there house restaurants ranging from Spanish tapas to German schnitzel and English pub; Indian tailors who threaten to fashion a custom suit that will make you look like Pee-wee Herman on a bad day; inexpensive guest houses with a view of the sea and a small restaurant/bar besides; shops of all kinds; fish markets; and bars where one may rest if a half-mile should prove too strenuous.

The Family Tree (center) is one of the finest
 shops in Thailand. It offers
affordable arts, crafts, jewelry, and clothing
made by community groups and Thai artisans.
Committed to Fair Trade, the shop supports
multiple social and environmental initiatives.
And I did my part by purchasing a dress there.

Along the way is a typical fishing-town grocery store selling a jumble of everything from fish hooks and bait to fan belts, toothpaste, taxidermy, and eggs. "One egg, 5 baht!" chirped a 10-year-old who appears to be next in line to run the joint. His grandfather beamed at the lad's display of initiative.

Motorbikes buzz around the corner on their way into the pier parking area. One of them bore a family of four, with baby atop the handlebars. On another, a little girl, held firmly in place in front of her mother, somehow managed to fall asleep without bouncing off.

Even fishermen's dogs drive motorbikes in Hua Hin.

Closer to the pier, shops shrink down into the roadside variety, where old women and children tend to eateries with plastic chairs and flowered-plastic-covered tables. The sweet smell of fish sauce, soy, garlic, and squid or fish drying, fly-covered, in the sun, begins to drift into the nostrils. Street dogs wander about, mangy and unencumbered by collars or rules. They are, for the most part, good dogs, who sleep so deeply in the heat that they appear dead.

The ongoing road to the pier dwindles down until it becomes clear that you are about to walk straight into a fisherman's home if you continue.

Instead, you turn right, into a large parking lot with an untended administrative building.

The concrete pier itself hasn't seen maintenance in many years. A large sign posted at the entrance warns that you mustn't venture out there.

I piped up, "But there are people there." Indeed, the pier was dotted with Thais fishing, or trying to fish, off the side. A couple from Wales, whom we had been following, stoutly announced, "We're going!" After all, we were following the guidebook's advice and "staying around the area," weren't we?

This view of colorful, if ramshackle, fishing boats is
about as picturesque a shot as one can manage here.
It's a wonder these are seaworthy, and a good thing this
blog doesn't include odors. A great deal of old bait, discarded
takeout Styrofoam, and fish lies rotting in these tangled weeds.

Fisherman's Wharf, Rockport, Gloucester it ain't.





At the end of the pier, the reason for its dire warnings becomes clear.
The good ship Chuang, the most aged of the Thai naval fleet that protects the king's palace, lay docked there, but we didn't dare
cross the pier's gaping, rusty hole to look more closely.
All the way back, the pier seemed to sway
beneath our feet.