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Hat Tung Wua Laen --- January 2020


Nasiadai
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Here is a report I wrote in German for my People at home; here is my translation. If there are mistakes, I beg your pardon.

I repeat once again:
I have about 30 people on my e-mail list. Family, friends, acquaintances etc. For these approx. 30 people I write travel and experience reports.
I write my impressions and experiences in a MS-Word compatible text file. In the text I insert pictures which loosen up the report and show the reader
very concretely where I am and what I am writing about.

One more remark:

I have often reported about my beach and the area here. I have been coming to thjis place for over 25 yeras now; I assume that some things are known,
so that I don't have to describe many things again.

When I'm proofreading, I notice:
I translated some sentences according to German syntax. This is incorrect for native English speakers; I apologize.

Now let's start ...

 

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Hat Tung Wua Laen in January 2020

Hello, moin moin, sawasdee kraph my dear Peoples in wet, cold and dark Germany.
I am at my beach, the Hat Tung Wua Laen, near the city of Chumpon, about 500 km south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Siam.
In the last years I have reported several times and in detail about this paradise.

Last Sunday around 5 pm; a few locals are still enjoying themselves on the beach; it was a bit hazy.

1945158206_ChumponStrand-DSC00278.thumb.jpg.8d12e843a6e7ebdc83ccdeabbb0e59ef.jpg


 

142456245_ChumponStrand-DSC00288.thumb.jpg.7018f2250380cab00153cfbf111c16ec.jpg

The palms sway in the light onshore wind.


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My dear girl,
Soon there will be waterproof smartphones; girl, then you can even swim and bathe with your mobile phone and at the same time send your friends some selfies,
so that they become green and blue with envy.

to be continued ..

 

 

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1947345095_ChumponStrand-DSC02963.thumb.jpg.bc4c2faf466a05d6989f17a07f629112.jpg

At the southern end of the beach. This is the final stop; terminal (Right now the Traveling Wilburys are singing "End of the Line").
If you don't feel like it now, I can't help you anymore. Simply dreamlike, paradisiacal.

==================


As Christian grown-ups we know that there was no work in paradise. Adam and Eve lived in a heavenly-elysian state, room and board were free, the Wishing Table Restaurant opened its doors daily with the most exquisite delicacies of the Garden of Eden. Roast chicken, milk and honey, pineapple and cherries, dates and figs, accompanied by exquisite wines and champagnes such as the red wine Château La Mission Haut Brion Cru classé Graves or a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from Burgundy (the bottle at current market price at 500 Euro, round about). In the evening, a Dom Pérignon Vintage or a Pommery Brut Royal Champagne was tasted; our two paradise inhabitants certainly did not do it below that.

Since 25 years now, the Tung Wualaen beach is my paradise. I say now times freshly, piously, merrily, freely like I am, this Arcadia here is absolutely comparable with the heavenly garden Eden. It used to be, in my healthy times, it was for about a week (I usually had 4 weeks vacation then); now I spend almost a month here. My drinks are called 'Singha Drinking Water'© or Crystal water, and instead of champagne I celebrate a bottle of San Miguel Light - or two - at one of the beach bars in the evening. The San Miguel Light is the Dom Perignon of beers here, so to speak; that's why it's a bit more expensive than the other beers.

However, it was the bad Eva's fault, the fall of mankind occurred, and suddenly over and done! Now it said "in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread". Since the expulsion from paradise, we humans have been living beyond Eden and are condemned to work. Toil and drudgery are now the order of the day. Such efforts and hardships I will have to take upon myself and master when I am on my way through Laos. Hours of nightly bus rides through this mountainous, hilly country are an ordeal. Hardly any roads are asphalted; they are clay and gravel roads, winding, mountainous, through forests and valleys; a constant up and down to reach the destination. How did the Beatles once sing? "The long and winding road to your door".

Men in their prime, real men, rent motorcycles in Vientiane and ride them around the country. They often film their rides with a helmet camera; fast, adventurous. My God, I'm jealous when I see that. The Laotian landscape and its roads and paths are a challenge to all our senses and at the same time to the driving skills of the motorcyclist. The reward: Here the dream of freedom and adventure becomes reality.

Unfortunately, this is no longer granted to me; I can't even rent a scooter on this beach anymore, with which I could make excursions to the nearer and further surroundings. Stroke, over and done.

Back to my beach.
Certain forms of landscapes do not exist 'per se'; it depends on how we humans look at, evaluate and reflect upon them: Landscapes are created in the minds of their viewers. What we see is interpreted, evaluated, tested for usefulness and usability, linked with ideas, images or metaphors. When the Greeks took up their aggressive conquest policy in the eastern Mediterranean in the 12th century BC, they needed protected anchorages and suitable landing places on the shores so that they could enter the country with men, weapons and equipment. Such 'landscapes' were bays with flat beaches surrounded by large promontories. The Greeks of this age did not see the 'beach' as a place of pleasure and leisure, where one could swim and bathe, sunbathe on the beach. It was a useful place to go ashore.

In all the traditions of Greek mythology, the beach is a place of anchorage for ships, a place to go ashore comfortably and safely, and a place of salvation that offered shipwrecked, distressed sailors a way to return to life safely with the waves and swell.

There is not a single scene in Homer's Iliad in which he depicts Greek fighters bathing and enjoying themselves in the water on the beach off Troy. A poet of Homer's eloquence would probably have enjoyed presenting such bathing scenes to readers in his hexameter verses, for example after a heavy and costly battle against the Trojans. But to use the beach as a bathing beach did not occur to either the Greeks fighting off Troy or their highly talented, brilliant poet. This was beyond their imagination, beyond their horizon of thought.

Mozart, together with the librettist Giambattista Varesco, turned one of the myths that followed the Illias into a great opera. In the first of his seven master operas, a beach on Crete also plays a decisive role. King Idomeneo returns from the Trojan War with his fleet, but shortly before reaching his destination his fleet is hit by a terrible storm. All ships are destroyed and in order to save his ship and the lives of the last fighters and sailors, he promises to sacrifice to the sea god Poseidon, the first to meet him on Cretan soil upon his arrival. Poseidon has an understanding and all men, including King Idomeneo, can save themselves to the beach with their last strength.

In the libretto, the brief but meaningful stage direction reads: beach on a still moving sea, surrounded by steep rocks. On the shore the wreckage of a ship.

Unfortunately, it is his son Idamante who hurries to greet him ... and the drama takes its course …

to be continued ..

 

 

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Unfortunately, however, the number of tourists has fallen once again. They are mainly holidaymakers and overwinterers of retirement age; married couples, small mixed groups; younger tourists still in working life are in the clear minority. Swedes, Dutch, English and several Germans; in addition, three or four French. Of course, it is the plummeting currencies that play the main role in the absence of Western tourists. The US Dollar, the Pound Sterling and our disaster Euro have lost more than a third of their value against the Baht. At the same time, the Baht is also very strong; in recent years, a lot of foreign capital has flowed to Thailand, for example because of the better interest rates. The Thai balance of payments shows a strong plus. The strong Baht is causing great difficulties for the domestic export industry. Thai goods and services are increasingly becoming too expensive. Moreover, neighbouring countries are much cheaper; wage and income levels there are well below those of Thailand. I suspect that the Thai central bank, in agreement with the government, will devalue the Baht by quite a lot in the near future.

Due to this unfortunate currency situation many Farlangs cannot come anymore, especially pensioners. Many western holidaymakers are beginning to switch to the neighbouring countries. Cambodia also has beautiful and still largely undeveloped beaches in its south. Vietnam attracts more and more western tourists. The reason might be that these countries are a good third cheaper than our kingdom.

But the native Thais are using their beaches more and more. During the weekdays in the late afternoon - i.e. after work - around 5 p.m. some of them come with their cars, pickups, scooters from the surrounding area for one or two hours to swim, picnic; the children play and romp on the beach, live out their urge to move. In the evenings in the darkness there are always a few young lovers on the beach and enjoy their togetherness. The pleasant temperatures of about 25 degrees and the light onshore wind make the evening a pleasure.

It gets dark very quickly; when the sun sinks below the horizon at about 6.20 pm, the twilight lasts at most 20, 25 minutes, then darkness prevails.

After dusk I often sit at the table in front of the kiosk that my bungalow landlords run. There I have WiFi - internet reception -, read the German newspapers, magazines, blogs etc. and get excited, my blood pressure and heart rate rise ... I close the notebook and go to the next beach bar, watch the pool, chat with the guests about this and that, about all and sundry and drink a Changbier, enjoy the light evening breeze ....

1680131595_Abends-Kiosk-DSC05110.thumb.jpg.18241986c2ce50985ec435f5bc8df088.jpg

My evening workplace in front of the kiosk.

The evening beach road, behind it is the beach; a couple of lovers with their scooters, further back a few Thais are enjoying the beach. From the open doors of the pickup truck loud Thai music sounds. It's about 7.30 pm; a few minutes later they were all gone and I sit all alone in the light evening breeze with Changbier and my notebook.

Enough for one go.
Stay tuned
There is more to come

Live from Hat Thung Wua Laen - Your voice from the beach
PS: I'm going to take a bath now. Only near the shore, of course.
The water there is a pleasant 26 degrees.

Envious? Get on a plane!

Moderator - Khun Sanuk - the program does not let me upload more pictures. It reports with an error message, which is incomprehensible to me.
Here should be a picture of the beach in the evening.

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