Two hours south of Hua Hin, and almost nobody gets off
By Michael Lauritzen
Most people who live in Hua Hin have made the drive south at some point. Pranburi, Sam Roi Yot, maybe as far as Prachuap for the day. Rather fewer keep going, and that is where it gets interesting.
Ban Krut is a village in the south of our own province, roughly two hours down the southern railway line from Hua Hin. It has its own station. Three trains a day stop there. That single fact explains most of what the place is like: it is on the map, it is easy to reach, and almost nobody gets off.
What is there is 12 kilometers of beach. Not a resort strip with a beach behind it, but an actual working coastline with a road along it, coconut groves behind, fishing boats at one end and very little else. There is no beach club. There is no bar street. In the evening, the loudest thing is usually somebody’s motorbike.
At the northern end, Khao Thong Chai rises straight out of the coast, and on top of it sits Wat Thang Sai, properly called Phra Mahathat Chedi Phakdee Prakat. It was built in 1996 and it is worth the climb for the view alone: the whole bay in one direction, the hills in the other. Go early. The stone gets hot.
For expats used to Hua Hin, the honest picture of Ban Krut is this. It has no bank branch, no post office and no shopping mall. It has an ATM, which stands in the middle of the village between the two 7-Eleven stores and works perfectly well, a pharmacy near the station, a couple of small shops and a morning market. That is the lot. If you need a hospital, a cinema or an international supermarket, you drive back to Prachuap or up to Hua Hin.
What it does have is time. There is a morning market opposite the old station, and in it a coffee stall that roasts its own beans and is open from six until half past nine. Along the beach road, there is a pizza place that opens at half past four in the afternoon and is exactly what you want on a Tuesday. There is a cycling club. The seafood is cheap enough to be slightly embarrassing.
The practical bits, for anyone thinking about a night or two. The train is the pleasant way to arrive, but check the timetable first, because only three services stop each day and it is easy to end up in Bang Saphan or Prachuap instead. Driving takes about two and a half hours from Hua Hin on Highway 4, and the last stretch is flat and easy. December to April is the dry season here, and it is genuinely good: warm days, a breeze off the Gulf, a flat sea. October and November are the wet months, when the northeast monsoon pushes straight into this coast, the water turns brown and the beach stops being the reason to come.
Bring cash. Not because the ATM is unreliable, but because almost nothing here takes cards.
If you are making a trip of it, the coast either side is worth the extra hour. Bang Saphan, 40 kilometers further south, has an even emptier beach and even less to do, which for some people is the entire appeal. Prachuap town, back north, has Ao Manao inside the air force base, the monkeys on Khao Chong Krachok and a seafront where the fishing boats come in. And Kui Buri, up toward Hua Hin, remains the most reliable place in Thailand to see wild elephants, which is a strange thing to be able to say about somewhere 90 minutes from your own front door.
None of this is a secret, exactly. It is simply that the trains do not stop for long, and most people are asleep by the time they pass through. For more information about Ban Krut … https://aboutbankrut.com/en/