🇹🇭 Hua Hin - Wing Foiling
Preparing for retirement?
Coming to Hua Hin wasn’t in my plans. In fact, it probably isn’t in anyone’s, unless you’re retired or have a family. I went there as I wanted to learn wingfoiling, and the wind in Hua Hin was sufficiently strong. I was initially planning on going to Koh Phangan as it’s livelier, but it’s the end of the season there, and the wind is poor.
Hua Hin is a small beach town, apparently pretty popular with older Westerners. There really wasn’t much to do there other than doing watersports and spending time at the beach. It’s also got a surprisingly strong culture of horse riding, so often I’d see horses on the roads and on the beach. It sometimes felt like being in a fever dream.
Wingfoiling
After trying windsurfing a few years ago, I’ve been curious about wingfoiling. The sport only really started in 2019 or so, and has a few advantages over its siblings - the equipment is easier to transport, and you can practice it in weaker wind. Seeing people glide above the water on the hydrofoil also looks surreal, and I wanted to try it.
I’m aware that not many people know of the sport, and to be fair, it seems that watersports like these are mostly popular with older European men. This is what it looks like:
I learned with Surfspot, mostly as they’re Thai-owned. Other schools seemed to be run by Westerners and were charging European prices, which I didn’t want to support over Thai places. Surfspot is an all-encompassing centre for watersports, mostly offering equipment hire and storage for members. Lessons didn’t seem like their forte, judging by the lack of online reviews mentioning them. I felt like I was taking a bit of a risk by booking with them, but at half the price of the places run by Europeans, I thought I’d give it a punt.
I got a Thai guy as my teacher, who goes by “Jack”. He was an adept wingfoiler, but sadly, I don’t think he had much practise teaching others, especially in English. The lessons felt improvised and unstructured, and I felt a language barrier. He also didn’t have a way to get to me when I was out in the sea, and would sometimes run off to the terrace for extended periods of time, meaning that I couldn't ask for advice. I spent a lot of my lessons deliberating whether to switch schools. Towards the end of each lesson, though, I felt like I had progressed enough just by spending time on the board, so I stuck with it.
As to the experience of wingfoiling itself, I found it more fun, but also more difficult than windsurfing. This is mostly due to the wing not being attached to anything, unlike a windsurfing sail. I had to think a lot more about the angles of the wing, as well as the positioning of it relative to the board and me. It felt like I had to learn to concurrently control the wing and the board. When I caught the wind and sped up a bit, though, the experience of gliding through the waves was incredible, making it all worth it.
After the first day, I got a bit sunburned (UX index 13 is no joke), so I took a page out of the Asians’ book and bought a bucket hat and some strong zinc sun cream. I didn’t realise, but the sun cream was red-tinted and took days to wash off. It protected me, but it was the most evil sun cream I’ve ever used.
The wind blessed me on most days, and we only had to cancel the lesson one time. I had a good time, but honestly, I can see why mostly old people are into sports like these - you really need to allocate a lot of time for practise and have a contingency plan for when the wind is not good.
Everything else
Hua Hin didn’t have much going for it. In the evenings, I spent time in my room above a launderette watching videos on winfoiling as a supplement to the teaching, and otherwise just planning future travels. It felt like a holiday from a holiday, which, after 3 months of travelling, I found was much needed.
I also got my first-ever Thai massage here, which wasn’t difficult to find, with most streets full of overstaffed massage parlours. The experience reminded me a bit of being in a hammam in Uzbekistan, with a lot of the massage involving my body being stretched and cracked in a way that had me worrying if I’ll still be able to walk after.
To make the most of the downtime, I also went to the dentist to receive the most efficient scaling & polishing of my life - the Asian work ethic really can’t be understated. There was also a Polish restaurant here, which served really good food. Polish potato pancakes taste surprisingly good with sriracha.
