Baan Rua Resort

My friend Kik told me about this place and she was absolutely right. It's a great place to enjoy a swim and have some lunch. Although at first glance the setting may not seem that glamorous, being right beside a big bridge, it's a lovely spot to while away quite a few hours.

Having not been here before, I took Anne & Graham with me on my first trip whilst Mr John soldiered on at work. I'd been told it was at the end of the bridge on the right hand side and in trying to establish its whereabouts I had mentioned the white temple at Laem Sing. Kik said yes and that I should turn right. I had also seen photos on her Facebook page of the resort and knew you could clearly see the bridge from it.

Without further ado, we all jumped in the car with our beach towels and headed for Laem Sing. After a walk along the beach and, I must say, an outstanding cup of coffee, we set off for the bridge. Before turning right, I thought I'd drive past the spot where we saw monkeys, you know, for our foreign visitors entertainment. Turns out they weren't where I expected them to be but as there was nowhere to easily turn around I had to keep heading west when we accidentally found them all over the road. Excellent tour guide brownie points.

Having turned around, I then intended to go straight to the resort. By now it's getting toward lunch time. I head back toward the bridge and straight on which would have been the agreed right turn if I'd come from the bridge itself. I'm thinking, no worries, piece of cake, we'll be able to see the resort from this high up. Except we couldn't. I drove straight ahead thinking there'd be a sign. But there wasn't. Then the heavens opened and I pulled into a "rest area" whilst poor Graham is trying to find the resort on his phone. It was then we discovered there was a small leak around the rear window. 

So no joy with trying to locate the resort but he's spotted a large swimming pool on the location map. We head off with renewed optimism. I follow the instructions given and we end up on a dead end road with a rather large wall surrounding what could only be described as a derelict building - albeit large! At this point, I also noticed we were low on gas but decided not to share that with the group considering it to potentially be a step too far! All tour guide brownie points lost.

We took all sorts of turns and roads, crossed the bridge more than once and ended up in more than one dead end until finally I gave up. I decided the best course of action was to drive the coast road to Chao Lao beach and hopefully find a petrol station. I knew there were places to eat there! Well, you'll never believe it but going over a bridge (about 15 minutes down the road from Laem Sing) I spot the resort. We'd found it! 

It all worked out beautifully in the end. The food was outstanding and reasonably priced (around 100 / 200 baht for a main dish). I should warn you that, whilst the staff are lovely, their spoken English is not great, but the menu does have the English titles so a bit of smiling and pointing and you end up with a lovely lunch. There was only one ladies toilet by the pool so guess there might be a queue on busy days, but the two showers have liquid soap and shampoo so you can freshen up nicely.

The charge for using the pool is 100 baht and although we had brought our own towels, they were insistent that we paid. And here's the map so you won't be driving down any dead ends honestly, it's so easy to find I'm a bit embarrassed