There’s a certain smugness some runners (OK, slow joggers… OK, fine… maybe it’s just me…) get of feeling really productive for your health when out running early in the morning whilst most sensible people are either asleep, repeatedly hitting their snooze button or digging into their breakfast.
The sun has been up since just after 6am, the air is warm but not yet brutal, and if you pick the shady side of the road you can almost convince yourself this is pleasant. After two years in hot climates – Malaysia before this, Thailand now – the heat is something we’ve made a kind of peace with. It still affects us. We’re not superhuman. But it’s a different relationship than it would be for someone stepping off a plane from a British winter and immediately attempting a jog.
I run without headphones these days. I used to need music as a crutch but somewhere along the way that changed, and now I’d actively recommend leaving them out – especially here. No real pavements in most parts of Hua Hin outside the town centre means you’re sharing the road with motorbikes, dogs, and the occasional very relaxed cat, and you want your wits about you. A podcast on a treadmill is a different matter entirely.
Having finally settled down in long-term accommodation – I am gradually getting back into running. When I was living in the UK, it wouldn’t be unheard of for me to enter Parkruns (definitely recommend it for people new to running and experienced runners – great experience and very friendly people and if you’re feeling anxious about running in a group, please don’t – there’s all ages and levels of fitness and many people just walk the course) or run the odd 10k now and again – however 2 years without any real running regime and the heat has gotten me back to starting from the beginning – I know for a fact, if I try to recover my old form too quickly I’ll be out of action with injury long before that.
So… I’ve been running up and down our residential road for a while – about 600 metres end to end, which is fine when you’re building up distance again, considerably less interesting once you’re pushing further. So I planned a 3k route on the old Garmin and decided to actually explore the neighbourhood. There is genuinely no better way to get to know an area than running through it. You notice things you’d miss in a car, you find connecting paths that don’t appear on maps, and occasionally you make decisions that seem reasonable at the time.
This is a story about one of those decisions.
About 2km in, I caught a flash of electric blue low over the road ahead. Kingfisher. If you’ve never seen one in full flight you’re missing something – they’re unreasonably vivid, like someone’s turned the saturation up. I followed it. I knew it wasn’t the right direction but I thought there might be a connecting path further down, and honestly, a kingfisher is a hard thing not to follow.
The road became a dirt path fairly quickly. I kept going. There was a house set back from the path and as I jogged past, dogs appeared at the fence – barking, growling, the usual. Fine. Dogs behind fences are mostly theatre. I’ve learned to read the difference between a dog that’s performing and a dog that means it.
The next set of dogs didn’t have a fence.
They started barking as I passed and then, as I got further away, started coming after me. This is the thing nobody quite tells you about dogs – they prefer to stay behind you. There’s something about being followed rather than approached head-on that activates a specific kind of unease. I kept jogging. I half-turned to look them in the eye to let them know I was aware of them. I was tempted to stop and stare them out but the runner part of me doesn’t like stopping – feels like cheating a bit. Running faster felt like the worst option so I just kept on at my normal pace.
I also had a creeping realisation: the path ahead was becoming less and less of a path, and I was going to have to come back the same way.
A few minutes later I turned around. The dogs were still there. More interested this time, if anything. One got close enough that I made a decision – I slowed to a slow jog, turned to face it, and said NO. Loudly and firmly. Not panicked. Just clear.
It cringed slightly and backed off. The others kept their distance.
I won’t be going that way again.
A note on the dogs themselves
From experience around here, the dynamic is slightly counter-intuitive. Strays tend to be mostly passive – they’ll look up at you in a ‘you’re mildly interesting but I’m very hot’ kind of way and go back to whatever they were doing. It’s the house dogs that are often more aggressive, even behind gates – they’re territorial in a way that strays, who tend to treat the whole street as shared space, generally aren’t. That said, a stray that’s hungry, unwell, or just having a bad day is still a dog that can bite.
Which brings us to the bit nobody wants to think about but everyone should.
Dog bites in Thailand mean a trip to the hospital. Full stop. Not tomorrow, not after a Google search, not “let’s see how it looks in the morning.” The risk of rabies is real – it exists here, it’s not common but it’s not theoretical either, and the treatment timeline matters. A local we spoke to was matter of fact about it: people do get bitten, and they do need injections.
If you get bitten, don’t think about it. Just go.
What I do now
I still run the same routes – mostly. A few adjustments: early morning is right as the heat is manageable and the roads are quieter; shady side of the road where possible; main roads over quiet dirt paths especially ones leading past residential properties; cross the road early if you see dogs ahead – before they feel you’re in their space, not after; no headphones as you want to hear what’s behind you; if a dog follows and gets close – slow down, turn, and be clear and firm.
A proper guide with properly researched advice on dog encounters is coming. This is just one man’s experience of a Tuesday morning jog and the uncontrollable urge to follow shiny things.