I woke up the next day in my hotel, only a few hours after sleeping. I wanted to catch the buffet breakfast, as this is always my main stumbling block when it comes to hotel sleepovers. Ambitiously, I awoke at 7:30am, an ungodly hour normally, but especially as this was the first morning of my relaxing Thai getaway. Nevertheless, I assaulted the buffet and left my hotel satisfied.
I had roughly 3 hours to have a look at the neighbourhood, but really there was little that was photogenic about the place. It’s a messy, dirty place, but the atmosphere is really different and that’s what I like I guess. I spent my three hours exploring, walking around, talking to random people and generally absorbing the feeling of Bangkok. I spoke to a man from Ghana who quizzed me on the pros and cons of illegally shipping people into Australia. I said to him, in my frank opinion, that he had slim chances. He wondered about the corruption level over in my homeland. I proudly told him that corruption was almost zero. He looked dismayed. But it made me feel good about my country. Whether or not it is really true or not is beyond my knowledge, but we sure do breed that feeling in our population. The difference is, that if corruption exists it is very well hidden. See, in poor countries, like the one I’m in right now, everyone knows that people can be bought. It’s common, almost expected. But back home, it still happens, it’s just that everyone has a it-couldn’t-possibly-happen-because-we’re-a-civilized-nation-don’t-you-know kind of attitude. It’s like steroids among professional athletes. Oh, you didn’t know?
Most athletes take steriods. Not, oh there’s Ben Johnson or that cyclist guy they’re the bad steriod takers. No, most athletes you see on TV or in the Olympics use performance enhancing drugs. Of course we made a big fuss of that Johnson guy. His trainer felt that he was an amazingly gifted athlete even without the drugs. He just got unlucky with a mixed sample. But since then his records have been broken on 3 seperate occasions by three different people. Are we to assume that 3 even more gifted athletes came along? No, it’s just that there are many ways to hide traces of drugs in your system. And how do you test for air up a swimmer’s butt anyway? Ask them to fart before a race? Maybe now you can see the benefits of those special skin-tight suits that they have…
Where am I? Oh that’s right, Thailand. So anyway, after my little wander, it was time to go and check out, head to Pattaya and get some beach and sun. The bus leaves from Ettamai station, which is on the Sky Train line. It cost me 200 baht and the ride there took 3.5 hours, longer than expected, I guess due to traffic. I booked my hotel which I was staying in for about 660 baht per night. On arrival, I was dropped on the side of a busy road with no beach in sight. Someone told me to grab a taxi, well actually it was a small truck with seats at the back. It was a short trip and I gave the guy 100 baht for that. He dropped me off at my street and I walked past a number of bars with girls screaming out at me, “ooooh hey!” and a few food stalls that had me a little curious after my long drive. I found my hotel, Sunshine Residences, to be quite pleasant and well situated in the center of town. Having to lug my suitcase around everywhere is becoming a drag, but that’s life without an apartment to store stuff. I dumped it in my room and went to check out the beach. Definitely not what I had in mind. Quite dirty in fact. Later that night, when I went down to take a picture of the beach I crouched down to take the shot, with my knees, elbows and hands touching the sand. The next day, I woke to find some kind of rash or bites on the exact spots that touched the sand. This isn’t a beach that I’m going to be spending any great deal of time.
The first day in Pattaya was essentially a night here, due to my long bus ride. Apart from the aforementioned beach bug crawl, I spent my other hours walking around as much as I could, looking for interesting places to visit. I can pretty much say that there is quite a lot of nothing to do here. There is a little bit of shopping here, plus lots of massage, hair shops and other things like it where you can get a cheap cut or thai style above board massage for under $10. I’m not really that stressed, so I decided I’d leave them open to serve people who have real jobs with stress.
Now, here’s my recommendation. Don’t bring your family here. I can’t figure out whethere this is a brothel built around a city or a city around a brothel. My best recommendation is to choose North Pattaya, where you can stay at the Tropicana Hotel or at the A-One Hotel for about $40-50 per night and enjoy a nice location and good quality hotel away from most of the Go-go bars. I understand that the northern part of the beach is better too. I took a walk there last night and found a few nice street cafes and most of the couples and families were around this area. Although I’m still not sure what Pattaya has to offer them. I must try to answer that question today. I’m off to visit a travel agent to secure a trip to Phuket or Koh Samui and some finer beach action. [ed: see next post for better advice!]
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