I set off at about 9.30am in the beast with 468 km to drive to Pattaya. On a European motorway it would take less than 5 hours (UK excluded), but my map app said 7 hours 41 minutes. In the end I did it in about 6 hours 40 minutes, but still a long way.
I plan to stay a few nights in Pattaya, before heading on to Koh Samet, a small island of only 5.12sq km. Then I aim to head down to Koh Chang, a much bigger island situated close to the end of the country, where it dwindles into nothing and becomes Cambodia.
I have a great centrally located hotel, which is really nice and well appointed, although for some reason it seems to have a sheep theme. The beach is nearby as are countless restaurants, bars, shops, night markets and many other attractions.
I hardly know where to start with Pattaya, it is very very busy and is known as the sex capital of Thailand. There are plenty of the usual sort of attractions. Views, beaches, temples, numerous markets, art galleries etc, but you can’t easily get away from the other side of Pattaya. You are constantly beckoned at from many of the bars to go in and have a drink. Depending on the bar, you might be left alone to enjoy your drink in peace or just chatted to. Other bars have pool tables, maybe poles or groups of scantily clad women, sometimes wearing numbers and not much else. Most of the massage places are normal, but if you venture up a side street be careful in choosing in case you get more than you bargained for. There are lots of ladyboys here as well, indeed maybe most of them are here as I haven’t seen any elsewhere in Thailand this time, until I got to Pattaya. They are well integrated though and not just involved in the seedier side of things. I’ve seen them on the checkout’s and serving in restaurants. One was my hairdresser at a local hair salon.
Walking street in Pattaya makes the Khoasan road in Bangkok look like a vicar’s tea party and even Walking street is fairly tame compared to the infamous soi 6 as is a walk along the beach after dark.
Apart from all the girls and clubs on Walking street there are some good live music venues and a Muay Thai boxing ring, where you can watch the action from the street. There are also numerous restaurants, street magicians and those annoying Turkish ice cream sellers.
There are large numbers of Russians, funny that, I thought they were currently barred from most countries, but apparently not. They are stocky, rough and look like they could spit nails and that’s just the women.
On the subject of your average expat, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Mostly fat, liberally tattooed, decked out in wife beater vest tops and often accompanied by a thai girl half their size and age. There are also a huge amount of Indians, for which I am grateful as I have been able to get my masala dosa and chai tea fix every lunchtime. However these are not like nice Mr Patel at the local corner shop. These Indians are big and mean looking. They are money changers, opium den owners and pimps. Well actually it’s cannabis dens these days and they also have many tailor shops, but thanks for the great food.
It’s not all single men at all, there are couples as well. Most of the older european couples look like escapees from Torremolinos with skin the colour and consistency of old leather complete with fag hanging out the corner of the mouth. Call me a snob, but there are some real dregs here. No doubt there are quite a few sad stories too, I am sure.
It’s not all like that of course. There are quite q few young couples and singles travelling around Asia and some families as well. There are also older gentlemen that dress nicely and the Thai lady on their arm is much closer to their own age and I would say are clearly a proper couple. Most of the families appear to be Russian or Indian, rather than european and they appear to have absolutely no qualms about strolling along walking street, or even soi 6, with their children in tow! I saw one couple that made me laugh. The westerner was complaining to his thai wife/girlfriend that they were supposed be going for health screening before doing anything else and she just wanted to look at property. They were still arguing when I crossed their path again half an hour later.
The food here is really excellent. Apart from the countless Indian restaurants there are whole areas dedicated to street food, selling everything from the ubiquitous pad thai to barbecued crocodile. Wherever you are you can find somewhere to stop for a snack, either chicken skewers or squid, little banana leaf wrapped parcels of sweetened sticky rice or my favourite noodle soup. There are many western style restaurants as well including all the fast food burger joints, but I didn’t eat in any of them, so I don’t know how good they are.
I managed to crack the screen of my phone, but it’s only marginally cheaper to buy a screen here and the tools required are not sold with the replacement screen like at home. They can change it for you, but I’d be concerned about them swapping out the internal genuine apple parts for generic ones, while replacing the screen. As I am perfectly capable of doing it myself it can wait a few weeks.
The beach is very long with beautiful soft sand and there are numerous deckchairs on the beach, all with tables and umbrellas. Each section is run by a different owner and it costs 50 baht to sit down on a deckchair, but you can stay hours for that. Not being a beach person, that doesn’t interest me at all, but what you can do is to buy a drink from them and ask if you can sit down on one of their chairs and drink it. So long as you don’t stay more than about 20 minutes or so, they are happy to oblige and you get a bit of beach time, a drink and a few moments to put your feet up. A whole coconut straight from the ice box is the best!
I visited Ripley’s believe it or not museum and also a 3D art gallery. When viewed through the app they give you, the pictures in the gallery come to life. You can then be in the pictures as well. Unfortunately there needs to be two of you to achieve this. So with no one to take a photo for me I missed out on that bit. I suggested they have a member of staff in the gallery offering to take photo’s, as they did at the upside down museum in Penang, Malaysia. Maybe they’ll take it on board and future solo travellers will have a better experience.
Preferring to leave the car in the hotel carpark, it’s easy to travel around by Songthaew. Literally this means two benches, which is about what you get in the back of a pick up. There are also two steel foot plates sticking out at the back so you can ride standing on those, which is quite fun. They songthaew’s go round and round the main town and it’s 10baht, however long you ride for and you never need to wait more than a minute for one to pass by.
There are a couple of ladyboy cabarets at the theatre that are well known. Tiffany’s and Alcazar are the main two, unfortunately they subscribe to the ‘fleece the foreigner’ plan and charge more than double for non Thai’s, so I’ve put it the no go list. I did go to the Sanctuary of Truth, an amazing 100 metre tall, 400 year old structure made from teak, with thousands of beautiful carvings. There are also many statutes of a variety of gods from Vishnu to the God of Fire, it’s a crazy world 😉 There is also a golden statue of former King Bhumibol, whose long rein was only just eclipsed by our own queen Elizabeth II. She in turn is actually only the second longest reigning monarch. That title goes to Louis XIV, but he became king at 4 years old and sneaked in a world record breaking 72 year reign before the French decided to permanently end any future chance of it happening again.
In the end I extended my stay in Pattaya 3 times, the last time as my friend decided to hop on the big yellow night bus from Satuek in the north and join me. It’s a slow journey and takes about 9 hours. Pattaya is certainly fun and very lively. Once you’ve strolled along walking street a few times and got used to how things work here, you can slip into a relaxed, more normal life and mostly ignore the other side of things. The local supermarket sells decent cheddar, so I treated myself. My knee is playing up a bit as I have probably overdone the walking with well over 20,000 steps a day. I keep meaning to take it easy for a day, but never do.
I promised the hotel that I would actually check out today 😀, so we are off to Ko Samet about 75km south of Pattaya. It’s only a small island with most of the action on the east coast. It’s a national park so you have to pay a fee when you land. There are numerous piers on the mainland, from where you can catch a speedboat over to the island. A couple of piers also have a slow boat service that is a lot cheaper., but as even the slow boat only takes 25 minutes, it’s hardly a problem. The boat we went on must have been the family home as well and they had pet rabbits hopping around the deck.
It’s very beautiful here, with around 15 different beaches and coves. There are some fabulous viewpoints for sunrise and sunset as well. Immensely tall trees dominate the skyline in parts of the island and there are some interesting statues and a temple with a giant buddha. One of the statues is a mermaid holding out a child, another a prince playing the flute and another that of a female giant, which rises up out of the water guarding the entrance to the island. They are all characters from a famous Thai poem called Phra Aphai Mani. The poem is all written in verse and is 30,000 lines long. It is considered a masterpiece of literature and tells the story of two princes from ancient Siam who are sent away by their father to prepare for royal duties.
He is furious upon their return to discover that all one has learnt is sword fighting, while the other has only learnt to play the flute. Suitably chastened by the king, Aphai Mani sets off off on an adventure through fantasy lands filled with giants, beautiful women and mermaids. He ends up in an undersea kingdom and is tricked in to falling in love with a giantess. If you want the rest of the story you can look it up.
All along the main beaches at night there are restaurants and bars that pop up, together with fire shows and live music. It reminds me a little of Koh Tao in the early days, with the rutted roads and jungle interior. However there are a few posh resorts on this island as well as backpacker places and it is quite expensive, which Koh Tao isn’t. There isn’t really any diving here either. One place that did it stopped due to covid and never restarted. Another place I went to said they need a minimum of 3 people or it wasn’t worth their while. I think my chance of going diving again before flying back to the big cold, at the end of the month, are looking slim.
Talking of cold, I haven’t seen a radiator in a long time, there is no heating needed here and the average electricity bill is a matter of complete indifference to most. Apart from the showers, which have hot and cold running water, all the taps I have come across are just cold only.
After Ko Samet, we ended up back in Pattaya rather than Ko Chang as my friend wanted to see more of the bright city lights. The heat is really starting to ratchet up now, it was around 31 for several weeks, but the last few days it has been 39 degrees. The new hotel is marginally further out, but that’s good as we get the chance to wander around new streets. and discover new markets and sights. There is a swimming pool on the 3rd floor, with great views over the city. We also went to underwater world, a fairly decent aquarium with some great walkthroughs, full of sharks, giant groupers and other large fish including one that resembles a crocodile. I did see those in Memphis too, but their name escapes me.
I think I must be addicted to chilli’s now, I always seem to scoop a good load on to all my dishes and dream about spicy food 😀, especially my regular pork noodle broth (waiteeo moo, in my phonetic thai) which makes the food a lot spicy (ped marr). Chilli’s cost almost nothing here, so I shall bring back a big bag of dried ones.
There is a good English language newspaper here called The Thaiger. In amongst the stories about scammed foreigners either by corrupt police or dodgy businessmen or stories about tourists meeting a sticky end (already 73 so far this year! mostly due to accidents), there are a lot of interesting and useful news items and stories for the expat and tourist alike. Sometimes the articles are just funny, like today’s offering. It being Valentines day, they say that if you are single and feeling a little lonely, why not name a cockroach or even a rat after your ex and feed it to an animal to make you feel better! In a humorous twist the ex in question can even receive a notification that a roach has been named after them, together with cockroach themed gifts if you so desire. Apparently if roaches aren’t your thing then you can get a litter box named after them. It goes on to say that in Wales, business waste allows you to submit a name for the chance to have it printed on a garbage bin.
While I’m not at all lonely, there are a few cockroaches running around here and a couple of them even have names now 😉
Heading back to Satuek tomorrow, which is another longish drive, but first I will go to the supermarket, which is full of English goodies, that I can’t get locally or at home for that matter.