Day 2 in Pattaya!

Sunday - 11 May 08

Hi there everyone! What a place - PATTAYA! I must say it is a bit of a shocker and as previously told to us by a guy in Udon Thani you need to have an open mind with this place and he was right. It is quite a nice place and I have to say our hotel is great for 500Baht ($17 Aus) per night we are lucky. Besides the fact that we the room gets serviced daily, clean linen and towels and the place is immaculately clean, it also has a clean pool, outdoor entertainment area with pool tables and the rooms are all air conditioned with 65 channel cable TV, and we thought for that price it was probably a brothel. Ha! Ha! Its called the Chanthong Place Hotel

The only thing with the room is, no tea & coffee making facilities, however you can buy a cup of coffee at the reception desk for 30Baht. Woopy Doo! I have to have my coffee as soon as I wake up and I don't think I am going to go down to reception in my nightie to get a coffee. We did the next best thing, we went to the department store and bought ourselves a tiny little kettle that can easily be packed in our backpack, stopped at a market stall and bought 2 stainless steel camping mugs, we had already bought a huge tin of Nescafe from home and I already had a plastic spoon, so now we are set to make our own coffee in any hotel we stay in that doesn't have those facilities. I won't pay 30 Baht for a cup of coffee that taste like shit and is so strong you can stand your spoon in. We did the same with toilet paper, if you go to a public toilet here they don't have bum wrap, they have a slot machine you put coins in turn the knob and out comes a little box with 10 sqares of toilet paper. So we now carry a packet of tissues with us.

Today we spent most of the day exploring the beachfront shopping area of Pattaya. We found a great little restaurant to have breakfast, for 2 x bacon, eggs, toast and coffee - 88 Baht (3.50 Aus) so we will be going there again, probably tomorrow knowing us. We walked further down the street and found McDonalds the first we have seen one on these travels in Thailand since we have been here and we just had to stop there and have a Latte. We then found KFC & Sizzler all in the one shopping centre, how cool. We strolled one shopping centre after another as I am trying to find english birthday cards but they musn't celebrate birthdays here cos I can't find any sort of cards only postcards. We had quite a heavy downpoor and it cools the place down a bit for a while at least and then its gets twice as humid. The humidity isn't bothering us a great deal because as soon as it gets too much we go back to our hotel and hang out in the air conditioning and then early evening when the breeze comes in and it cools down again we head back out again.

Pattaya is a lively place and mostly at night time. It is full of girlie bars, Lady boys, nightclubs and bars, not our scene so we make sure we have dinner around 7pm and head back to our hotel to get away from it all. There are a couple of US war ships and subs in so there are heaps of blokes in town to keep the young ladies in the bars occupied and employed. Nothing opens here (other than local fruit and veg market) until 11 am and most shops and restaurants are open until at least 10-11pm at night. As for those bars and nightclubs they are probably opened until late morning. There are some tourists here and oldies like us, but there doesn't seem to be as many as I thought, maybe they too only come out at night. Who Knows!

Rick and I stopped at the Beer Garden pub that is built out over the beach, we were so hot and thirsty thought we would have a nice cold coke before continuing our exploring, they probably thought who are these two old deadshits coming in for just a coke, this is a bar and you are meant to drink alcohol, stiff!! I reckon if I hadn't been with Rick he could have been quite a lucky boy, if you know what I mean! Lol.

We bought a Wi Fi internet card 100Baht (about $4 bucks Aus) for 2 hours internet time. There seems to be problem picking up the signal in our room so we take our laptop down to the pool area or reception area to use it, its a bloody pain because the mozzies are so bad they just about pick you up and carry you away, thank god for our Malaria tablets.

Tonight was dinner at a German restaurant not far from our hotel, Snitzel, chips and salad, we are having a break from Thai food for a couple of days or until we can find a good Thai restaurant where the food is fresh and can understand english.

Anyway Rick is itching to go get some food so will sign off!!!!!! Lets see what tomorrow brings!!