Marino & Tiz in Thailand 2019: 04/20/19

Last night was one of the most interesting and unexpected experiences I can remember having had in a very long time. Thanks for that Pattaya.
It also led to one of the best nights sleep we have had for a very longtime.

The Travelodge in Pattaya is not only one of the best value for money hotels in that town, it is also very soundproof. Just a great hotel and the AUD 63 / night makes it great value.

After getting up, and having chosen to forego the hotels breakfast offering, we walked down to the beach road to look for a coffee shop.
On the way there this is what we saw -

Quiet, empty streets.

You would not have known you were in the same town as last night.

The next pic is for one of the guys at the Diamond Creek Mens Shed.

Let's call him Ken Commodore. Ken, seems to have a real thing for Trilby type hats

and I have seen him wear several different ones to the Tuesday get togethers.

I think he might like these.

And at less than AUD 5 each, if you were into them, you'd buy a few!

We had our coffees and after checking out of the hotel .....

The room looked like this after our nights sleep

..... we headed to the ferry terminal

via Walking Street and taking pics of this and that on the way.

A common form of shared public transport. All you need is a ute, a couple of planks for seating and a bit of a cage and you're a people transporting entrepreneur!

A modded scooter with some stuff that might make it go faster and

some stuff that makes it only look like it could go faster.

The lead up to Walking Street proper, which I photographed last night.

It was certainly a different scene then.

The two pics above, taken on the beach at Pattaya, are for a dear friend ours.

We all have yardsticks for what makes a good holiday,

or the lack thereof contributes to a lousy holiday.

When we talk with this friend about holidays banana lounges keep getting raised

as a must have for any holiday to be rated.

No banana lounge or only stretcher seats = Shit holiday.

Banana lounge available = Excellent holiday.

There was a comment made that in Cha Am there are no banana lounges

available at the beach, ergo .....

The Pattaya Beer Garden, where we ate last night, in the distance

This guy was taking a selfie, but what made us laugh was that he was wearing a thick hoodie.

We shouldn't be mocking him for taking a selfie, as he was a very handsome man,

nor for wearing a heavy hoodie, as it was cold - 33℃

Walking Street doesn't have the same allure by the light of day

It's almost impossible to tell but I took a picture from this exact same spot last night

of the Stones Bar, just left of centre.

It was pumping harder than I've seen or heard any club pumping in a long, long time.

Today it was silent.

In fact the whole of Walking Street was silent.

The trip home on the ferry was uneventful but it took a little longer than the trip to Pattaya.

When we got to Hua Hin beach we walked past the spot where we saw the cowboy yesterday.

He obviously has a pet goat too. Maybe the goat is used for little kids to ride on, or maybe there is a secret society which uses it for their rituals.

We stopped at the Sit and Drink Beer Bar for a feed of Pad Thai, which is genuinely excellent

and a few cold bevies and then headed home to Cha Am.

This is an adornment that is not that uncommon.

It has a picture of the King and his wife in the centre.

It is difficult to convey the reverence the Thais have for their king

but is much easier to understand if you are here.

There are statues and pictures and flags of him everywhere.

It is really admirable.

Yet another big day has come to and end and all three of us are quite pleased with the past few days.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and Lee and Tiz are researching for a good place to have a

special Easter Sunday lunch, and I'm sure they will pick a great spot. I'm looking forward to it.

On that note, I'll wish you all a great and safe Happy Easter and sign off.

Felices Pascuas y esperamos
veros a todos mañana.

I had a big sleep in this morning and made it through to 8:30am.
I felt so invigorated I decided that I'd go for an early morning dip.
The outside temperature was 35°C and the water didn't feel that much cooler, but it was wet.

A big cup of coffee from our "enough coffee for Africa" stockpile followed.

Given our lazy day yesterday we really wanted to go out for a walk so we went to the Big C on the outskirts of Cha Am.

It's only 1.6 km! We recalled the first day we were here and our walk to the Big C.
We were neither used to the midday sun nor did we know where we were going, both of which made the trip feel much longer than it did today, which we now consider a short stroll.

I took the 3 pics above mainly for my mate Greg, as a bit of a laugh, as I know he doesn't think very much of trikes nor little slow bikes.

They do have their uses though, such as this cut little unit, which I liked.

Tiz and I like tuna, a lot, but the quality of the Thai stuff is pretty low, even if it is cheap

Beer here is an entirely different matter. It's good and it's cheap

Our shop for today. Fruit for lunch, small containers of skim milk for Tiz and some soap.

~AUD 8

This was lunch. A fruit salad containing guava, banana, mangosteen and mango with Farmers Union yoghurt, from Australia, which had "a hint of honey", yes that's what it said on the container, and the durian flesh leftover from the other day.

Delicious and refreshing.

We left for the ferry at ~2pm.

This is the view down the almost deserted highway though the tinted front windscreen.

Thais tint their glass, including the front windscreens, so dark you can barely see through it.

Yes, it's a tunnel. You can't not take a picture of a tunnel even if you have no idea why it's there.

A utilitarian little scooter with stacked sidecar on the highway

Tiz and Lee enjoy a drink at the Sit Down and Drink Bar, yes, that it's name,

down by the ferry terminal in Hua Hin

This bar area is enormous, and clean

With a beach to match

They even have a resident cowboy

I was taking a pic of the ferry and the terminal and this photo bomber appeared!

The ferry is like a super wide super spacious plane,

complete with fold down tray and complimentary water

Tiz and Lee enjoying the comfort

They even have hostess' that will take a pic for you

Ferry terminal in Pattaya

Sunset as we walk off the jetty

The ferry as we look back

Our first view of Pattaya

This was our route to get here from Cha Am to Pattaya

What happened next was ... interesting, and needs context. Our friend Som had warned us not to take a cab from the rank at the terminal as they are notorious for ripping people off.

Tiz had already seen to this by downloading and using Grab, the SE Asian version of Uber.

We were aware that these ride apps were problematic in some countries, in the sense that local cab drivers dislike the app and its drivers. Disliked to the point that they were violent, in some cases, towards the drivers.

We had walked towards the end of the cab queue and about 50 metres beyond and called a Grab car.

After about 5 minute the car arrived and we jumped in.

All of a sudden there were three locals, obviously cabbies, flinging the door open and yelling at the driver.

The arguing went on for about five minutes and one of the aggrieved cabbies asked me "Taxi?!", probably trying to intimidate me to which I responded "NO TAXI! NO TAXI!". I then grabbed my door and firmly pulled it shut.

The young driver was outnumbered but gave as good as he got and eventually we left without any violence, which I had been sure was going to happen.

Thai on Thai street violence is one thing, and usually gets sorted out quite quickly. But, if you throw a falang into the mix it takes on a whole new level of "stink", which I really didn't want to be part of.

After we drove for a while I asked him if he was OK and he answered in broken English that he was. He explained we should have left the port area before using the Grab app.

If you use Grab or Uber or Lift be aware of "cabbies" zones but also that they are fiercely protective of their industry to the point of violence in some countries.

Personally, I have no love for the taxi industry in general and the only country I enjoy using them is Japan.

In my experience, in almost every other country, they are generally dishonest, unreliable, poor value with even poorer service.

We checked in to the Travelodge, a really nice place and then walked down to the Walking Street.

We had been told that Songkran was being celebrated in Pattaya

but we never expected what we found

Tiz and Lee at the beginning of the celebrations of the beach road which leads to Walking Street

A little further along and it gets rowdier AND wetter

The rowdiness and amount of water has stepped up quite a few notches

The beginning of Walking Street proper is here

Beyond that point it gets VERY LOUD & WET

We opted to do a right hand turn into the Pattaya Beer Garden for dinner.

You access the the place by walking through an open area full of small bars with a Muay Thai boxing ring, and fights being held, in the middle of it.

The bars have every conceivable type of human being sitting there from kids eating icecreams as their mothers ply for business, guys "on the make" with bar girls, lonely falangs slowly drinking themselves into a coma, big "jungled juiced" heavies in tight singlets and snapback caps on backwards showing off their unnatural physiques, way too gorgeous to be real 3rd genders, an enormous white guy getting "seven shades of shit" kicked and punched out of him by a skinny little Muay Thai boxer in the ring, lots of characters that just ooze a suspect vibe and everything else in between.

At this point I need to admit that although I really didn't want to come to Pattaya this simple yet fascinatingly complex scene with its mish mash of humanity really fascinated me.

All of this and we hadn't even made it to the Walking Street proper.

I am a convert BUT I also am aware that this place is like crack. Enough said.

Below are a series of pics taken from the beer garden as we were having dinner.

I will put a note with the ones that need it. The others should be obvious.