On to Pattaya

In the morning of this day we did some sightseeing around Bangkok. I think we got tired of paying Western prices for our entry fees. It's certainly something we aren't accustomed to doing. Usually in the North we can get the Thai price if Rusty shows them his work permit or Thai driver's license. Not so at the places we went!
We saw another reclining Buddha and the emerald Buddha which is really jade. Go figure. I guess emerald Buddha sounds more exquisite. After those quick stops we were off to Pattaya.
When we arrived in Pattaya, Songkran was just beginning there. I just thought Chiang Mai was wild and crazy! Chiang Mai has nothing on Pattaya. I won't tell you all of the things we saw in Pattaya. I'll spare you the gorey details, but the thoughts of Sodom and Gomorrah did rise in several parts of the city. It seems our taxi driver thought we had to go right through the center of town every time we went anywhere no matter what we or our host said.
Since I've mentioned the bad part, I will say that outside of the bad part of town I thought it was quite a beautiful place. It offers many things for the western tourist. The beaches are pretty nice although I hear the water is cleaner in Phuket. There are some lovely resorts, and there is even an outlet mall!!! There are many western restaurants including Burger King, Hard Rock Cafe, etc. I'll share a few pictures from the trip although most of our time was spent sitting in traffic. It seems our host thought we could just get out and walk back to the hotel in the middle of the world's largest water fight. Yea right!We looked at some hotels that are right on the beach. If we go back to Pattaya we'd like to stay in one of the hotels with a private beach. Relaxing on the beach reading some good books, playing in the water, having foot and leg massages near the water...sounds like a good vacation to me! This is the hotel that hosted the ASEAN meeting a month or two ago that was interrupted by protesters the week before we were there.

We wanted a good lookout of the city and so we drove to the top of this hill. The funny thing is...we ended up on a helicopter landing pad! We didn't stay long but managed to shoot a short video.On our last full day in Pattaya we finally got to put our feet in the water. Yay!!!! For a while I had lost hope that we were going to get to do that. We had fun looking for seashells, and then a Thai family wanted to take their picture with us. The man told his little girl to get her picture taken with the farangs, and then the mom wanted in too. So we are on yet another cell phone. :) They liked it that we spoke some Thai. I couldn't figure out why they wanted their picture with us when there were farangs everywhere, but maybe it was because we weren't wearing bathing suits.