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Published: August 9th 2007
From my last blog "Ceramic Festival" I told y'all that we were going to Guam for the Memorial Day weekend, well I got busy and.....I procrastinated, and when I went to book our trip, I was politely told "To bad so sad", not her exact words. So instead Pearl found a great deal to Bangkok, I have always wanted to go there because the name. Anyway the title is from that great chess playing song by Murray Head, some of you might remember.
Day 1
The trip got off to a rocky start…..John being an ass……sorry….we will just leave it at that. We got into our hotel around 9:00 pm, with a good nights rest under us we were ready for our early morning wake-up call and our visit to “The Emerald Palace” in Bangkok. If you are a guy, and wearing shorts, like me, you first must buy/rent a pair of long paints and wear them over your shorts to cover your legs. So I got a pair that just came down to my ankles, by the end of the visit, my legs were soaked. The palace was very “glitzy” and very detailed with small squares of different colored
Emerald Temple
Pearl and I, and me with my "High Waters" onglass, the whole tour of the palace was in Korean, so I cannot explain much about the palace, I do know that they have in one building three different Buda’s, one for each season, my guess for the seasons are hot; hot and humid; and finally very hot and very humid . After the palace we walked to the nearby river for a boat ride, but to get to the river you have to pass through a very small market full of fresh fruits and all kinds of foods being cooked in open cookers. The boat was a long narrow boat; we traveled a couple of miles up river, got to see what the “River front property” looks like in Bangkok. I think it was about 50-50, 50% of the houses along the river were very nice very interesting character and charm, than there was the other 50% which looked like they would fall down during the next big rain. We arrived at some type of temple when we were offered to buy a loaf of bread to feed the fish, well we bought a loaf and started throwing pieces in the water, in about 30 seconds thousands of very
large (maybe some over 10 lbs) cat fish, I think, started feeding on the bread, I was thinking we could have one heck of a fish fry if we wanted. After the boat ride it was time for lunch, which was at a good Korean restaurant, which was followed by our drive to Pattaya, a long, long hot drive. The highlight for me on the drive was while we are leaving Bangkok I saw a Swenson’s Ice Cream Parlor, that brought back some great memories of a child going there on our birthday and ordering “The Zoo”, a huge bowl of ice cream with small plastic animals all around the bowl, hence the name “The Zoo”, sitting in the middle of a stretcher, and delivered to your table by four guys…..but I digress. Did I mention that the drive was long and hot? Once we got to our hotel we had some time to relax and take a nice swim in the pool before we all met for our pre dinner show and this was no ordinary show this show was performed by transsexuals. The show consisted of your typical song and dance show. After the show all the characters
performers would go outside for a photo opportunity. For some reason Pattaya is famous for their transsexual population. After dinner we had some free time so Pearl and I decided to get a Thai massage. So for a 2 hour massage (no oil) was around 200 baht, or $6. The massage is a very physical, hard massage which incorporates a lot of pulling, stretching, and for me, having the Thai lady walk on my back. It was kind of relaxing for me, still not use to the hard massage style here in Asia, and getting walked on was different.
Day 2
The next morning we were off to Coral Island, a small tourist resort island off of Pattaya. On the way we stopped at a floating dock/platform to partake in some parasailing. Now as we approached the dock I noticed the large “Swarm” of parasails, there must have been dozens of them, all closely bunched together, and for each parasail there is a boat, and for each parasail boat there are at least 2 -3 regular boats all crisscrossing paths. There seemed to be no order or right-of-way being used, you really got a good view of this in
the air. Once we docked and debarked the next thing I noticed was how all the employees were dressed, they all wore dark knitted ski masked pulled over their faces, so all you saw were just eyes. You kinda got the feeling they were gang members/bank robbers and in their free time ran a respectable parasailing outfit. The dock/platform is set up with 4-5 rows of seats with a cover so you can sit in the shade, in front of the seats is the landing/take off area which is approximately 30’ x 30’. You stand in line, when it is close to your turn you are given a lift vest/harness, a person comes over and cinches up your harness, and guys I mean they REALY (talking in a very high voice) cinch you up. As a parasailer lands he is unclipped and you are clipped in, the masked person is saying something about running, signals the boat…..and that is when you understand what the person was trying to say to you. You are up in about 15’, the length of the rope is very short, which is probably a good thing, maybe 300’. Once up you can really see all
the other parasails, and other boats below and you are just hoping the driver is watching other boats/parasails. Actually Pearl went up right before me, and we passed close enough for me to yell at her. You are in the air for about 10 minutes, about halfway through the driver slows down and you slowly descend, I’m thinking ok when my feet touch he will gun it, nope, I get about waist deep in the water and than he guns it, so you are kinda body surfing, it did feel good to get all wet and cool off. The driver than swings you over the correct dock/platform (I say that because there are 3 close by) and slows down so you lower on the platform, all things said about these guys, they did do a great job. The strangest thing I did see while waiting to parasail was, if you are too small an employee will ride with you, without a harness, he runs behind the person and when airborne will sit on top of the parasail harness. We than boarded our boat and continued our journey to Coral Island. Now the island, as I mentioned earlier is basically a
tourist island with rows of chairs with huge umbrellas, water sports, swimming, shopping and eating and drinking, we opted for the shopping and drinking part. As we were walking past the shops Pearl noticed a guy selling iced down coconuts, I noticed that the same guy sold bottles of local rum, so we bought one of each. They crack open the top of the coconut, put in a straw, I drank a little, it was ok, filled it up with rum, and drank some more…..beautiful. With our coconut rum drink doing what we had hoped for or maybe it was the oppressive heat and humidity I saw a guy that did tattoos, we looked at each other and said “why not”. So Pearl got a butterfly and I got a dragon they are on our right shoulder. It was very cheap, no colors, around $10 for both, thanks to the coconut rum drink which killed the sensation of what he was doing. It was time to leave the island and enjoy a late lunch at yet another Korean restaurant, than back to the hotel for a brief rest and a trip to an elephant and tiger park. In the park
they had two areas, one has a female pig which is nursing some baby tigers; in another area there is a female tiger nursing some baby pigs, that had tiger outfits on them. I’m only assuming this was to keep the little pigs from becoming Mc Riblets for the female tiger. There was a tiger show and an elephant show. After this we went on a short elephant ride and than a visit to a miniature park. The park is basically famous landmarks around the world, built on a miniature scale, after the park was dinner which was a huge buffet style dinner. After dinner was free time, we decided this time to get a foot massage, for $3 each the massage lasted a little over an hour and focused on pressure points which affect different parts of your body. I got a good masseuse, very firm and focused; Pearl’s on the other hand was constantly watching TV, was not very firm, Pearl had to keep telling her to rub harder, I think she got it right on her second foot. After the foot massage it was time to shop and check out the night life, we shopped till around
11:00pm than focused on night life. We did our own bar hopping (like we did in San Antonio) until 4:00am. We checked them all out, from regular bars, to Go-Go bars to Discos. One spot on “Walking Street” we bought a couple of Mai Tai’s grabbed a seat, and just watched the show go buy, and it was an excellent show, so after our first round we got another round. We saw a westerner get his pants pulled down and his underwear ripped off, saw a transsexual in training. We did some more walking and around 3:00am Pearl bought some clothes for $2 from a street vendor. Since we got back to our hotel room at 4:00am and with a 6:30am wake up call, we were very tired for our last day in Thailand.
Day 3
Was very uneventful, which was probably a good thing considering how tiered we were. The morning started off with a trip to an alligator farm, and a stop at a local pineapple farm, we were given fresh pineapple, and I had to try the famous “Stinky” fruit….all I can say is it is very stinky and almost taste like it smells, that was
the only fruit that the flies would go to. We than drove back to Bangkok and went to a couple of nice shops, dinner was at the worlds largest restaurant, The Royal Dragon. You can check it out here http://www.royal-dragon.com. The place is huge, most of the waiters are on roller blades or roller skates, and the food was actually very good. After dinner it was off to the airport for a very late flight, which was over an hour late leaving, so we arrived in Seoul at around 6am, and it was off to work.
All-in-all this was a very nice, and relaxing trip, the only down side was the fact we went to Thailand to eat Korean food, but it was good Korean food.
The end of this month I will be going to Shanghai for a couple of days for some Marriott work, I will try to take pictures and write a short blog on it.
P.S. Mom….just wanted to let you know that the tattoos we got were only temporary, I’m sure you are very relieved to hear that….lol
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Mom & Dad
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Hey, "Travellin Man"
WOW!!!Whata Trip and those wonderful pictures. You did a great job telling your story....,.However, after seeing the pictures of the heavy traffic in the water, don't think I would have went parasailing. You have guts!!! The Temples are beautiful and so.o.o.o.o ornate. Want to hear more about that elephant ride and the hug with the tiger. You and Pearl really had an experience. Sounds like you had a fun time. Looking forward to hear about the China trip...Thanks, for telling me about the tatoo being temporary..I already had some bad thoughts...You are a wonderful man and we are so proud of you, Son.....