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Published: August 29th 2009
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Pattaya
So after our teary goodbye with Kim’s friends we made our way over to the notorious city of Pattaya, famous for its sleazy sex industry and home to a large proportion of Thailand’s ladyboys. When Kim was a child she spent 2 years in Pattaya as her dad was working there at the time, so she was especially excited to see how it had changed and if all her memorable places were still standing.
As we drove down the motorway towards the centre of Pattaya, Kim noticed her old school (ISP - International school of Pattaya) and started to get really excited as the memories of learning to speak Thai and flirting with all the European boys started coming back.
When we were in Bali we met an English guy who coincidently had a fashionable Thai bride on his arm, he kindly recommended a hotel in Pattaya where he stayed regularly so having kept the hotel card we decide to give it a go as we have always been happy with ‘word of mouth’ recommendations in the past. The hotel itself wasn’t that bad, but compared to Kim’s previous residence when she lived in Pattaya before it was
very different to what she was use too. Being based in South Pattaya our neighbours included go-go bars, massage parlours and a street dedicated to the male / lady boy preference called ‘Boy Town’.
Pattaya isn’t exactly home to many of Thailand’s cultural attractions so we spent the days bowling and going to the cinema to see Transformers 2, which was awesome by the way! And the nights were spent visiting restaurants and bars Kim use to visit with her family. One establishment that Kim and her parents were quite keen of was the Malibu bar, famous for its nightly transsexual cabaret show which we spent nearly two hours looking for as it had relocated several streets away. We secured a seat towards the back, ordered cocktails and soon realised that James was the only guy in the bar without a Thai girl on his arm. Even though the show was very tacky and quite amateurish we still found it very funny with our highlights being the realistic Tina Turner lookalike who had some fantastic knee bending moves and James getting a sloppy kiss from a very attractive man with superb fake boobs.
A hotel that Kim and
her parents lived at was the Thai Garden Resort, with a joining restaurant called the Moon River Pub, where we went for a meal one evening. As we nibbled our food Kim looked across the room and thought she recognised a lady sat a few tables away, James obviously thought that she had had one too many glasses of wine and before he knew it she had gone across to speak to her. Sure enough it turned out to be an old family friend who had remained in the area for over 13 years!
Even though this place generally attracts sleazy men we like to call ‘walruses’ because of their big beer bellies and hairy moustaches we had a lot of fun in Pattaya and it was nice to take a break from the traditional sight seeing. It’s a shame that places like Pattaya and Phuket tend to be only geared towards night time activities, with all the neon lights and cheap drinks masking the nice beaches and potential cultural sights. James was a little shocked that Kim had spent several years of her life being exposed to such an unethical environment but Kim reassured him that it wasn’t
as bad as he thought and being an 11 year old kid it tended to go all over her head plus she was glad that she had come back to remember that part of her child hood.
Koh Chang
After the fun we had in Pattaya we caught a bus and boat across to a small island on Thailand’s East coast called Koh Chang. Being a huge national park with large forests we didn’t know what to expect as the previous beaches we had visited on Thailand’s south coasts were truly amazing. We caught a tuk-tuk to the backpacker region of the island, a beach called Lonely Beach where we walked up and down the beach in search of some decent accommodation. The only place that was available and within our budget was small bamboo huts set high in the trees upon the mountain side but as Kim is pretty scared of creepy crawlies and not too fond of heights she persuaded James to splash out for a posh hotel room for one evening.
The following morning James was up bright and early in search of some cheaper accommodation and managed to find a nice place located
about 50 yards from the beach. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too good to spend the days sunbathing on the beach and as there wasn’t that much to do around Lonely Beach James decided to hire a motorbike and explore the island. After a lot of nagging he managed to persuade Kim to sit on the back of his bike and come with him but as Koh Chang’s roads are extremely hilly it wasn’t the best place to build up Kim’s confidence and after a shaky 5 minutes we decided it was best for both our sakes that Kim got off and walk back to the hotel while James sped off for a day zooming around the island visiting elephant sanctuaries and waterfalls. Unfortunately for James his day didn’t end too well as his motorbike broke down 500 yards away from the hotel as he was too tight to top it up with 50p’s worth of gas and had to flag a car over to go buy him some more so he could make it home.
We had had lots of fun experiencing all that Thailand has to offer, and after a month of lazing on pristine beaches, trekking into
dense jungles and shopping in the busy streets of Bangkok we believed it was time to move on to Cambodia.
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