Pattaya - round 2.

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It was my lovely friend Ciaras birthday this week and we decided to head to Pattaya to celebrate. We all only had saturday and sunday off work so we wanted somewhere not too far and as we had been to Bangkok loads we thought we could go to Pattaya, back to where it all began (we all met on orientation in pattaya!).

I got the 13 hour overnight bus down on friday night and arrived feeling anything but fresh on saturday morning at 7am. we got a tuk tuk from the bus station to jomtien beach (the nice part of pattaya) and met the girls at the hotel. On the drive we saw the effects of the morning after in pattaya.. theres a reason the place is called 'the seedy underbelly' of thailand. The place was swarming with old farangs (white foreigners), most sporting balding hair, a beer belly and vile vest! not pleasant..

We headed to the pier to get the ferry for 45 minutes over to the beautiful island of Koh Larn. The beach itself was beautiful but we weren't impressed on the whole; there were no places serving western food and we had to settle for ham and cheese sandwiches... like that wasnt bad enough they only brought us out half a sandwich - not ideal! The beach was very crowded with russians/asians and lots of massive tourist groups, it was all a bit hectic. And to make things worse we were stared at for the whole time and people kept taking photos of us - i thought it was only north-east thailand where we got stared at for being white!

We headed back on the ferry to the hotel and washed all the sand off to find ourselves all very sunburnt, before heading out for amazing chicken kebabs (deffo the best thing about pattaya) and stocking up on whiskey. Our pre-drink consisted of copious amounts of whiskey, drinking games, 90s music and dancing around to the likes of the spice girls and b*witched - of course me and ciara did our usual party trick of irish dancing.

We then headed out, first stop SUES BAR!! This is literally the best place in Pattaya. Momma Sue runs it and we all descended on it last time we were here; they recognised us straight away and everyone came over and said hi. After ordering a round of sambuca and singing happy birthday momma sue (the owner) came over and gave us all a free whiskey and handed us all a rose each which she had just brought off the little kids who go around selling flowers. We stayed there for a bit before moving onto other bars where we could dance and drink even more whiskey. We had a really good night but its safe to say we wont be going back to pattaya. Its a bit too seedy for my taste! Although we did get an amazing mcdonalds to finish the night.

The next day everyone was very hungover and all had to head back to our homes around thailand. Our bus wasnt until 9pm so we spent the day at the shopping mall which amazingly had a topshop, la senza and miss selfridge - it was like heaven! We went to the cinema and got pizza before getting the gruelling 13 hour overnight bus back to Mukdahan and heading straight to work.

It was a long journey and Pattaya has to be the worst place in Thailand but i was with the best bunch of people and we had a great time! 😊

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