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Published: June 25th 2017
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Sunset
Balcony view. Nice. Condo lifestyle has not been our norm. In fact, we had no such experience prior to visiting friends last January who were condo living in the Pattaya resort suburb of Jomtien Beach. At that time, we did what all tourists to the city of Pattaya do - we made a point of visiting Walking Street, the renowned sex epicentre of Thailand. The experience was analagous to visiting Amsterdam for the first time, and checking out its famous Red Light district. I did not fully realise how much that introduction tainted my perceptions of this city until we returned this year to again visit our friends, and did not include that area of town in our agenda.
Instead, we discovered kilometres of paved beach walkway two minutes from our condo, safe and fully lit at night. In typical resort beach mode, there were stretches of crowded side-by-side beach chair rentals, but we also found frequent areas of public beach, a variety of free exercise classes, beachside Thai massage, biking paths and parks, as well as the usual resort rentals: sea jets, surfboards, sailboats, parachute sailing, and motorboats. We also found nearby shopping, restaurants, numerous bars and live music venues, and the
Parachute Sailing
Our daily entertainment - watching from our balcony, that is 😉 always packed local dining market, offering a variety of excellent, very inexpensive but delicious food. And by inexpensive, I mean the average entry is between one and three Canadian dollars, freshly made while you wait, and delivered with a smile.
Jomtien Beach is a very popular spot for a variety of European sun seekers, as it is easily accessible by air and only a short ride from the flight hub of Bangkok, perhaps comparable to Canadian travellers flying for a week or two to Mexican sun spots like Mazatlan or Cancun. Younger travellers to Thailand who are less concerned about convenient travel routes and more interested in budget accomodation and natural beaches tend to head further south in Thailand.
Jomtien Beach attracts in particular many Russians - so much so that the signage in local restaurants is often in Russian. Because I arrived in Asia this trip with a really messed up back - aggravated from sleeping at weird angles on the long haul flight over - I did some searching and ultimately found a wonderful Russian masseur who - over a period of several visits - not only healed my aching body, but reintroduced me to my
Ramblin' Rabbits
A moment of silliness ☺️ Slavic roots as I dug back to my childhood for Ukrainian words to share, while he taught me some Russian. Most importantly, we laughed together frequently and in so doing he effectively erased my false preconceptions about all Russians being an extremely serious people who don't particularly appreciate humour, which was based - like all stereotypes - on the usual cocktail of ignorance and media exposure. Perhaps therein is the most beautiful and valuable gift that travel offers - the opportunity to meet real people from unfamiliar cultures and dissolve stereotypes, ultimately seeing others as more alike than different from us, and always broadening our perspectives. Anyway, I am feeling
momentarily inspired to reacquaint myself with the Ukrainian alphabet I had studied years ago in a University class so I could read the signs in this Thai city if we return again. You gotta love the irony!
But our time in Thailand is up for this trip, as we hit the adventure trail again, heading to not-yet travelled-by-us Sumatra, Indonesia, land of jungles, orang-utans, and volcanoes. Exciting.
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