day....one!

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Saturday 17th - After a nice lay in we woke up to a lovely traditional Thai breakfast prepared by Wan - green tea, condensed milk (in a glass!), fresh coconut wrapped in banana leaves and fried doughnuts - yum! Suk arrived to drive us all ( ted,wan,and cream - wans 15yr old daughter who is fluent in English and michelle and I) to Pattaya for the day, a 2hr drive away. On the journey a member of the Thai royal family drove past us on the opposite side - a big event road closures, police, escorts the lot! We arrived at The Sanctuary of Truth, a Buddhist palace being carved since 1981 completely out of wood, and still yet to be finished - beautifully carved figures, trees, animals all representing the relationship being human beings and the universe. While there we all did an elephant ride around the palace and fed them some bananas, not the smoothest of rides but lovely to be on the back of a big gentle giant. Met our first lady boy - of Bangkok! who gave us sarongs to wear in the palace as legs had to be covered. While there we were also treated to a traditional Thai dance from men and women and had our photo taken with them! Suk then drove us to one of the 10 best seafood restaurants in Pattaya which Wan had found online - absolutely lovely Thai dishes massive prawns, squid, crab all fresh and cooked in lovely hot, spicy sauces. We then drove to a local market late afternoon which was pretty quiet at first then within a couple of hrs it was packed! en-route to the market a loud speaker announcement came over their tannoy system (communicating local bargains of the day, so we thought) - what this actually transpired to be, was one of the daily announcements that is Thai tradition, for their King where everyone stops and stands in silence to listen - so Michelle and I were busily chatting away oblivious to the fact it is etiquette to stop what you are doing and to observe this. Ooops :-/ Next time we will! so we bought shorts, a linen shirt, flip flops, 2x cashmere pashminas and a leather belt all for less than a tenner!! the food stalls were amazing and incredibly colourful - such a huge variety of foods to try...we snacked on fried grasshoppers (but we passed on the worms and baby frogs.. maybe next time!) and then dessert was fried bananas! Suk drove us all home - and we kept him company by falling asleep on the way back! Back at Ted and Wans we sorted Skype and got my mobile working over here - phew! We crashed out gone 1am, after another lovely catch up with Ted and co..

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