DAY 19 - SOUVENIR SHOPPING

Danny and I took a baht taxi back to downtown Pattaya - trying to pick up a few souvenirs.   Only partially successful...  It's such a drag that practically every single shop sells exactly the same thing - way too predictable.  Went into the shopping mall attached to the Marriott Hotel and discovered what looks like it will be an excellent Japanese food restaurant.  We plan to make time to get back to try it out.  Had a snack and a drink in a German restaurant overlooking the beach road, did a little people watching.

Most of the malls here go up, rather than spread out.  Not unusual for a mall to be 5 floors high.  We checked out the top floor of this mall and discovered a number of touristy "attractions".  In order to take a break from the heat, we decided to check a couple of them out:  First one was probably the lamest 3-D "adventure ride" we've ever been on.  Won't waste time talking about details.








Second was Ripley's Believe It or Not and it was actually pretty entertaining.  Had a lot of the usual stuff (I imagine, never having been inside any of their other locations) but also had a definite Asian slant to the exhibits.  We managed to spend more than an hour browsing through - it was kind of fun :)













Third was Louis Tussaud's wax museum.  Note the name....  NOT Madame Tussaud - maybe a distant relative?  lol  Most of the exhibits were just not quite right....  There were also a lot of Asian celebrities that we were unfamiliar with.

We've seen a lot of great signs -
gonna start taking pics of them

Walked up and down a few side streets, searching for that perfect souvenir...  Stopped a couple of times for a cold beer - no worries - quite certain we more than worked the calories off with all the walking/heat today.

Spirit House outside
downtown mall

Another fine example of street wiring :)

DAY 18 - NONG NOOCH TROPICAL GARDEN

Chai picked us up around 8:30 a.m. and took us out to see the tropical gardens which are billed to have the world's largest collection of palms and the most variety of orchids.  Pretty impressive - on the scale of Butchart Gardens in Victoria, but a little more "kitschy" with a lot of cartoon type animal figures throughout and not so many flowers...  Still, it was quite beautiful.

Baby tiger - they also had a full grown one
but it looked like it may have been drugged?

Near the entrance, they had some tigers, a gibbon (monkey) and some tropical birds (all chained up) that you could pay to have a photo taken with....  We took a pass.

Corinne & Chai (our driver)

 Chai told us this was only the second time he had ever seen elephants mating and, because it was so rare to see, it was considered very lucky...  The sound that female was making didn't sound like she thought it was her lucky day!  The noise she made was deafening!  Notice how Danny managed to keep the photo at a very discreet angle with the post?  There was a Russian woman darting around, back & forth desperately trying to get a photo with all the goods!


It was actually quite fun feeding the elephants...  We bought bunches of small bananas (plantains?) that they were very happy to take off our hands.  If you gave them the whole bunch, they'd stick the whole thing in their mouths - guess it wasn't much of a mouthful for them :)

Also took in the Thai cultural show and elephant show (elephants are the national symbol of Thailand).   They've trained the elephants to do different tricks, including painting, which I found pretty amazing.  Obviousy, they've taught the elephants which strokes to make, and which colours to use - they end up with beautiful paintings, which they've done on t-shirts which are then sold (of course).  

During the elephant show, there were young boys (maybe 7 or 8?) going up and down selling bunches of bananas for the people to feed to the elephants.  Chai told us that these boys are usually the sons of the elephant trainers.  They don't go to school.  Families come from Cambodia (where, apparently, their lives are much worse); fathers may be elephant trainers, young sons sell the bananas, wives and daughters work in the concessions or tending the gardens.  They live on the grounds.  The gardens provide work for approx. 1200 people.

We took an open tour bus around the grounds - simply too hot, even in the morning, to spend the 4 hours it would take to walk it.

French garden

Cacti  

"Stone Henge"

Later, we asked Chai to take us to the Pinnacle Revolving Restaurant.  This is the tower that we can see from our condo balcony so we were quite curious to see the view from up there.  Food was mediocre but the view was fabulous.  They have zip lines as well as these gondolas going from the top of the tower (55 floors) down to the ground.  No, none of us cared to try it out!

These "foot spas" are all over the place...
Stick your feet in & these little fish
nibble the dead skin off your feet

Last stop of the day was the Golden Buddha on Pratamnak Hill in Pattatya.

DAY 15 - LAZY POOL DAYS

The past couple of days have been very lazy around the pool. Gary & Jerry dropped by for a drink early in the evening and entertained us with stories of his state of health and wild youth. He has had numerous heart operations, cancer, and kidney failure. Notwithstanding, the man lives life to the fullest and has no intention of slowing down. They are leaving Monday, Gary to Koh Chang, an island in the south of Thailand and Jerry to Singapore to see her daughter who lives there.  They were an interesting, fun couple and it's been a pleasure meeting them.

The four of us went back to The News for dinner and Phil, Linda, and Danny all ended up with a case of Thailand revenge, similar to Montazuma's revenge but with an Asian flare. It may have been something as simple as an ice cube. 

Tomorrow will be another pool day and a concerted effort to eat foods that agree with us.

Another view of the inside of the condo

DAY 12 - EASY DAY

Not a lot happened today.  Phil & linda went shopping downtown today and we stayed at the condo, a real easy day. We met a couple from Ontario, Gary & Jerry, who vacation here in Thailand 3 to 5 months a year and have done so for seven years. They recommended a small bakery/restaurant about two blocks from  the condo. We decided to go there for lunch and then explore Jomtien beach, which is supposed to be a little nicer than Pattaya.  After a rather mediocre lunch  (Corinne had a club sandwich and I had a bacon sandwich) we have concluded Gary and Jerry's favourite restaurant will not be ours. It was so hot after lunch that we decided to forego Jomtien and went back to the pool.  Adjusting to the heat here is proving to be a lot harder than we thought it would be.  


Phil joined us for dinner in the evening at "The News" again then we returned to the condo for a little TV and an early night to bed. Linda was too tired to join us for dinner and went to bed at about 6 pm.

View to the left of our balcony - Jomtien beach area
Can't see it in the pic, but there is a zip line from the tower to the ground

View to the right of our balcony - Pattaya beach area

DAY 11 - CLOSE CALL

Danny and I took a baht taxi to downtown, just to see what we could see.  Had lunch at the Hilton with a great view of the water and beach.

Only a few of the parasailers....

There were over a dozen of them, with the boats zipping back & forth 

Returned to the condo and then ventured out again with Phil and Linda to check out the outlet mall east of here.  Guess we were getting a little over-confident with dealing with traffic here because when we left the taxi, we almost got taken out by a bus when we crossed the road.  We got half way across ok (3 lanes in each direction) but then we all looked right instead of left when we started crossing the last half of the road.  (They drive on the opposite side of the road here.)  A Thai man sitting across the road yelled at us so we all darted as fast as we could.  We will never take the traffic/road crossing for granted again!

DAY 10 - SANCTUARY OF TRUTH

Danny is actually much happier than he looks :)

Arranged with Chai (driver that Abe hooked us up with) to take us out to the Sanctuary of Truth, just north of Pattaya, built on the shore of Rachvate Cape, Naklua, Pattaya.

The Khmer styled wing

The Sanctuary of Truth is a remarkable creation.  It was started by an eccentric Thai billionaire named Lek Viriyaphant more than 30 years ago and is now being completed by his son and is expected to taker another 5 to 20 years to complete (depending on who you ask).

It is built entirely of teakwood and is designed to “showcase Thai culture and ingenuity”. The building is a work-in-progress; the founder’s intention is that visitors should be able to appreciate the amount and kind of work that goes into a creation of this magnitude. 

From walking around the outside, it seemed as if one entire wing of the building has just been erected fairly recently; artisans are still busy with the interior and exterior carvings in this area.  The carvings are fabulous, as is the architecture and design of the sanctuary. Almost every square inch inside is covered in carved images of gods and goddesses, as well as effigies of the planets, floral motifs, and so on.

The religious imagery draws from and illustrates the four major influences on Thai culture – Buddhist, Chinese, Khmer, and Hindu.  There are 4 wings reflecting each of the styles.

When we were done, Linda & I had a foot massage.
Only problem was then I wanted a back massage too lol !!

After all that walking, in the heat,
only one way out:  Up

DAY 9 - BAHT TAXI / WALKING STREET

 After another relaxing day by the pool, we took our first baht taxi downtown for the evening.  Baht taxis are modified small pick-up trucks.  The truck bed has benches down either side, a step at the back as well as a place for 1 person to stand on either side of the back.  There's a metal roof overhead with several buzzers to hit when you want to get off.  You stand on the side of the road and flag the taxi down, get in the back and hit the buzzer when you want to get off, at which time you pay the driver - usually 10 baht (about 30 cents).  A lot of tourists use the baht taxis, as well as some locals, so it can be a good place to strike up a conversation or ask a few questions.


 We walked beside the beach area - wall to wall umbrellas and beach chairs lined up - just a mass of people on the beach, a mass of people on the sidewalks and a mass of vehicles on the road…

Stopped at the first seafood restaurant we saw on Walking Street, mainly because none of us could wait to get a cold drink.  The drinks were good, the food just ok….  We passed on the giant lobster (approx $100 CAD); hard to tell from the pic, but they looked to be about 10 lbs each!




Walked the length of Walking Street.  I dunno, somehow I expected to be a little more shocked.  Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention?  Or maybe it was still too early in the evening.  The street kept filling up, the later it got.  We left by 10 pm - likely before things started heating up!








I think I was most surprised by the number of tourists who brought their kids down here.  It definitely is creepy seeing old men with very young girls.  I'm not a great judge of age but I'm guessing the girls are at least 18+ (I hope, anyway).  Still….