Asia Update #36 - Pattaya

After a few days in Korea, we headed south to Thailand. The plan is to spend a few days on the beach at Pattaya and then a few more days checking out the culture of Bangkok.

On the first full day, we did some souvenir shopping and headed to a crocodile farm. On the way, there was a field with some elephants in it. Quite neat to see them wandering about and eating (though they were probably part of the crocodile farm, but it sure seemed like they were in the wild).

Along with lots of crocodiles and crocodile shows, the croc farm also had lots of other animals. Various beautiful birds, elephants you could feed, crocodiles you could feed, and even the chance to be photographed with a few animals…

Next day was my day to complete my SCUBA open water certifications (which I started last fall at Phuket). Conditions (especially visibility) were not quite as good as at Phuket, but it was still fun. An added benefit was that along with my certification dives, I also got to do an extra dive to a wreck of a US warship from the 1920's. Quite cool.

Last day was sailing day. We rented a 31 foot catamaran (just the two of us, along with a skipper and hostess) to take us around for the whole day. Sailed for a few hours to 'monkey' island, where we stopped and hiked a while and got to see many monkeys. Then headed to a remote beach for some walking on the beach and snorkeling. Below is a picture of the sailboat we had, along with the dingy we used to get to shore.

Obviously, this was from monkey island and that guy was checking out our dingy for any food we may have left behind (as soon as we landed, one came and tried to steal our backpack from us).

Pattaya has a sleezy night scene, much like what I saw in Phuket. Bars, bar girls, Thai boxing shows, snake shows, cheap souvenirs, etc. were all available. And the strengthening of the dollar has also made things even cheaper than when I was last in Thailand. We hit the souvenir shops and have loaded up with just a few goodies (enough to require that we use one more bag to leave here than we came with, and we likely will do more shopping in Bangkok).