Pattaya

I arrived at the Bangkok international airport at about 6:00 in the afternoon on September 29, and was greeted by the cab driver I had previously setup to meet me. Immediately upon arrival I noticed several things that were distinctly different about this country than from the Philippines. Just from the airport you could tell that this country has more money and higher standards. The cab driver that picked me up was driving a car that was in nearly new condition and was a good car, something you just don’t find in the Philippines. Once I was on my way from the airport to Pattaya I began to see the city of Bangkok as well highways and familiar cars and trucks as well as semis which were something I had not expected to see. Aside from the fact that we were driving on the left side of the road you could have almost mistaken this for a city in the US. That is at least at night and from the highway you could have, the darkness of the night hides much of what is different so that the billboards and lighted signs, skyscrapers restaurants and other lighted buildings stand out making it look like any other first world city. Of course this changes once you get off the highway or it turns to day. But we didn’t get off the highway for several hours and I didn’t get to see Bangkok by day until several days later when I returned. As for now I was on my way to Pattaya and would arrive there at about 10:30. My hotel reservation was already set up for the Jomtien Boathouse which my driver took me directly to. I was dropped off, given a room, my baggage carried to my room for me and more or less set for the night. I unpacked as was going to stay here for about 10 days. As I sat there now with nothing more to do I began contemplating if I should go to sleep or head outside to see what there was to do. Also I was a good bit famished and thought I might get something to eat from the hotel restaurant before I headed out. Having now been somewhat used to the Philippine restaurants and having some familiarity with restaurants in other countries I didn’t rightly know what exactly to expect, but was quite pleasantly surprised to find a complete western or European menu in English as well as a Thai menu also in English. That made ordering much easier, and I was equally surprised to find the food I had ordered was cooked in a manner that I would expect of American restraints. This is a dramatic enhancement over what I had been dealing with in the Philippines. After finishing my meal I decided to take a walk along the street to see what else was to be seen. The street that my hotel was located on runs parallel to the Jomtien beach, so on one side of the road you have the beach on the other you have everything else. The main road along the beach has many hotels restaurants massage parlors and shops. Every couple hundred feet or so there is a side road that leads back away from the main road. Most of these roads have several bars on them and an assortment of shops. The bars here serve a couple of purposes. First they serve as a place for people to socialize and drink, second they serve as a place to find and hire some personal entertainment for the night if you so desire, and thirdly they all have rooms for rent directly above the bar. You can easily see how these bars would prove quite convenient for some tourists. After walking up and down a couple of these streets I decided it was time for me to head back to my hotel, but thought I might stop by a massage parlor on the way. After the massage I called it a night it now being about 1:00 or so in the morning and I needing to find the scuba diving shop I would be diving with in the morning. I started the next morning at about 9:00 thinking that I would go to the dive shop and set up sort of a schedule of dives for my time there. When I had awoken though I had noticed that my ear was hurting and had high suspicions that I had and ear infection and should probably go see a doctor and get it straightened out. I went down to the dive shop the first thing and ended up setting up a couple of dives for that day. That as it turns out was a mistake, while my ear wasn’t bad in the morning by the time I got back in the evening I would wish I had gone to a doctor rather than go diving. I knew before hand that it is a bad idea to dive with a head cold or an ear infection or anything that interferes with your sinuses or ears, but I figured I would give it a shot and go see a doctor that afternoon. So I went out on the boat with several other people whom seem to have come in groups, or were interning at the dive shop earning there certifications. The dive was at a few islands located about an hour and half boat ride from the main shore. Of course the boat we were on was a rather slow boat so it probably wasn’t more than a few miles as the islands could easily be seen from the main land. The divers were split up into groups of 3 to 5 people each with one or two interns who would be guiding them. As the only person that was there by myself I was teamed up with two interns one that was new to the shop and learning underwater navigation, and another one who was there instructing him. Me I was just there for the ride which suited me just fine. I informed the interns that I would be diving with that I might have a problem with equalization because I suspected that I had an ear infection. Once we reached our destination we all donned our gear and one by one flopped into the ocean. We swam a ways from the boat and then began our decent. My not so bad ear infection immediately began to let me know that this was not something it cared for me to be doing this day, as I descended further and further it became harder and more painful to equalize the pressure in my ears. Now for those of you that may not know as you descend further in water the pressure of the water increases and divers compensate for this naturally by breathing pressurized air and the pressurized air equalizes with pressure of the water outside the body. This is true for all parts of the body that has air or blood circulating through it with the exception of the inner ear. If you don’t know your inner ear is connected to you sinuses. If the tubes that are connecting your sinuses to you inner ears are healthy and clean, by enlarge equalizing will be relatively easy and painless some divers don’t even need to equalize there ears as there body will naturally do it, others like myself must pinch there nose and attempt to blow out of it. The forces the pressurized air that your breathing through the tubes from your sinuses to your inner ear, thus equalizing your inner ear pressure with the water pressure outside. Usually as a matter of course your ears will naturally depressurize without a problem as you ascend to the surface, but occasionally you can experience problems when rising, and the only thing you can really do there is ascend much more slowly so as to not burst your eardrum. On my decent I immediately began having problems equalizing I had to pressurize my ears every five feet or so and it became increasing difficult the deeper I went, as our dive was starting out deep and then moving gradually to shower waters I figured that if I could get down initially I should be good from there. As is was we ended going up and over and back down a couple of ridges which caused me quite a dear of pain. Now aside from the problems I was having with my ear I did quite enjoy the dive, especially as I haven’t been underwater I quite a while. When the dive eventually came to a finish we climbed back aboard the boat and waited for the few remaining people to finish surfacing, and some of the interns that were training for rescue diving to finish there training. Once all were out of the water lunch was served and I was rather impressed with by the small spread put on as they have a vary sparse kitchen area no bigger than most kitchen sinks. Even so they managed to cook up four or five main courses and enough of it for all of about twenty of us. We ate lunch as the boat slowly began the trip to the next set of islands that we would be diving around. I had decided though that I wouldn’t be doing any further diving that day as my ear simply hurt to much and I didn’t want to press my luck and burst an ear drum. The rest of the day I just enjoyed the ride and took it easy while the others dived. We got back to Pattaya around 5:30 or so and my first mission was to find a doctor and do something about my ear. I knew at this point though that I most likely wouldn’t be doing much diving as it usually takes me about a week to clear up an ear infection and I didn’t want to try to make it worse by doing anymore diving. I headed back to my hotel to shower and get changed into something a little dryer. After that I went out to the main street and started looking for a pharmacy figuring that would be my best bet on finding someone that would know where a doctor was I could go see. When I found a pharmacy I explained to the gentlemen who spoke English rather well that I needed a doctor to get a prescription for an ear infection. After explaining this to him, he told me that I didn’t need to see a doctor he could give me the prescription, and so with that he did. He then asked me if I would also like a prescription of Viagra, I thanked him but had to decline the offer. I then made my way back to my hotel and more or less called it a day. The days there after sort of become a little bit of a blur as I don’t remember which days I did what because as I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do what I had planned on doing, that being scuba diving, I turned to doing more of the tourist thing. A couple of the days I just took it easy and did nothing at all except chill out in the hotel and by the beach. Also as you can tell, unlike while I was in the Philippines I didn’t keep a journal. Some of the things I did get to do though included, going to a cabaret show something everyone to Thailand should do, a tiger and crocodile zoo, a garden, some islands off the mainland, and another animal zoo. Each of these events took up the better part of a day so while I wasn’t every terribly busy I certainly wasn’t bored either. The zoos were more or less like any other zoo and they put on shows with some of there animals or you cold snap pictures of the animals in there cages. The cabaret show was quite interesting. The shows are theatrical productions and different shows have different themes but they all have one thing in common all the actors are men, the catch is, they all look like women, and they are quite possibly some of the most beautiful women you will ever see. There are other shows where the actors are mixed and you cant tell which are men and which are women which is also kind of part of the fun trying to figure out which they are. The same evening that I went to see the cabaret show I also went to Walking Street as it had been recommended to me by many persons. Walking street is kind of a neat combination of shops, stores, art galleries, restaurants, bars, open air markets, and a red light district. Walking Street is so called because the street is continuously blocked off to traffic and so the whole area is open for waking without fear of getting run over. As you may be able to imagine there is quite a bit to see in such an area and so I spent a good deal of time that evening wondering about and looking around. Oven the next couple of days I went to two zoos, the first being the tiger and crocodile zoo which I was somewhat disappointed in as it was a rather poor zoo, ill maintained and you could tell its sole purpose was to draw in tourist, which it did, but didn’t present much in the way of real attractions. They did put on a couple of good shows with the tigers doing tricks and a crocodile show where a man and women world do tricks with the crocs, more or less the person doing the trick while attempting to not get bit by the croc. The other zoo I went to was actually much better both for the animals that lived there and for the people visiting, but I ended up getting rained out after being there for only about 2 hours so I didn’t get to see most of the zoo or any of the shows they put on. The other two things I got to see were the gardens and the Islands located a short distance off the main land. Bothe were obviously set up strictly as tourist spots, the buildings in the gardens were still under construction or the ones that were built while looking nice were completely nonfunctional. Of course this isn’t at all to say that the gardens weren’t nice they were, it just sore of had a faux feeling to as did much of Pattaya. The islands that I went to offered little to do besides walk the beaches or sit under an umbrella unless you cared to rent a boat or jet sky, or go parasailing so some other such thing. Now I don’t want anyone to think that I didn’t enjoy my trip to Thailand, I did, but when I said before that it had a faux feeling there is a reason for it. Pattaya and many of the places that tourists go to, are strictly that tourist spots, geared totally towards tourists and the “things” tourist want to do. To this end there is sort of a veneer to what you see or the things you can find to do. When asking a local person about places to go or things to do they always direct you to the things designed for the tourist rather than the places or things the locals might go to or do. Along this line the places you stay as a tourist are always dressed up so to speak. Poverty is very prevalent in Thailand but unless you go out of you way and do a little digging your unlikely to see any of the real Thailand or poverty that the general people live in. you will see the beggars in the city streets just as you do in any city, but that’s not the poverty I’m talking about, I’m talking about the poverty that the average working person lives in every day. When I go to a country I like to learn about the people of that country and how they live, and for me Pattaya was not that place, it’s just too much of a tourist trap. But as I had come to go diving and Pattaya is a place to go diving I still think it turned out to be a rather good trip even if I didn’t get to do that.











Pattaya Bay
Beaches and walkways lining the islands.
	Boats for rent on the islands that I visited off the mainland.

Hay if I'm going to be a tourist I ought to get some touristy pictures.