Banana Hammocks and Slimy Grossness

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  Pattaya City, Thailand
Sunday, January 15, 2006

We got to Pattaya around 3pm, and as soon as we got out of our minibus we were immediately pounced on by a Thai man looking to make a couple of bucks on us. He asked where we were staying, and when we told him he said, "No, that's a man girly place, you don't want to stay there! Let me take you to my friend's hotel, you don't like it you can go somewhere else."

Fearing he might drive us out to the middle of nowhere and then charge us a gazillion Baht to get back to somewhere, we asked if we could walk there. He started laughing and said, "Walk?? But it's very far! 10 minutes!" We told him we could handle ten minutes, so he pointed us toward the beach and off we went, laden with our huge backpacks in the hot hot hot midday sun.

Lonely Planet kept saying that Pattaya was exactly like Florida, and as we headed to the beach I saw why

01: The Beach

. On the one hand it was beautiful: lots of trees and flowers and beautifully manicured hotels and things, but as you got to the beach there were progressively more people with far too little clothing and tons of grotty looking touristy hotels, bars, and shops.

Every place we stopped at was booked, so we ended up having to splurge for the night and stay at a nice hotel.

I say splurge, but for a really nice hotel right on the beach we were paying practically nothing.

After we dropped our bags off and had some water, we headed down to the beach... first thing we thought?

"I have never seen so many banana hammocks in one place in my life!!"

The beach was nice, though it was crowded with too many people and chairs (and said banana hammocks), but it was hard to truly enjoy it since I was constantly being pestered by vendors coming by trying to sell me bracelets or food or henna or trinkets

02: Beach Chair

. It was more tiring than relaxing, especially since if I would say "no, thank you" in English they would keep pestering me, and if I said "no, thank you" in Thai (mei yao), they would start laughing and then start asking me questions about myself and THEN keep pestering me.

There were also some disturbing things about the beach, and just Pattaya in general. There were about a million motor boats and wave runners coming up to shore, waiting for tourists to rent them out for a spin, and there were people who were trying to swim or relax in the water off of the beach. There were also a ton of children who were playing around in the water, and these boats and wave runners kept zooming around them as they were swimming around. Apparently Thai people think it's okay for children to have their fingers cut off while they're playing in the ocean.

Also.

First of all, all of the tourists in Pattaya were at least middle-age, except for the few tourist children that were running around. Second of all, if the old, very unattractive Western men didn't have wives with them, they were walking around hand in hand with very young beautiful Thai girls. What are they thinking? Money? Citizenship? As we were coming back to our hotel from dinner, one old gross lobster-red Western guy, as he was having a drink with his Thai girl and touching her rather innappropriately, started hitting on us!

Disgusting Slimy Grossness.

SO, the verdict on Pattaya is that it's not worth going there, which is why we booked it out of there for Ko Chang the next morning. Well, not worth it unless, of course, you enjoy banana hammock epidemics, pestering vendors, children getting run over by motor boats, and old unattractive slimy Western men hitting on you while simultaneously groping their young Thai play toys while you're just trying to enjoy the evening beach air after dinner.

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03: Evening Sun	04: Pepsi Sand Castle	05: The Sun Begins to Set	06: Almost Set
07: Where the Ocean Meets the Sand	08: Linnea gets artsy with her camera

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