Thailand stopover en route to Europe
Trip Start
May 18, 2006
1
Trip End
May 23, 2006
Bangkok,
Thailand
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
At the time of thinking about the nearest beach, Kat and I were imagining a chilled out, quiet beach with palm trees and coconuts. Logic should have told us differently, especially as this wasn't my first trip to Thailand.
Pattaya is apparently a nighttime neon strip infamous for it's rampant prostitution, but in the daytime it was a mere mountainrange of skyscrapered hotel apartments lurching over the beach with sleeping beach bars lined up like urchins at their feet. They were hosing down the bars when we arrived and 15 minutes later, while we were awaiting our boat, a storm of hurtling rain came out of nowhere and drenched the beach, leaving as quickly as it came.
We boarded a small boat with a cool old thai skipper (see photo). He took us to a larger vessel where a the mix of middle-aged tourists ranging from Germany to India were strapped in for the days adventures. As I reclined while the boat took off I considered that this may not be what I was originally expecting.
After driving, or rather 'boating', across waters and between islands that all looked luscious with inviting beaches, we arrived at a big floating platform where we unexpectedly had the option of para-sailing.
Stopover in Thailand en route to Europe
Only Kat and I took them up on it. It was cool, my first time, and her's too. Crazy - they had a Thai guy jumping up above you, in the harness of the parachute, and he rode with you all the way, completely unharness 40-50 metres in the air, guiding the parachute up and back down for it's landing on the platform again. There were high winds at the time, and I had the feeling that if the wind was any stronger they would have had to reluctantly cancel it. The landing was pretty hairy!Then we boated to our destination which turned out to be a small and grotty little beach with loads of trash in the water where one small restaurant served up a meagre, sad lunch. Swimming was almost out of the question with the murky condition of the water, but it seemed obligatory to my original concept of a chilled beach day under coconut palms, so I threw myself into the water quickly before the boat started rounding us up to leave. On the trip back we passed loads of nice islands with palm trees on the beach. Eventually the humming of the boat engine and the feeling of travelling across water was enough to give me that high, spacious feeling of satisfied calm, and although I wouldn't recommend a day trip like that to anyone, I still gotta say I enjoyed it.
