2 best friends
19 hours of flying
7 hours in 3 different airports
1 hour on the road
5 airline meals later…
WE HAVE ARRIVED!!
Welcome to Bangkok – the city of thousands of lights, foreign languages, interesting smells, loads of shopping and no green grass!
We left Durban, South Africa at 7pm on Monday evening. Landed in Dubai at 5am on Tuesday morning. Spent 3 hours in their airport lounge snacking, trying to warm up and checking up on duty free shopping deals. We left Dubai at 9am and landed in Bangkok at 6pm on Tuesday evening.
An interesting taxi drive to our hotel – with a driver who spoke no English but told us his life story anyway, to dodging scooter after scooter with speedy drivers with no helmets, too many passengers and zero road rules, to driving past a number of shopping stalls with great clothing at bargain prices and arriving at a jam packed hotel – the tallest building in Bangkok – 84 storeys high!
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| Baiyoke Sky Hotel – tallest building in Bangkok |
We dropped our luggage, headed to the nearest Golden Arches (McDonald’s), chomped on a tasty cheeseburger and fries, sneaked in a quick foot massage (unbelievable!!) and then back to the hotel for a much needed shower and into bed!
What a day…
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| Can’t beat good old McDonalds for dinner |
DAY #2
Nice little sleep in this morning. Open the curtains to a very different looking city. Gone on the pretty coloured lights in the darkness, today it is grey and smoggy over dirty buildings and streets! The morning market is packed with people. We wonder how much money is passed between hands each day?
Quick breakfast on the 77th floor. View goes on for miles but the smog is restricting… Quite shocked at the “buffet” breakfast on offer – sushi, dim sum, curries, noodles and the usual fruit, cereal and some dodgy looking eggs! I play it safe with toast and jam.
Pack our bags, check out and hop into a taxi heading to Pattaya – coastal town.
Another power nap in the taxi and arrive at Nova Hotel & Spa (don’t be fooled with the spa – the prices are extreme so we stick to our back alley massages – with no happy endings!) Drop off our bags, put the bikinis on and head to the beach. We soon learn our hotel isn’t as close to the beach as we thought but its an interesting walk – different smells, food carts, stray dogs and boy/girl prostitutes looking for business.
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| Welcome to Pattaya |
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| View from our hotel room |
We reach “the strip” of restaurants, speeding scooters and the place we’ve come to see… The beach! Hundreds of deck chairs line the narrow beach and we sit back to soak up the sun, a few dips into the relatively warm ocean. The sound of jet skis fills the air and we watch numerous parasails take off… Not so yummy snack of prawn tempura (more tempura than prawn) leaves us starving and we sacrifice an hour in the sun to fill our tummies.
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| Pattaya Main Beach |
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| Coke and prawn tempura for lunch |
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| House of Tiffany’s Theatre |
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| Us girls with them “boys” |
In absolute awe and amazement, we take a walk down the strip, and we land up in a dodgy little restaurant with poles and porn pics on the wall. So a quick drink is downed and we head back to the hotel for some shut eye..
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| Quick night cap (please note all the poles in the background!) x |
I live in Malaysia (country next to Thailand), and I've yet to visit Bangkok yet! I've been seeing and hearing of so many people visiting Thailand, and I'm sad that I've not had the chance. Even more so now after seeing your post. š
xx
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