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After months of preparations, we finally made it. It all started last November 2011 when an officemate of mine and I decided to booked a flight to Bangkok Thailand. We bought tickets to Thailand for 4 days only. The trip was scheduled for June 13-17, 2012. We had 7 months to prepare. I started to look for hostel and some good tourist spots to visit. Our main goal was to save money for our trip.
Come last week of November I left Manila for a short term assignment to Doha, Qatar (another blog entry). I went back last February, and started to focused my time on the tour. Luckily, my officemate was allowed to take a week off from our office so I decided to rebooked our flights. I called the airline and asked about the rebooking fee, the agent told me to booked another flight because there was another promo flight to Bangkok. It will cost us another 4000PHP if we rebooked our flight so we decided to buy another ticket. But the problem is, what are we gonna do in 8 days? As an achitecture graduate, I studied early civilization, and I was fascinated by the ruins in Siem Reap. So we included Siem Reap in our IT.
After months of preparations, the moment we've been waiting for arrived. Last June 10, we started our tour. Here is the not so complete Itinerary.
June 9 Saturday - my cousin and I picked Cris (officemate) in Starmall to spend the night in our house.
June 10 Sunday - we left my place at around 3am to go to Terminal 3. Our flight was at 6am. We stayed and eat our brekky at the airport. We arrived in Suvarnabhumi International Airport at around 10am Manila time (1 hr ahead of TH time) and man, the airport was huge. Our first stop Pattaya. We bought bus ticket going to Pattaya, Thailand (270Baht). Unfortunately we were seated at the far end of the bus werein 4 Romanian guys were seating in front of us. F### they smelled terrible. The bus driver was driving like an old lady, the 1.5 hrs from Airport to Pattaya became 2.5hrs. Ate Daisy, my cousin together with Carl and Mickey her sons, agreed to fetch us in Big C supermarket. They were waiting for us for hours. Exhausted with the smell of the 4 men, lack of sleep (too much excitement) and hunger, I felt I was going to throw-up. Ate owns a Mazda 3 and I was impressed with her driving skills. We arrived at their house at around 1pm. I unpacked my things and gave my pasalubong to ate and the kids. The pasalubong consist of grocery items that was not available in Thailand, and some toys for the kids. We ate late lunch in a Thai resto near their place. We had Khao Pao Ta lei (fried rice with veggies and Pork) and stuffed squid. I'm so hungry that's why we don't have any photos.
After lunch, we went to Million Years Stone Park and Pattaya Crocodile Farm (Entrance fee = 300Baht). Located on an over-70-acre piece of land just 15 minutes' drive from Pattaya, this Park & Farm is a new striking tourist attraction created with more than 20 years' efforts, for all nature lovers. It contains much more than what its name suggests. It is not only a living museum of curious and beautiful things of all the three kingdoms-animal, vegetable and mineral, but it also offers you several kinds of amusing and exciting shows. We saw white tigers, crocodile show and we had close encounter with an Elephant. After 3 hours, I asked my ate to bring us to the Floating Market. We went to Pattaya Floating Market. Covering an area of 100,000sqm, the Four Regions Floating Market is separated into four sections - each representing and selling items from the four major parts of Thailand (north, northeast, central and south). Expect to find many eateries, fruit stalls, souvenir shops and some art galleries. We ate thai pork sausage and ice cream. I had Durian flavored ice cream while Cris opted for the chocolate one. We bought souvenirs for ourselves and for friends. After a tiring day, we went home to rest.
Ate Daisy is living in Thailand for almost 8 years, in fact my nephew and godson Carlos Miguel or Mickey was born in Bangkok. I asked ate to allow us to stay in their house for 2 nights and my request was granted. Free accomodation, free brekky, free wifi and tour guide, what a way to save some money.
Second Day of our tour, we woke up early becaouse the kids were going to school. We went to the kids school which is around 5km from their house. Then we proceed to Mini Siam (Entrance Fee = 350Baht) It houses the miniture models of all the famous landmarks of the world. We were the first one to arrived in the area. The fee supposed to be 450Baht but since it was Monday we paid only 350. We saw lots of landmarks from Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, Merlion and a lot more. My favorite was the Tomb of Abu Simbel which can be found in Eygpt. After 2 hrs of picture taking, we went to Mc Donald's to have a quick snack. Next stop - Baan Sukhawadee (Entrance Fee = 200 baht, Golf cart rental = 20baht). The mansion was created during the time of "King Louis the 14" with European design in mind. This place covers more than 60 acres of land including spacious garden and private beach. Moreover, the whole area is decorated with luxurious European sculptures and figurines both inside the buildings and garden. It was huge and we rented a golf cart to roam around the area. Ate picked us up at around 1pm and we proceed to The outlet Mall for lunch and some shopping. At around 3pm we fetch the kids and went to the Royal Garden Plaza where we saw the Ripley's Believe it or not. We also bought Starbucks Tumbler (my collections). We went to Jomtien beach to see and experienced the not so white sand. I remembered the last time I went to Jomtien, I had the oppurtunity to try the jetski and it is awesome. We treat the kids with some ice cream at Swensen's, did some shopping again and went home to packed our things.
Next entry will be the Siem Reap Blog... goodnight folks
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Jeanny.com will bookmarked. Your entry will come in handy when we will visit Pattaya soon :-)