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Thursday 26th July - Tuesday 31st July.
So here we are in Pattaya, the taxi driver brought us direct to the hotel which was great that we didn't have the hassle of being dropped off and getting another taxi or Songthaew. Our hotel was situated off a busy soi (road) but tucked away down a smaller soi so it wasn't noisy. We noticed plenty of bars, restaurants, massage and laundry shops all within walking distance. The hotel we chose was new and you could see some unfinished touches as you walked into the sparse foyer. We was given our key and shown the way to our room, it was only on the second floor and we went up on lift. The room was amazing, it was new, clean, fresh, modern with a lovely big bed and furniture, small balcony overlooked the quite street. There was a lovely big fridge, tea and coffe making facilities. What made me and Lee chuckle what we hadn't expected or seen before was where the free tea and coffe sachets were they was also a pack of condoms and some Colgate mouth wash. There was also a list of do donts if you brought guests into the hotel and your room, we found it all very amusing but also didn't want to think what had previously gone on in the room as it was so lovely and we didn't want to spoil that nice feel about it. We had a rest, freshened up then went for a walk.
Our hotel was situated of Bua Kau Rd Soi 9, which is well known for its bars, we walked down to the famous Pattaya beach and it is everything you imagine Pattaya to be. Although the water looked very clear and clean it is one of the most extremely polluted beaches in Thailand.
For centuries, Pattaya was a small fishing village. But a change occurred on 26 April 1961, when the first group of about 100 American servicemen who were fighting in the Vietnam War arrived in Pattaya for relaxation. From this beginning, Pattaya became a popular beach resort which now attracts over 4 million visitors a year. Fishermen's huts along the beach were replaced by resort hotels and retail stores, including Asia's largest beachfront shopping mall, the CentralFestival Pattaya Beach Mall and hotel (Hilton) situated on Beach Rd in central Pattaya.
Pattaya beach was everything you would imagine it to be, rows and rows of deck chairs, stalls selling drinks, and boat trips. Opposite the beach were lots of bars with rows of soi,s all along with men sitting and chatting to Thai bar girls. It was nothing different to what we expected or what we had already seen in Phukets Bang la Rd but on a much bigger scale. It was very hot so we decided to go for a drink and without feeling intimidated we headed for one of the bars, was greeted as we would expect in any bar and enjoyed a few cold San Miguel Lights and sat and people watched. We was getting a bit hungry, the bar didn't do food so we headed back towards our hotel. It was hot and sticky and before we knew we was back at Bua Kau rd. Our hotel was an annexe to a bigger hotel and was very luxurious for what we paid it served the most amazing breakfast and also did lunches and dinners very reasonably priced.
We spent the next 5 days visiting bars, people watched in the famous Walking Streer which I believe is a bit tamer now as over the years Pattaya has tried to make it more of a family friendly environment. There is a lot of Russian influence here as you can tell as a lot of information brochures and maps we picked up were all written in Russian and a lot of English signs had now been replaced with Russian. All though the men that frequented the girly bars were still very much white European or ex pats.
One evening we decided to go to the Famous Tiffany show which was the most glamourous lady boy show on earth. I had looked on line at it and thought it was like a beauty pageant but it looked more like a show, with different acts in between which would be no good To us as we don't understand Thai. I did see that before the show the lady boys came out and you could have your photo taken with them, I thought it looked like 20bht in there hand. So we sat and waited and just before the show about 10 glamorous lady boys walked out in all there finery, everyone dashed forward to take pictures of them, then one came our way and said to Lee quick there's one here so we had our photo taken with him(he was not the best looking or dressed of them). When we gave him 20bht he as horrified he wanted 100bht for each photo - bloody hell we wasn't going to pay £4 quid to have our photo taken with possible the worst one so we pretended we didn't have anymore money and couldn't understand what he was saying, phew we got away with that one.
We spent 5 days in Pattaya, enjoying chilling by the roof top pool, relaxing in the room, jumping on and off the cheap song thaews that ran around for 10bht a time. The San Miguel was cheap, so we drank plenty and ate well until it was time to leave and get our flight to Phuket from there we was off to Koh Lak.
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