Wander with Me: Pattaya

Forgive me for my lack of posts. When you’re writing freelance full time and spewing out at least 3,000 words a day on stuff like mortgages and video surveillance, you won’t have much energy to write anything else. Anyhow, this is a very much delayed account of my trip to Pattaya with my friends from home some 2 weekends ago.

My friend, A, who currently lives and works in Singapore, flew in to Bangkok Friday night to visit me and my friend, D, who was nearing the end of his Bangkok vacation. It was going to be a reunion of sorts and we have been it planning for weeks. A was only staying until Sunday afternoon so there really wasn’t enough time to go anywhere far, and since the 3 of us have always been serious beachcombers, we weren’t left with much of a choice – Pattaya. I’ve never been there but I’ve heard so many things about the place, most of them quite bad, so I figured it was going to be very interesting.

But I digress, as I usually do. A’s flight was delayed for hours and when she finally walked out of the arrival gate at 2 AM, well, let’s just say a lot of shrieking and jumping up and down were involved. A looked fantastic, as always. She’s filled out a bit, which really suited her. I took them home with me to crash. She had her first taste of Thai street food at 3 AM. I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. After all, somebody needed to be the mother hen and for some reason, that’s a job that always falls on me.

I woke my charges up at the crack of dawn. We headed to the Mo Chit bus station where we boarded the bus to Pattaya. The trip was uneventful. We slept through most of it. We got to Pattaya a little over 2 hours later and took a songthaew to Pattaya Beach. We had breakfast at a McDonald’s, the only McDonald’s in Thailand that I’ve been in that actually served proper breakfast food (Egg McMuffins, anyone?).

We spent a good part of the morning looking for a place to stay and we finally decided on a beach front hotel called Natural Beach. It was quite nice. We were given a room with a terrace and a view of the pool and D was given an extra bed, so we were all quite satisfied with the accommodation.

As soon as we were all settled, we slipped into our swim wear and crossed the street to the beach, where we were greeted by quite an appalling sight. Pattaya Beach has got to be the worst stretch of beach I’ve ever seen. It was cramped, dirty, and very much ruined. Needless to say, we were very disappointed and very outraged. Once again, like in Patong Beach in Phuket, I was struck by the people’s negligence. Everybody was so caught up in making money that they’d ruin perfectly good beaches just to get it. It was sad. Since we can’t be made to swim in all that muck, we swam in the hotel pool instead.

We decided to go on an afternoon tour and we were taken to the Million Years Stone Park and Pattaya Crocodile Farm. We had loads of fun feeding the fishes and the crocodiles. A had her picture taken with an elephant, D and I with a tiger cub. We watched a camel pee for over 10 minutes, saw giant catfishes the size of baby whales, and watched a crocodile show, which included a guy sticking various parts of his body in the crocodiles’ heads.

We were taken back to the hotel at the end of the day. Tired, we all took a nap for a couple of hours. By 9 PM, we were ready to hit the famous Walking Street and see Pattaya in all its gaudy glory.

We had dinner at a seaside restaurant. We watched tourists walking in with their scantily clad Thai whores. It was exploitation at its very best. Both the tourists and working girls were busily getting something out of each other, so I couldn’t really feel sorry for anybody. At the table beside ours there were 2 obese American men and a tiny Thai girl in even tinier hot pants. At some point, one of the fat men said to her in a really loud voice: “Do you like my brother? Because he’s going to bite your ass.” Gross. We were out of that restaurant pronto.

We all planned to see a girl-on-girl sex show but none of us was daring enough to just walk into a club and take a seat. We must have walked through Walking Street quite a number of times before we were led by a dodgy little man to a go-go club, the name of which escapes me. The experience was educational, to say the least. We saw vaginas perform daring, even miraculous, feats. Indeed, all sorts of possibilities were opened up that night. The whole of Walking Street was so ugly and dirty but we couldn’t look away. In all its ugliness, it was much too fascinating.

We ended the night by getting a nice Thai massage on the way back to the hotel. I treated my friends to my favorite banana and chocolate pancakes. The moment our heads hit our pillows, we all passed out.

We planned to get an early start back to Bangkok so we can visit some markets before A leaves in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we all woke up rather late. We didn’t get to leave Pattaya until noon. Still, it left us with enough time to shop a bit in Chatuchak Market. We never got to visit Chatuchak, however, because A lost her wallet somewhere. We spent the next few hours looking for that wallet. We checked the bus we were on and even called the Pattaya bus station but it was nowhere to be found.

Dejected, I took A back to the airport. D didn’t come along because he was leaving Thailand the next day and he needed to spend time with his sister. I stayed with A long enough to share a burger with her. At the customs gate, we hugged each other goodbye and promised that we will do it again soon.

I wonder if we ever will. Sometimes I think that weekend was the last we’ll ever spend together as a group. After all, in a few months’ time, D will be migrating to New Zealand. A will still be living in Singapore. And as for me, well, God only knows where my feet will take me then.

We have come a long way from our headsets and workstations and beaches back home, my friends and I. And even if that trip was indeed our last together, it’s at least something that will never be forgotten. As long as we have the pictures proudly displayed on Friendster, we’ll always have each other. And in all its dirty sand, cracked pavements, and ugly neon, we’ll always have Pattaya.