A Day at the Beach, Pattaya Thailand.

While we were in Pattaya we obviously had to venture to the beach.

Pattaya doesn’t have a lovely beach by any means. But Nong Ja had never been to a beach and felt the sand and small waves washing onto the beach.

It was very hot out in the sun but Miss Noot insisted that she have her photo taken with on the beach.

There were plenty of takers for jet ski hires. There were 4 jet skis near us and all were busy for the few hours we were there. It was funny as most will know of the scam that operators use in saying that the hirer damaged the ski and must pay extra money (google it otherwise). These operators walking the hirers around the skis making sure they checked it before hiring. Most of the hirers didn’t seem to care and just wanted to get going.

The people whizzed about and in all the time I only saw one small altercation between some Indian or Pakistani guys who had apparently gone overtime (another scam used) and the guy was asking for extra money. Two guys walked off telling him, ‘no’. But one stayed and handed over some extra money sure to save any further problems.

I had taken Ja to the waters edge and put our feet into the ocean, also played in the sand but is was very hot in the sun so we returned to the shade of the beach umbrellas. There I bought a small bucket and shovel set and Ja seemed to be having fun.

We were sitting under the umbrellas with a nice breeze blowing. I was just watching the world go by, I enjoy people watching. The girls were waiting for food to arrive.

A crab salad in a curry sauce. It was very nice to be truthful.

A spicy Seafood salad, a very popular dish across Thailand. This also was very good.

And we had to have a papaya salad with fermented fish sauce with crab. Well the girls had this dish, I didn’t. Noot complained as she said, ‘fermented fish sauce not the same in Pattaya as Isaan. It isn’t as strong and not the same good flavour.

The one thing that is a real pain in the butt on the beach, are all the hawkers. They are an endless stream that stops by your table selling a huge array of goods. You can either ignore them or offer a smile and a polite wave of the hand and a simple, ‘no thank you’ and most go on their way. We did buy a few things (the girls thought they were feeding 20 people) from them.

There was only one hawker that got the ire of me. He was a youngish guy who had small birds in cages, and what you do is buy their release. It is meant to be a good thing for you. Like you are making merit by releasing it. After telling him, ‘no’ politely 4 or 5 times and he still stood with the cages virtually hanging over our food I told him in Thai to move along, go away but added please at the end. Still trying to be nice.

After another 30 seconds I had enough and stood up and took two steps towards him and told him to go, very sternly and impolitely. He moved on but about 5 minutes later returned behind us and again started to ask about buying the release for a bird. I again got up and really wanted to thump him but it would be no point as he is a kid making money for some other rich asshole paying this kid a pittance. The rich piece of shit I would have liked to clobber. The kid moved on again and we didn’t see him again thankfully.

Returning from the nearby Koh Larn island were the boats full of tourists spending the day there. This boat wasn’t very big but had 41 people on it. They were jammed in like sardines. It isn’t any wonder why these boats sink so easily when overloaded like this.

Nong Ja was sitting back just taking it all in. It had been a big day but not near the end of the day yet. We headed back to the hotel for a sleep and then we headed out for dinner.

We headed out the new swanky Central Festival.

My three Thai girls posing for yet another picture.

We headed to Hot Pot for the all you can eat buffet. It was okay, actually good. A good range of different foods for the price of 250 Baht I think.

So after dinner we went for a walk along beach road for some shopping. These combivans are popular here in Pattaya. They are converted into little cocktail bars and I saw at least 6 of them when walking about the place.

It was then back to the hotel for a long sleep as we were all so tired from another big day on holiday.

Brunty