November 7th
Flew from San Diego to San Francisco to Tokyo (Narita Airport) to Bangkok.
I left at
10:15am (San Diego time) and arrived at 10:55pm (Bangkok
time). Including layovers,
the trip was scheduled to take 24 hours
to complete. It actually ended up taking 21
hours and 45 minutes.
(For anyone who's wondering, it took 6 hours and 45 minutes to
reach the International Date Line.)
November 8th
Dan, Mike, and I took a taxi from the airport to the Nana Plaza area.
Mike and I
stayed at one hotel while Dan stayed at a less expensive one.
After we unpacked, we
met at the Nana Entertainment Center area.
We spoke with some people there and
discovered that the bars no
longer closed at 5am or 6am but at 2am. The new
government had
changed the laws. Since it was about 1am, we had a few beers and
then called it a night.
November 9th
In the morning, we walked around the royal palace page. We had dinner.
Afterwards,
we walked to the Soy Cowboy area. We hung out
in some of the bars. While talking
with one of the girls, I
discovered that they were all available to take home (or to a hotel,
as
the case may be). It was a $500 baht "bar fine" to take a girl
out of the bar before
closing time, a $300 baht charge by to bring her
into the hotel (some hotels do not charge
this "guest fee"),
and the "service charge" was negotiable. Interesting, eh?
November 10th
Late the next morning (There were a lot of late mornings.), Mike and I took a
bus ride to
Pattaya. (Dan went to a city named Korat (sp?) to meet
a woman that he'd been in
contact with prior to the trip.) It took
about 3 hours to get there, including stops to drop
off and pick up other
passengers. It was during this ride that I began to learn some Thai
words and phrases. We were going to stay at the Merlin Hotel but
discovered that it was
bought out by the Hard Rock Hotel chain.
What was worse was that they weren't going
to open until November 15th.
So we got a taxi to look for another place to stay. We
went
to another hotel and they were full. Then we found a place called The
Charming
Inn. It was anything but that. Unless you're on a
tight budget, don't stay there if you go
to Pattaya!
For lunch, we went to a restaurant that Mike had frequented when he had
previously
gone to Pattaya -- The Blue Parrot. We discovered that
it had been sold. However, we
were pleasantly surprised that it was
bought by an American, Kevin, and that it had
significantly improved.
They serve both Thai and Mexican food. Afterwards, we went
back to our separate rooms and took much-needed naps. (Notice how I said
"separate
rooms"? After you read some of the more
unfortunate experiences mentioned below,
you'll understand why I am making
this clear.)
That night, we went to some of the gaming bars on Walking Street (refer to
pictures on
other page). At these bars (which are also referred to
as "gaming bars", "beer bars" or
"square bars"; refer to pictures on other page), you play games such as
Connect Four,
Jenga, Shut The Box, or billiards with the girls that work
there. (Yes, most of these girls
can also be taken home for a
price.) After spending a few hours at about 4 of these bars,
we
went to the Marine Disco. It's a dance place that can hold around 400
people. Mike
and I met two girls named Oo and Pu. We hung out with
them for a while and when the
bar closed, they invited us to go to an
after-hours bar. We agreed and they hopped on
Oo's motorcycle while
Mike and I got taxi rides on two other motorcycles. The bar
turned
out to be a 3-story house that was temporarily converted into a bar for the
night.
It also turned out that there was some homosexual activity going on
in some parts of it.
(Mike stumbled across one such scene on the way to
the bathroom. Fortunately for me,
he warned me about it.)
When I went to the bathroom later on, I heeded Mike's
warning, didn't look
in the room where "something" was going on, and found Oo
standing by the door. She told me that Pu was inside, throwing up.
I told her that I
would come back later. Soon thereafter, we took a
taxi back to the hotel, at least we
tried to. The taxi ended up
dropping us off in some neighborhood and we ended up
walking around for
about 30 minutes until we found another taxi. What an interesting
first night in Pattaya!
November 11th
The next morning, we found a much better hotel with a location central to all
of the action
-- The Royal Palace. That day was pretty much a blur
considering what we went through
the previous night. I think that
we did some souvenir shopping and caught up on some
nap time. That
night, we spent all of our time at some gaming bars. As happened many
of the following nights, I don't know what time we headed back to the
hotel. We must
have had fun.
November 12th
In the morning, we went bowling. Afterwards, we went to the Hard Rock
Cafe for a
couple of
drinks. After that, we hung out at a
couple of gaming bars and had some more drinks.
Then we went to a place
called "Sabai Dee" and got a "foamy". I won't go into
details
other than to say that it involved a girl, a bunch of bath suds,
and some vinyl. I had to
laugh, both then and now!
Afterwards, we were pretty worn out and went back to the
hotel for some
napping. That night, we did our typical routine -- going out to bars.
We
HAD to since it was so much fun.
November 13th
That morning, we did some souvenir shopping. When we finished, we took
a bus back to
Bangkok. (It took about 2 hours.) The plan was
to meet Dan for the next part of our
trip. We found him at a bar
called The Golden Beer bar. It was filled with working
girls.
We stayed at a very nice hotel -- Lotus Novotel (mentioned on the previous
page).
The rooms are completely computer-controlled (including the TV,
lights, air
conditioning, etc.) and the people are extremely attentive,
cleaning and replacing things
such towels whenever we left the rooms.
That night, we went to the Nana Entertainment
Center and then to a
place called Nana Disco. After spending a couple of hours there,
we
went back to the hotel.
November 14th
We flew to Phuket at 1:30 that afternoon. (I don't remember what we
did that morning
other than make the reservations.) We took a taxi
to the Bayshore Resort. At first, the
driver took us to the wrong
one. Then, we discovered that we had made reservations at
the new
one. The new hotel was experiencing growing pains -- I had problems with
the
shower's pressure and temperature fluctuating. All in all,
though, it was a nice place
(refer to picture on other page).
Phuket has a more relaxing environment than Pattaya. However, they also
have plenty
of bars and that's what Mike, Dan, and I did after we had
dinner. It was at one of the
bars that I first heard a girl yell
out what a friend had told me I would hear all of the
time -- "Sexy
man! Come to my bar!" So funny! That night, Dan got a
picture of
himself with a lady-man. Dan's about 6 foot, 6 inches
tall and the lady-man wasn't much
shorter. Scary stuff!
November 15th
I got up pretty early the next morning and decided to have breakfast right away
since I
was very hungry. I called Mike's room and we agreed to meet
at 9:45 to decide what to
do that day. I had time to kill, so I
walked around town taking care of errands and doing
some shopping.
When I returned at 9:45, Dan and Mike were gone. (Maybe I misread
the time on my watch and it was actually 10:45, I don't know.) They had
left a note
saying that they would meet me at the hotel by 3:30.
So, I decided to go around town on
my own. I walked for about 3
hours, got my hair cut (for $4.77 from a woman named Koi
who had a 3-month
old baby), and bought some souvenirs. I also sat near the beach and
spoke with a local guy for a while in order to get a better feel for Thai culture
and
checked my email messages. (I wanted to find out what Bill's
schedule was since he
wasn't sure if he would arrive on the 17th or the
18th.)
I returned to the hotel at about 12:45 and had lunch and caught up on some
reading at the
pool (refer to picture on other page). I then took a
much-needed nap. At about 3:30,
Mike walked over and said that they
were going to hang out at the pool. I joined them a
few minutes
later and we stayed there for about an hour.
We had dinner at an Irish restaurant. We walked around afterwards,
checked out a
karaoke bar (but it was too early and nothing was
happening), and went to some gaming
bars.
November 16th
We took a mini-bus to the airport to catch a flight back to Bangkok. Mike
was returning
to The United States the next morning and Dan and I were
planning on meeting Bill the
next afternoon. The flight left at
2:40, landed at 4:00, and cost $110 US dollars. We
stayed at a
hotel called the Crown Royal for $600 baht (very low quality).
We had dinner at a restaurant called "Beer Garden". It is very
similar to the Karl
Strauss Brewery in Sorrento Valley, if you've ever
been there. We hung out there for a
while and I met a girl named
Nam (which means "water" in Thai). She said that her
birthday was
on the 19th and asked me if I would be there. I said that I would try,
although I was probably going to be in Pattaya at that time.
Dan, Mike, and I then went out to some of the bars at the Nana Entertainment
Center
area. (What's new?) We went back to the Nana Disco
and danced with some of the girls
there. I was dancing with one
girl and Dan and Mike decided to leave. After the song
finished, I
asked the girl that I was dancing with if she was having a good time. In a
deep
voice, she said "I don't think that I'm you're type."
Wo! It was a lady-man! I left the
dance floor and behind me
walked Dan and Mike. They were laughing like crazy and
said that
they had come back to rescue me because they weren't sure if I knew if I was
dancing with a lady-man. Guys, if I knew it, I wouldn't be dancing
with him/her to begin
with! That was enough and we called it a
night.
November 17th
Mike left early the next morning and Dan and I moved to a hotel near where Bill
was
staying at Shangri-LA. Our hotel was called Newrotel and it was
okay except for the
leaking plumbing and no hot water in the shower.
They moved me to another room.
(This seemed to be a common
theme popping up once in a while.) We took a 2-hour
break in our
rooms and met Bill at 5 o'clock at his hotel. He said that he needed to
get
oriented and so Dan and I walked around, doing some sightseeing (refer
to pictures on
other page).
Dan and I had dinner in front of a mall/galleria and picked up Bill at 8
o'clock. Bill
informed us that he had to stay in Bangkok because he
had a potential job interview in
Tokyo and needed to be ready to go at any
time. We walked through some "hostess
bars" that were
near the Shangri-LA Hotel. Then we went to some gaming bars in
another area. After we'd had enough (when the bars started closing down),
we headed
back to our respective hotels.
November 18th
Dan and I had breakfast at the hotel. Afterwards, we walked to the
Shangri-LA and gave
Bill information about where we would be staying in
Pattaya. We went back to the hotel
and made reservations at the
Royal Palace in Pattaya ($23 per night per room). We then
went to
the eastern bus terminal and went to Pattaya. On the bus, we met another
American -- Matt -- who was also going there. Since he was
traveling alone, we agreed to
hang out together while we were all there.
It turned out that he also lived in San Diego.
What are the chances
of that? We agreed to meet Matt at 7:30 at The Blue Parrot
restaurant.
We arrived at the hotel at about 3:30 and relaxed for a while. Then Dan
and I went to
The Blue Parrot for dinner (refer to picture on other page).
We walked around to some
of the bars and played pool and some of the
other games. At 7:45, we met Matt at the
restaurant. We went
out partying at some of the bars and finished the night at the
restaurant.
I bought a drink for one of the waitresses there -- Lai -- and we (Dan,
Matt,
and I) went back to the hotel.
November 19th
I had breakfast at the hotel. Afterwards, I ran into Matt in the lobby
and we signed up
for an elephant tour. It cost $400 baht and
included a taxi ride to and from the farm. I
then walked around,
did some souvenir shopping and checked my email messages for
Bill's plans.
He hadn't left any and I figured that he was still waiting to hear about
the
situation.
At 1:45, I started to head down to the lobby when Dan walked by my door.
I told him
that I was on my way to the elephant tour and he decided to
join us. (He had just gotten
out of bed. Nice life!)
The tour was well worth the price. We received a lecture and
demonstrations from an elephant trainer with 22 years of experience. We
were allowed
to feed bananas to the elephants. Then we were allowed
to ride the elephants bareback.
Finally, we rode in benches on the
elephants. This was one of the main goals of my trip
and I was very
glad that I was finally able to do it -- with only one more full day left on
the
trip (refer to pictures on other page).
At 5 o'clock, Dan and I went to one of the other foamy places -- Sawai-Land.
Dan and I
picked out 2 girls and Dan soon went to a room. I
decided to not have the foamy after all
because she seemed so nervous and
it wouldn't be much fun. She was upset and walked
over to another
guy, asking him if he wanted a foamy. He said 'No' and she was even
more upset and walked back to the seating area, sitting as far away from me as
possible.
We had dinner at The Blue Parrot again. By this time, I was able to
order "chaa yen"
with no problem (although I would sometimes
have to repeat it since they couldn't
understand my accent). After
that, we took a tuk-tuk (a taxi that is a small pickup truck
with 2
covered benches mounted in the back of it) to some gaming bars near Sabai Dee.
Dan and I met 2 girls there and took them to a disco. (Matt was
feeling tired and called it
an early night.) I got lucky and, for
some reason, I didn't have to pay a bar fine. I later
discovered
why -- The woman that I was with was actually a lady-man. How do I do it?
She/He tried to convince me to spend more time together. Ha!
You've got to be kidding!
Bye-bye.
November 20th
Matt had made plans to go diving that morning, so Dan and I went to The Blue
Parrot for
some huevos rancheros. We checked out of the Royal
Palace, Dan headed for another
hotel (because the Royal Palace was booked
that night and he had to leave), and I caught
the bus to Bangkok.
On the ride, I met 2 men, one from England and one from Germany
(Udo, who
was living in Bangkok at that time), and one woman (Theuray, a bar girl
heading back home from a hard week's work in Pattaya). Udo was very
informative.
Among other things, he told us that "Bangkok" is
not the actual name of the city and
that's it's strictly used for
foreigners' sakes.
After arriving in Bangkok, I walked and rode taxis around until I found a
relatively
inexpensive hotel -- the Honey Hotel for $17. I took a
1-1/2 hour nap. After I cleaned
up, I decided to find the Karl
Strauss-type restaurant that Mike, Dan, and I went to on
the 16th.
After looking for a while, I finally found it. I found Nam, the girl that
we spent
time with before, and she accompanied me while I ate dinner.
Interestingly, she had just
started working at the restaurant-bar 2
days before Mike, Dan, and I went there. After I
finished eating,
we ended up going to an outdoor dinner-concert. She was interested in
learning English, so I taught her some things such as word, sentence,
paragraph, and
chapter structures. I wish her the best of luck in
her future. If nothing else, she now
knows who Paul Simon is
because I gave her the autobiographical book about him that I'd
planned
on reading while on the airplane rides.
November 21st
At 4am, I caught a taxi for the airport. I arrived at 4:25 (and I slept
most of the way
there). The plane took off as scheduled at 7am and
I was on my way to Tokyo, San
Francisco, and home to San Diego.
Goodbye, Thailand. I had a wonderful time. Maybe
I'll return
some day.