Monday, September 25, 2017

It’s an early morning, with our bags having to be downstairs before seven thirty, which means breakfast is at six thirty.  We hop on the bus and ride across town to the other airport for a ride back to Bangkok, where we pick up another bus for the trip to Pattaya.

 We stop for lunch and since Ginger and I stop by the bathroom, we are the last ones seated.  That means we get to sit in a small, somewhat separate room with Rio!  Fun discussion, and more delicious food on the buffet!  Every stop in Thailand has had new delicacies to sample (and eat too much of!) 

We arrive in Pattaya and find ourselves in the Executive Tower of this Holiday Inn.  We have a balcony!!  It overlooks the water, sort of.  There is a huge construction project next to our hotel, and there are other buildings between us and the beach, but we can see the water and I think there might be hope for a sunrise!

This is kind of a rest stop.  Nothing is planned for us until we leave Wednesday morning, except our breakfast buffet each morning, so a little Trip Advisor research is in order for tomorrow. We’ve found a temple that looks amazing, and we’d like to do one of the drag shows. But first, there’s tonight!

We do a little exploring in the hotel and plan to start by visiting Helen to see her view.  It turns out that after you insert your key card into the elevator slot, you can only go to your own floor!  We get lucky and a lady we’ve been chatting with is on the eighteenth floor so we ride up with her to Helen’s room.  She might get a sunset from her balcony; I’m not sure.  Everyone can stop on the sixth floor; that’s where the infinity pool and breakfast are located.  Good to know for tomorrow!

The three of us go down to the lobby and talk to the concierge about getting us tickets for Tiffany’s Show.  (Rio has been talking about the lady-boys show and it sounds great!  Can’t wait to see if it’s better that the one in Las Vegas!) Doreen and Kyra are going tomorrow night at nine; but the tickets that are left are pretty far back.  If we go at 7:30, we can get second row!  No point in going if you can’t see!!  We ask for those and leave our money; we’ll collect the tickets when we come back.  We also confirm transportation to the Sanctuary of Truth for tomorrow.  He can call us a cab in the morning and it will only be 400 baht for the three of us.

 With that all settled we can go in search of seafood. Since we’re right on the water and it’s bound to be really fresh.  The bus drove us around the area so we’d get a feel for the geography, and Rio had suggested the food court in one of the malls.  We check that out; but it’s regular food-court stuff and why would we want to do that!?

A little more exploring and we see an outdoor restaurant with live seafood out front.  Looks like the perfect spot!  We choose a table and are immediately swarmed by the serving staff!  One girl has a laminated placard touting sticky rice with mangos, another has fish selections, a third has the beer special of the night (probably every night!) and one actually has menus!  The beer lady has buckets of four beers for two hundred and ninety-nine bahts (about ten dollars?)  We select the Tiger brand and when the bucket comes the bottles are the large ones with two glasses each in them!  That’s gonna be a lot of beer for three little old ladies!

That was the easy part!  Now to choose dinner!  Helen asks what is the freshest and the waiter points out the choices on the menu. Helen wants us to experience Asian snails and cockles and mussels, so that’s her selection.  Ginger gets the large shrimp and boy is that an understatement!  I ask which of the fish are the most fresh and he guarantees that all the fish arrive fresh every morning. I have the tilapia which appears intact;  I’m getting better – I didn’t have to cover his face! 

My fish is quite nice, especially with the spicy sauce that comes with it. Ginger’s shrimp are really prawn size and have lots of meat.  Helen enjoys her shellfish and we have the experience.  Don’t need to do that again;  but it was fun once!

By the time we’ve emptied our bucket we’re not fit for anything but trying to make our way home!  It’s a good thing we’re on the “right” side of the street, because it takes lots of nerve and timing to cross this traffic!  There aren’t any lights and you just have to choose an opening and take your courage in your two hands!  Ginger says it’s real-life Frogger!

Back home – well, I don’t really remember much about back home. We did remember to pick up our tickets for the show! I know I fell across the bed and about half an hour later I woke up and put on my PJs!  What a lovely day!