We originally planned
to buy a bus round trip ticket to Patayya. However, we got a last minute
deal with a group of cruise ship friends so we all hopped on a big van to
save transportation cost. The pay back was we had to go with their
schedule and we were okay with it.
We first stopped at
a theme park to see the elephant show before going to Patayya. Elephant
show is pretty popular in Thailand.
They train the elephants to do different tricks. Most noticeable was the
soccer game. The elephants actually scored some goals! The elephants was also trained to walk over tourists
without stepping on them. I don't want to get involved. What if the
elephants misbehave? It took only one miss step to kill the tourist lying
there! They also advertised photo opportunity with the elephant for 100
baht each. After the show, we walked around a mini tropical fruit market
inside the park to try their durian and sugar cane juice.
Leaving the park, we
headed to Patayya beach. Here, we had a chance to try Thai food for
lunch. We visited a food court in shopping mall. The place was pretty
quiet with very few customers but we tried their food any way. This food
court was very detailed in taking care of the silverwares. They put a pot
of boiling water there for sanitizing purpose. We ordered the signature deep fried
whole fish with spicy Thai sauce. We were a bit disappointed since we
didn'thave a lot of choices. After our late lunch, we walked along the
streets to explore the city. I couldtell Patayya is a city of night life.
The street must be very active and colorful at night. I believed this was
the main reason why the cruise ship company stayed overnight at Laem
Chabang port sothe guests could stay late and made the most of Patayya
night life. We found another shopping mall with underground food court.
This food court was a lot busier and offered more choices than the one we
had visited before. We couldn't find durian sticky rice dessert in the
previous food court but we found one here. It was delicious. We also got
coconut and jack fruit from the supermarket. I like to visit supermarket
to see what the locals pay for daily products and have an idea about the
cost of living in that particular city. My philosophy is we probably see
"jack up" price for tourists on the street but definitely not in
the supermarket. In Thailand,
there is an
opening device attached to the coconut to make it easy
to open. It is similar to the one we see in a soda can.
The ship docked at Laem Chabang Port
for 2 days. We used it to visit Bangkok
on the first day and Patayya on the second day. We wanted to get a
preview of each city and will focus on the one we like on our next trip
to Thailand.
We were supposed to meet our Thailand friend when the ship
docked at Laem Chabang but due to last minute scheduling conflict, our
friend couldn't make it. We will make it up when we visit Bangkok again in
the future.
Dennis
Phan 潘家墉
Khai Minh, UCLA and Investools
Alumni
Los Angeles, 06 Jul 2019
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