LAEM CHABANG PATAYYA

 

 

 Photography by Dennis Phan

 

 

 

 

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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