My Thailand Adventure

Sawadee-ka!

I just completed my adventure in the Land of the Free, which is called Thailand of course, “Thai” meaning “Free” in, well, Thai. The first day we pulled in to a port town called Laem Chabang which has nothing in it. Fortunately it is 30 minutes (on a good day, no traffic) from Pattaya which is chock full of hotels, bars, loose women and lady-boys. We got off the ship around 1630 (That’s 4:30 PM for all you non military folks) and took the longest “30 minute” bus ride ever. Especially since it took over an hour and a half to get to the Hard Rock Hotel on Pattaya Beach. We ventured in search of our hotel, found it down a semi-dark alley, and checked in to our $50 rooms. I got upstairs, went in to the room flipped the switch for the light. Nothing happened. I felt my way around, flipping every switch I could find. I stumbled my way back to the door and found a slot thing to put my room card in, the second I did so, all the lights came on. The room had a gigantic bed with towels on it folded to look like elephants sitting up. I dropped off my stuff and went down stairs to meet up with the guys.

We walked down the “main street” and stopped at the first restaurant we found called the “cool House” (there were a million food stalls set up along the way, but they didn’t smell good at all and would probably make us very sick at any rate). There I had the Best Spring Rolls Ever, along with a couple bites of (surprise!) delicious calamari and my favorite soup. Tom Yum Goong, made so spicy that I couldn’t have more than 3 spoonfuls before my eyes and nose watered. After dinner we headed back to the hotel, grabbing some sandals along the way. Once back I hopped on the internet and downloaded a bunch of stuff and went to sleep for the first time in almost 3 months with no one near me. It was awesome.

The second day we spent the morning wandering around in search of food. After a while and several failed attempts at finding an open restaurant, we gave in and wandered over to the Pig and Whistle for some classic English Pub food. The food was delicious, and we got some more spring rolls. We made our way back to the Hard Rock and braved the gauntlet of venders lined up by the hotel trying to sell fake sunglass, hats, swim trunks, and pictures with the most cuddly, fuzzy, adorable lemurs ever. I resisted the urge to grab a lemur and run, reminding myself that the nice smiling lady trying to hook a lemur on me probably knew Muay Thai and could probably kick my butt into a bloody pulp. For dinner that night I got to introduce my buddies to the joys of Indian food. It was once again delicious.

The third day I had Duty and is officially dead to me.

The fourth day Brian and I signed up for an elephant tour. Once at the Elephant Village we got introduced to the elephants and their love of bananas, I bought a bunch and fed one before climbing the platform to sit on the makeshift bench on the elephant’s back. The driver guy sat on the elephant’s (hereafter referred to as Alan) head and drove Alan with his feet. The first thing we did was ford a river. Alan was walking with the water almost up to his eyes. His trunk sometimes popped out of the water so he could breathe. We trundled through the hot sun on his back through fields, up hills, and into the jungle. We kept feeding Alan bananas so he would keep carrying us and not get too upset at the lack of tips.

After we got off the elephant we met Tony the Gibbon. He’s 5 years old and likes to play. I set down my soda to get a picture and he jumped over, snatched it up, climbed a bamboo tree, took off the lit, and drank my soda. Then he decided to play with Forest, one of the guys from the ship. Forest was running around with a monkey chasing him. When Tony caught up with him, he jumped on his butt and pulled down his pants. We were all cracking up.

Once Tony was done playing we went on a walk through the jungle, while hearing about how the wild boar is more dangerous than the tiger and they will pick your bones clean in under five minutes. We emerged from the jungle at a house where they make silk. Houses in Thailand don’t have 4 walls, they will leave 1 or 2 off to let in the breeze. There was an old lady making a bolt of silk cloth while we learned about how silk is made. A cocoon of the silk worm is 1 strand of silk that is 8-900 yards long and can make 300 yards of silk. After the silk house we crossed a lake on a raft, hopped on an oxcart and went back to the elephant village.

Once back in Pattaya, we tried to wander back to the Pig and Whistle for dinner. We ran into an obstacle on our quest for fine English good. Water Wars. It turns out April 12th is the beginning of the festival for the Thai new year and the accepted way to celebrate is by shooting people with water guns, dumping water on their heads, and pilling or the fire hoses. By the time we got to the Pig and Whistle we were soaked through, I was dripping water for hours afterward. Dinner was good, we braved the water once again and returned via the gauntlet of fake sunglasses and lemurs to the Hard Rock, and then to the ship and sleep.