PATTAYA, THIALAND

This is what a coke can looks like in Thialand. Hope you can see the picture since I tried loading a full picture, rather than the reduced size ones the others are Hi from us!

The Sanctuary of Truth Inside. It is impossible to show the details of the temple
clamming with the locals

Pony cart ride

waitress dancer doing traditional dances

March 12th

We were scheduled to go to Bangkok today. We were informed last week that a crane fell on the dock we were to use in Bangkok, so we would instead be docking in Laem Chabang, about 2 1/2 hours from Bangkok. We decided, instead of the long bus ride, we would visit the town of Pattaya, which is only 10 minutes away.

We took taxi with some other passengers and arrived in town. It is a small resort community that has many lovely beaches. We thought we might just sit on one and maybe go swimming. What we did first was to walk around town. Many small shops. We turned up an alley to get away from the traffic and saw shop that did massages. So we decided to each get a Thai massage for an hour for $8 each. On the ship it cost a little under $100. It was lovely. The girls use their entire body to massage you. They even walked up our legs with their shins while massaging our backs. It was great.

Our new friend Rosa, who lives in London, but speaks with a thick Italian accent, has a son who lives here. She suggested that we go to the Sanctuary of Truth. She said it was lovely. So we went there. We took a tuk tuk there for 200 baht, around $7. When we got there, the driver said he would wait and take us back for 500 baht. We said, thank you but no thank you. Didn't seem fair.

Well, the sanctuary was amazing. We spent over 3 hours there. We saw a dolphin show, wood carvers doing amazing things, we had lunch (my mouth will be able to taste again, soon, when they say something is hot, it's HOT). The main thing there is the temple to truth. You got to the temple by riding in a 2 passenger pony drawn cart.

It is 108 meters high (325 feet high) made of hard woods with no nails used. They started construction in 1981 and is expected to take another 20 odd years to finish. It has been paid for by one man. Mister Lek has passed away and his son is taking over the construction. It is a huge building with carvings all over and in it. It is very ornate. It is dedicated to the belief that what religion you choose to follow doesn't matter, since all people are heading for the same place, tho by different paths. It contains one wing for each of the 4 main Asian religions, with carving associated with those religions. The center is where it all comes together to reach heaven. It was very moving to see.

We also saw some people on the beach outside the temple. Some of them were cracking open mussel that had grown on big rocks and were taking out the meat. Other people were digging in the sand for different kinds of clams. Arleen was able to help them dig and found 4 clams herself. She was so excited.

When it was time to go, we returned on our pony cart and looked for a tuk tuk to rent. No such luck. We were on a hill on a dead-end peninsular by ourselves. We talked to the ticket seller and he said if we wanted to ride on the back of a motorcycle, we could go to a bank and buy some bahts and use the local bus to get back to the ship. Arleen was not at all happy with the idea of riding on the back of a motorcycle. So we walked down the hill until we reached a major street. It was nice walk. When we got there, we were honked at by a tuk tuk. We had finally learned that when they do that, they are asking you if you need a ride. So we told them where we need to go, to Laem Chabang. They let us know that they would take us to a bus that would take us there. So we got on, and they let us off near another tuk tuk (not a bus as we would think of it). We paid them our last one dollar bill. We had taken lots of singles, but everything seemed to cost odd numbers, like 4 or 18k, so we were out. We rode the next tuk tuk for quite a while, but in the right direction. We were thinking that we would just give the driver $10 for taking us back to the boat, but when Arleen gave him the address of the dock, he seemed upset. He stopped alongside the main road and let us off. When we finally were able to get him to take US dollars, he gave us change and rode away, leaving us with 2 men. These men were local motorcycle taxi drivers. Here we were, on the side of the road, with no way to get back to the ship but to ride on the back of motorcycles.

These guys were great drivers. They were smooth and cautious and wonderful. As it turned out, the tuk tuk driver had thought that we wanted to go to the town of Laem Chabank, not the port, so he had driven past the port. The motorcycle drivers had to take us back, and they did.

We got back in time to make the ship and even do some shopping on the portside. It was a very interesting and exciting day.