We had great plans for our Thanksgiving week. John was going to take off a few days & we were going to Borneo, leaving Wed & returning on Tuesday. I had worked out with a friend who knows the Executive Manager of the Shangri-la Hotel in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Borneo to get a good deal on a room. If you don't know Shangri-la hotels - they are 5 star & really really nice!!
As you already know, the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) or Yellow Shirt people, took over the airport on Tuesday night, so our vacation got canceled. Just a side note - the PAD are fighting to have only 30% of the government officials elected democratically & 70% to be appointed by the King, so they are actually against democracy.
We had really set our minds on getting out of the city for a few days, so we changed plans & decided to head for the beach that is closest to Bangkok, called Pattaya. Pattaya has a reputation as being the red light city of SE Asia, but with the airport closed our options were limited.
We were told there was a bus that went from Bangkok to Pattaya & where to get it. We tried taking the sky train, but were not allowed on with a suitcase. So we hailed a taxi & asked him to take us to the bus station. He said because of the bad traffic it might take 1 to 1.5 hours to get to the station (this happens a lot here, which is why we like to take the sky train or subway). We asked him how much to just take us all the way to Pattaya? We negotiated a price (about $50) & in 1.5 hours we were at the beach!!
We had not booked a hotel ahead of time so ended up at a rather seedy place our first night. It was close to the main strip so we enjoyed walking the street & seeing all the Go Go Clubs (they still call them that here) & girly bars. Most of the bars are open sided so you can see what is going on inside without having to go in. There was one that had Thai boxing, but it didn't look like they were very serious. Another had an Elvis impersonator. Most of them had poles for dancing & it looked like something out of Austin Powers - 1960's Groovy Baby!!
On Thanksgiving day we ate at a Russian restaurant. There are lots of Russians vacationing there. It wasn't very good. We moved the 2nd night to a resort type hotel that had nice grounds, a pool & a beach. We stayed there the rest of the time, it was very relaxing. We rented a motorscooter ($10/day) which was lots of fun. We got massages, manicure & pedicure on the beach ($3 each). It felt very decadent.
We did find an Irish Pub that had a carvery dinner on Sunday night, so we even got to have turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing & cranberry sauce. It definitely was not home cooking, but it satisfied the craving. We found some nightlife away from the Go Go bars & pole dancers - pubs showing English football. We saw a few tourist sights (Sanctuary of Truth) & went go karting (john was much faster than me, but I did OK).
It was a nice get-a-way, but we sure missed not being with family & friends. We have rescheduled the Borneo trip for Christmas, so hopefully nobody takes over the airport this time!!
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