I am not surprised at all Cathy. When it comes to taking sides there is always a rush almost a stampede to be on my family's side.:(

Yellow Submarine fish at the underwater park

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What a resting place !!!

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After our Koh Larn trip we were driven to Erawan Hotel for an Indian buffet lunch. We had been grumpy about this Indian lunch as we never eat Indian food on our holidays abroad. Any way we had those wonderfully fresh prawns as starters so we walked in with the rest of the group to the restaurant at the hotel to eat. The spread was big and had good selection of dishes from different regions of India. To our utter surprise we found the food to be very good. It was neither too oily nor overtly spicy as restaurant food tends to be. We ate quite heartily and chatted with our fellow members. Although I love to eat but when it comes to actual consumption I eat very little. I was finished before my family did and went out to have a smoke and also to see what can be done about our transportation to underwater world and back. The hotel where we were staying had offered their van for 800B one way and an on-line transport service of Pattaya had offered 600B for hotel pick up & drop. Curiously in the few exchanges I had with the guy responding to my queries, the guy always ended his mails by asking me if I wanted “anything else” This is in spite of informing him/her that we were a family of four persons. Our van driver that day was a very nice old man. So I thought I would seek his help to find out how we can go to the aquarium.

I found the old man standing next to the van and smoking. He informed me that the underwater world place was a bit outside the main town and offered to take us there for a mere sum of 200B. I thanked him and it was agreed that after dropping us at the hotel after lunch he would wait for us to have a wash & change of clothes and then take us to the underwater park. After reaching hotel we had a quick shower and changed our clothes. The old man drove us through the city pointing out various interesting things. After reaching the park I gave him 2000B to buy four entry tickets and keep the 200B balance.

We were at the park when all the group tours have left, so we had the whole tunnel to ourselves. In the surreal surrounding of blue lighting and fishes swimming all over us I watched the grin on my daughters’ and wife’s faces. I felt very happy and contended. I had finally brought them to see this wonderful spectacle and with the help of that good old man solved the transportation problem so nicely. I had a feeling of accomplishment.

The water was very clean and there was a good collection of marine life. We decided to shoot a movie as we moved. There were shoals of multi coloured tropical fish and sharks of different types, there were huge lazy creatures which lay on the sand, only their gill movements showed sign of life. How graceful is the way the fish swims. Scientists and engineers are now busy studying their movements and trying to design water crafts that will be made of flexible material and a computer would recreate the body movement of the craft like a fish does to propel itself.

We spent almost an hour in the tunnel and “resurfaced” The souvenir shop as usual was strategically located at the exit. My daughters began to explore the shop while I went out and sat on a bench under the shade of a tree. There was an ice cream vend in close proximity. I felt like having an ice cream and waited for my family to emerge out of the shop. They did sooner than expected. The knick knacks sold in these types of shops are always overpriced. They had bought a couple of key rings I think. I went and bought ice creams for us and one for the driver as well.

After having our ice creams we drove off to the hotel. The driver himself proposed to show us some shopping malls, local markets and also a place where locals ate. We drove around the town and chatted all the while learning a lot about local life. We talked about India, our home and our city too. He also showed us a short cut through which we could reach the shopping & eating place from our hotel. After this brief tour of Pattaya town we were dropped at our hotel. It was late afternoon, me and my elder daughter went to have a swim in the hotel pool.

In early evening we went out for shopping. We didn’t have much time in Bangkok so decided to do most of our shopping here. We had a big shopping list which included chocolates, condiments, sauces, cooking wines, prawn wafers, sea weed, dried mushrooms and so on. We always carry a spare duffel bag to accommodate our shopping. We found that various other things like shampoos, lotions, moisturizers etc. were available at a cheaper price than in India. Our cart was full when we reached the cashier.

Lugging the overweight bags we returned to the hotel. We all sat down and rested while chatting. I had bought some orange juice and had some good Vodka that I had brought from Delhi. I poured a glassful of chilled orange juice liberally laced with Vodka and parked myself on the sofa. We tried to tune to a news channel on the TV to know about the weather condition in Delhi but couldn’t. After I had a few quick ones we went out to eat at the place shown to us by the driver.

We walked through the same lane where I had been last night. It was fairly early so even the prelude to the real action had not begun. The lane meets one road which is parallel to the beach road. Crossing this road we walked ahead as we were told by the driver and soon arrived at a smallish food court. The stalls here did not have the opulence of the fancy seafood courts. There were eggs, meats & abundance of vegetables. Towards the rear of the row we found a stall where local people who looked like forced bachelors perhaps, working in Pattaya ate their supper. We chose this one and sat down. The daughters went to inspect the merchandise and decide on our dinner.

We had crisp fried Snappers and instead of ketchup we had again a fiery hot & sweet sauce. After that we had a red curry with almost everything possible, prawns, squids, bits of fish, shredded pork. We ate this wonderful thing with steamed rice. We finished off our meal with fried noodles with omelet toping, excellent. We paid only 700B for our dinner which we will classify as the best and most satisfying meal of our trip so far. After our dinner we went again to the shopping mall where we shopped in the afternoon. We had spotted an Italian fresh fruit ice cream & smoothie place there. We tried out some varieties there and enjoyed every scoop. On our way back I slipped in to the massage place and had a foot & shoulder massage. This is becoming addictive. Tomorrow we would leave Pattaya after breakfast for Bangkok.

The small place where we had the wonderful dinner in Pattaya.

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all that shopping it is easy to get carried away not realising that you have to lug it all back home.
The meal sounded delicious. Drooling just thinking about it.

__________________
Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.

Yes you are right jaxw17, this time we had heard so much about shopping in Thailand and good prices that we were prepared. I had carried very few things for my own use and all that I had was distributed in the three suitcases of my wife and daughters, so I had this duffel bag to lug back home.

28 JAN

Morning came as usual. Now it was time to pack up shorts & beach wears as we would soon leave Pattaya for Bangkok. The half a dozen shopping bags bursting at seams needed to be carefully emptied and packed in the duffel bag. My wife was collecting the plastic shopping bags as these are banned in Delhi. These days the shopping malls provide paper bags and sell jute carry bags. While others remained snuggled in bed I labored to pack everything & be ready to check out. We had a bit leisurely breakfast and after checking out waited in the lobby for our transport.

The van turned up at 9:30 and picked us up. The four guys from Mumbai whom we met yesterday were also there. I learned that they had postponed their return to India and was scheduled to take a flight in the afternoon to Phuket !!!
The van sped on the toll road to Bangkok. We had driven along this highway on our travel to Pattaya from BKK airport at night. I found a lot of warehouses along the way. There was not much traffic on the road so far. But as we approached Bangkok traffic suddenly built up. Driving through a maze of flyovers we hit the main city. Our first stop was at Sukhumvit where these four people would get down. They would cancel their reservation for that night at their hotel and pick up some luggage and head to airport for their flight to Phuket.

My daughter had chosen Montien Riverside Hotel for our stay in Bangkok. It is a lovely hotel on the bank of the river but a bit away from down town Bangkok. The hotel runs shuttle service to down town every half an hour. The lobby of the hotel is beautifully done. The Thai people have very good sense of aesthetics, subtle but very evident. What really impressed us was the flower arrangements. Not garish or riots of colours but a superb combination of shapes to create a collage that was so soothing.

Our room was large and very beautifully done. The bathroom was huge and had all amenities which are part of luxury provided at starred hotels like this. We unpacked what was absolutely necessary and went out to have our first lunch in Bangkok.
Our destination was an old eatery of Young Lee. This nondescript establishment is located at the corner of Soi 15 in Sukhumvit area. The hotel shuttle van dropped us near a sky train station near Thaksin pier. We had planned to take the sky train but changed our mind and flagged down a taxi. All the taxis here are Toyota corolla & they have different colours. We found purple, green-yellow and blue ones. We were a bit puzzled and decided to enquire about this at the front desk when we got back to hotel. The one we flagged was a green-yellow one. I noticed that a laminated card having the photo of the driver with his ID number and phone number of traffic police was fixed over the dash board.

We had expected traffic snares on our way but it was not all that we had feared. In quite a short while we reached our destination and the fare was 98B. This eatery operated by what appeared to be a mom & pop, son & daughter-in-law team is a very small one cramped in side. Its dusty sign board had been obscured by a banner advertising office rental places. The restaurant was filled choc a block by diners. We were told that we would have to wait for a long time for our turn but after some time something transpired between the family team and we were offered a table. We sat waiting till someone came & cleaned the table and placed the menu card which was nothing more than a tattered computer print out. We didn’t need the menu card as we would eat what Bangkokians come here to eat. Young Lee’s specialty is duck. Rows of roast ducks were hanging from a rod fixed near the kitchen corner. We ordered duck on rice and vegetables and golden fried prawns. The batter fried prawns were very tasty and went well with chilled beer. The main course was a huge serving of sliced duck, rice and vegetables in an exquisite gravy. Although we were very hungry but ate slowly to relish every forkful of this great food.

Once Wodehouse wrote that around noon you find two types of people, one who had lunched well and the other who hadn’t. We most certainly belonged to the former type. It was now quite hot on the street. We were trying to decide what to do now. I noticed a bank and changed some money and next to the bank stood Robinson’s shopping mall. We went in to the big shopping mall where I managed a chair in one corner of the floor selling dress & apparels while the ladies spread out. I wished I had a book or something to read and pass time. My daughters gifted me a shirt a piece. The Arrow outlets in India do not sell slim fit shirts and I am pretty lean. I bought a pack of soft cotton socks. Having done our shopping we returned to our hotel. The swimming pool at our hotel was superb and provided a grand view of the river too. We spent an hour or so swimming and then headed out to visit China town in the evening.

The hotel shuttle van dropped us at hotel Sangri La which is not very far from China town. We took bus no.1 and reached China town. It was evening now and China town was ablaze with the preparation for New Year. I found this place quite similar to China Town of Singapore. There were rows of shops selling Chinese medicines and grocery shops selling all sorts of goodies. We bought packets of prawn wafers, crackers & dried black mushrooms. We love these small Chinese black mushrooms, they are wonderful for making fried rice.

The other side of the road was full of eating places, both sit in restaurants and street food vendors. The air was heavy with the smell of food. We sampled some bbq pork with caramalised honey from a street vendor which turned out to be very good. Although we were tempted to sample more street food but we had decided to eat at Chinatown Scala Shark’s Fin Restaurant. This restaurant is on the corner of the street near the entrance to China Town. Again we did not bother with the menu and ordered roast suckling pig. We had to wait almost half an hour before the pig was served along with thin slices of bread and some pickled cucumbers. We were told to first eat the crisp fatty skin with bread and relishes. After we did that the pig was taken away to be further cooked with garlic. The meat came back carved and Oh boy what a gastronomic delight it was. We had never eaten so much meat before but it was so good that we over ate.

We rested for a while after this huge intake of food. We were in a hurry to get back to Sangri La hotel to catch the last shuttle van to our hotel. The waiter who had served us helped us in getting a taxi which brought us to Sangria La hotel just in time to catch the shuttle. Thus ended our first day in Bangkok.

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Roast suckling pig.

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Thanks I am really enjoying these and I suppose you are reliving the trip all over again by writing them.

__________________
Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.