THAILAND

Tuesday morning my alarm went off at 4.45 (and at 4.55 again, since I'm not really a morning person). It was time to get out my bed and go to the airport, time to do some serious tanning in Thailand! Everything went surprisingly fast; we had a taxi within 2 minutes, there was no line at the check-in and although I have a big issue with mornings, even I was fully awake. Although I was wearing my 'pyama's' (I looked like Nel Veerkamp in my tiger pants), I was so excited that I didn't even slept in the plane. Maybe this also had to do with the fact that the whole plane smelled like meat and rice, which we got for breakfast and which I didn't really appreciated at 8 o'clock. This same breakfast we also got for dinner on the way back.. really nice.

At 10 we landed in Bangkok airport. Since our taxi wasn't there we took the 2 hour bus ride to Pattaya. When we arrived there, we had to switch to a taxi to get to our hotel. It was like a Jeep and we sat in the open trunk (without seat belts and it was driving like crazy). I had never seen taxi's like the ones in Thailand before and I don't think you can call it a taxi but we survived.

Our hotel was a super nice beach resort with a pool in the front of the hotel and the beach 10 steps away. At 2 o'clock indeed, I was on the beach surrounded by palm trees getting a tan. The cocktail in my hand was missing and I didn't calculated the dirty old men in, but it was nice anyway. It was bloody hot, but swimming in the sea wasn't making it any better since it felt like jumping in a pool of hot tea. So, later we decided to go to the swimming pool to cool down. In the evening we wanted to eat the real Thai food. After walking for more then an hour we finally found a 'good' looking place; it seems that in Pattaya people don't eat, they only come for sex clubs or something because there was no bloody restaurant in the neighborhood. We ordered fish with lime, red curry and salmon. We thought this must be ok to eat and not too spicy since lime is supposed to be fresh. Well, I haven't tasted any lime but I did had green peppers of which I thought they were paprika's.. Luckily there was a seven eleven across the street we could run to, to get some ice cream. This made everything better but all 3 of us were done with Thai food for the rest of the days. We had wild plans to go to sex shows and go on the photo with she males, but my god these 'girls' were scary!! There was one street full of bars, the red light discrict in Amsterdam is nothing compared to this. Everybody was shouting at us, 'whoo sexy girls' and making kiss sounds. No way I was going in there if I wanted to come back to Hong Kong. So, we went to the hotel (here it was safe) for cocktails and live music.

Next day we went to the beach again and Tirsa and I went to the Pattaya floating market. A market on the water with all kinds of souvenir and food shops on boats which are connected to each other by bridges. When we got back in the hotel I could see I got some tan indeed, however not really the brownish color I was hoping for.. I looked like a lobster and was burned all over. But hey, everything what's red first has to become brown right?

Wednesday we took a taxi to Bangkok, this was quite interesting. We had an almost dead experience, everybody drives like crazy here. They don't look, but just go from the right to the left on the highway. When we arrived in Bangkok, our non-english speaking chauffeur told us he didn't knew where the hotel was so instead of a 2 hour drive, it was already a 3 hour trip. After a while he kept on saying take tuk tuk. This funny guy wanted to put 3 of us, with 2 suitcases in a tuk tuk. So we told him kindly that we weren't going anywhere. Finally we got to the hotel, which was really nice! First thing we did was taking the tuk tuk (after putting our suitcases in the room) to the siam square. This is a square full of young designer stores, .. and ice cream shops. After some shopping we went to Chao Phraya river to go on a boat tour. We got a privet boat an got a tour through Bangkok, this was so cool! In the evening we had dinner at Aldo's, a luxurious restaurant at the top floor of the Ascott hotel. We felt like real princesses with our 4 courses menu, for only 34 euro!

Thursday we had only half a day left so Nina and I took a massage. She went for a Thai massage and I took a foot massage. Not really a smart idea with sunburns and bruises all over, not knowing that Thai massages are really rough. Apparently with foot massage they mean a leg massage. Tirsa was checking on me, asking 'are you hurt steph?' That tiny Thai women had some strong hands and yes, it did hurt but no way I was going to say that. I did told the lady that if she was going to press on my blue spots like that, I might kick her so when she did my other leg it was finally how a massage should be, relaxing.

We had 4 awesome days in Thailand, however I thought it would be different. I imagined Bangkok just like Hong Kong with skyscrapers, but when we flew over Thailand it looked like the Flevopolder in Holland. Not exactly how I thought it would be. Nevertheless, I am happy that I've been there and I would definitely go back to Bangkok. Pattaya on the other hand is a place I will never go back to, I still have nightmares about scary she males!