To Pattaya!!

This Thursday at about 6pm saw Caitlin and I setting off on a 14 hour bus journey. Now, all of the long-distance buses I have been on so far have been quiet, peaceful... almost relaxing! I now realise that this is because they have not been filled with 50 senior kids and a karaoke machine. Thai karaoke machines have two volume settings - off and max. It was loud. Very, very loud... but actually quite fun, and thankfully we had Kru Nid and Kru Keh on our bus, so the karaoke was turned off at about 11pm so we could sleep.

We arrived at our first stop in Pattaya at about 8am - a huge mansion house which I think is the Thai equivelant to a Stately Home. It was very pretty, and really nice to get to look inside but obviously the tour guide spoke in Thai so we understood very little. After a while Caitlin and I managed to sneak outside and found a fountain, which we quickly discovered had steps into it. We then decided that as it had steps, it must be acceptable to swim in, or at least paddle! So we did :) And we got very wet, and got a lot of strange looks from students, but it was worth it!

Unfortunately our next stop was not so fun. We went to a Crocodile Zoo, and if you think that zoos in the UK are bad, then do not ever come to one in Thailand. The first thing we saw was what was called a "Crocodile Show" and consisted of a man putting his head into a supposedly tame crocodile's mouth to show the control he had over it. He also did things like shove his entire arm down the mouth of the croc and put on music which he then forced a baby crocodile to "dance" to. This dancing consisted of him waving the baby croc's arms around.

After wandering away from the show after a few minutes we came to a series of cages, genuinely no bigger than four double beds. Inside each bare cage was a fully grown tiger with nothing more than a water bowl (which was empty). The cats were pacing round in tiny circles looking petrified and emaciated. Nearby were two podiums, each with a large, obviously tranquilised, tiger chained to them to that tourists could have a photo of them with a tiger. Next to the tigers was a bear in a similar situation, only this beast had been trained to do high-fives, shake hands and collect money. He was so terrified of simply the noise of the metal stick his "trainer" was holding that I hate to think how he was actually trained. There were also bears in cages similar to the tigers. I genuinely do not understand how any human could think that this was entertainment in any way. After leaving this area of the zoo we walked past some more enclosures, this time with crocodiles inside. I have never seen so many crocodiles in a cage, you literally could not see the ground. Plus there was not a drop of water in sight for them. I think that what I find the most shocking is the number of tourists I saw smiling and laughing as they walked past these enclosures. The tigers and bears constantly had people paying to take photos with them. I do not understand how any human could find a zoo like this entertaining in any way, and to be honest if you do I hope I do not know you. I apologise for the photos below but I feel I need to show you what I saw.



After this experience we were going to go to the floating market, but one of the buses broke down so we went straight to the accommodation so that our bus could pick up the people from the broken bus. Our accommodation was inside a temple which was really nice - I think it is probably quite common for people to stay there because there are large rooms for sleeping in and a corridor of toilets. It would have been nice to be able to have a wander around and explore around the temple, but there was no time as as soon as we arrived all the students and teachers made their way to the beach. The beach was really lovely - not too crowded and very pretty. Caitlin and I went on a banana boat with four students which was amazing fun, and yes of course we fell off! :D At one point I stupidly flipped the entire boat upside down by trying to get on when no one was at the other side... turns out boats un-balance when you do that! After about 5 minutes of us all trying to recover the boat, the man controlling the speedboat managed to do it by speeding up so the rope tightened and forced it to flip. After this a group of students buried Caitlin and I in sand, making sure to give us large breasts, gentlemen equipment and a stegosaurus spine. Much fun! We got to bed at about 11pm, which was good because Kru Nid decided it would be a good idea to wake us up at 4.30am to tell us that the queue for the showers was going to be long. We got up at 6am, and the queue was not long. We are still unsure why the 4.30am wake up call was necessary...

Sunday morning saw us waiting in the bus for about an hour while one of the boys went to the doctor (he had a stomach upset), then going to the floating market which we were meant to go to on Saturday. It was a really nice market and I am glad that I decided not to take much money or I would have spent far too much! It was quite hard to find your way around though... Thailand is making me realise how awful my sense of direction really is! Caitlin said that she went to a floating market near Mae Sai where they actually went around the market on boats, but this market was walkways and a really cool swing bridge!

After this we went to the open zoo. After my experience at the Crocodile Zoo previously, and not being a fan of zoos in general, I was not at all looking forward to going, but thankfully it turned out to not be as bad as I thought. The animals were still kept in enclosures, so the name "open zoo" was slightly misleading, but the enclosures were much bigger and well equipped than the Crocodile Zoo ones. The tigers here, for instance, had both a large indoor and outdoor section with a waterfall and pool for swimming in. Not exactly what they would have in the wild but at least they are being treated with some care.

The next trip was to the Ancient City, which is a large park filled with miniature statues of famous landmarks and buildings from all over the world. I saw Ankhor Wat, the Leaning Tower of Pizza, the Statue of Liberty, the Pyramids, Easter Island Heads, the Taj Mahal... all without leaving Thailand! After this we went to a bee farm and saw lots of bees. We only stayed for a short time at the bee farm... although I love bees, once you've seen one hive you have really seen them all...
We then went to the aquarium, which I think was my favourite trip of the weekend (aside from the beach). Although it is still animals kept in cages, it was brilliant to see all the different fish and they were all in good condition. It is so long since I have been to an aquarium, and it made me realise that I actually love fish. I am actually thinking that this might lead me to go back to thinking about Biology as a uni degree and then going into Marine Biology... what do you think mum? :P I loved the stingrays, and took about 6 photos trying to get a good picture of one. The bus driver had to come to collect Caitlin and me because we got distracted in the gift shop looking at a "First English Words for Children" book. It had Thai words and sentences in it too, we weren't just looking at the pictures, honest!

We then started to make our way back to Na Kae, stopping about an hour in to look at a food market next to a really beautiful temple. The drive back was much the same as the drive there, except that instead of Karaoke we got to watch a couple of films. One of them was Narnia: The Dawn Treader (in Thai) and the other was a film called "Accidental Death" (also in Thai) which seemed to be a series of people seeing their own, or other peoples ,accidental deaths. It did not make much sense to us, but was nice to watch a film.