Helping us to see our own world

In the previous pages you will have seen some of the places I visited with my two friends from UK during their two week stay here in early January.

Of course in such a short time, it was not possible to visit all the major attractions and some difficult choices had to be made.

For instance, we decided that in the one week we had scheduled for trips in and around Bangkok we would alternate short and long days.

This meant that with only arriving there on the Sunday and their flight home the following Saturday, we really only had time for two long days out and therefore had to choose only two places from the three we had in mind, namely the River Kwai, Ayutthaya and The Floating Market plus Rose Garden.

In the end we opted for the former two, and had therefore to forego the Floating Market which also usually encompasses the Rose Garden cultural show, although the latter was more than compensated for by the wonderful spectacle of the Alangkarn show we saw here in Pattaya.

So why didn’t we then spend more of their two weeks based in Bangkok rather than here in Pattaya which many people regard as a cultural desert?

Well firstly, personally I feel that epithet about Pattaya is not in fact true, there are many sights of interest in and around here - if you are prepared to go and seek them out.

And secondly, my friends were coming straight from the depths of the UK Winter and were strangers to this part of the world, its climate and its food.

So with those facts in mind, we decided that rather than immediately plunging them on arrival into the hectic schedule you will have seen us undertake, it would be better to first bring them here to Pattaya to rest and recover from their long flight and the always present jet-lag that goes with it.

And as they arrived on a Sunday and taking into account that they only had 13 days in all, we didn’t want to loose days in transit between our bases here in Pattaya and Bangkok, and so decided therefore that they should stay the whole of the first week here, and then transfer to Bangkok the following Sunday which is a day when few organised tours run anyway.

So we organised a schedule that allowed them their first full day here to relax and get their bearings, and then the following days for a look at some of the more unusual attractions in and around Pattaya, plus some time for relaxation, shopping and also sampling the excellent fare we have in our multitude of restaurants here.

And overall I think we made the right choice in doing this.

In fact, and I hope my friends won’t mind me saying this, even this what I thought relatively light initial schedule proved harder going than I had envisaged and in the end a few of the planned visits had to be left out.

There were two main reasons for this. Firstly it always takes longer to visit most attractions than you think it will, so trying to plan to go to more than one place per day is generally not a good idea.

Secondly it is difficult for those of us who have been resident here for some time, or who are frequent visitors, to realise just how exhausting the climate here is, especially for someone just coming from Europe in Wintertime.

Even if here we do call it the ‘cool season’ to someone not used to it, it is far from cool and can prove very draining.

So if you have any guests coming this way I would urge you bear this in mind when planning their visit.

Nevertheless it was overall I think, and I hope and believe my friends agree, a very successful visit.

And it was also a chance for me to revisit (and in some cases visit for the first time) all those attractions both here in Pattaya and more especially in Bangkok that I had not seen for a very long time.

And isn’t this always the case?

No matter where you live in the world, mostly you only go to see the attractions right there on your doorstep when you have someone visiting to whom you wish to show them. Most of the rest of the time you forget they exist or if you do remember, you then dismiss them as ‘tourist things’.

But many of these places serve to remind us that we are living in a different and very ancient culture, something that is easy to forget in the daily hustle and bustle of life here in Pattaya.

So do make the effort, at least from time to time, to go and see them, and if it requires the presence of an overseas visiting friend or friends to jerk you out of your reverie, so be it, go ahead and invite them here.

You’ll be glad you did - and hopefully so will they.

Hope you enjoyed your visit to Thailand, Lin and Allen, and hope this pictorial review of your stay will bring you happy memories.