Day 3: We got up at 7 again so we could leave Pattaya and head out to Bangkok. This is where the trip gets REALLY fun.
And by really fun I mean it was so boring I got angry. I was subjected to a one hour live infomercial of this old Chinese guy selling bee products. At first I thought we were going to a bee farm, but when we got there it was actually worse: NO BEES, JUST A MAN. SELLING HONEY AND BEE'S WAX. He gave us a LECTURE about where the bees come from, how great their honey is, the honey's awesome healing properties, the benefits of using honey on your face, etc. SUPER BORING. We did actually get to TRY the honey (it was alright, VERY sweet), some honey juice or something (I don't know exactly what that stuff was, is that bad?), and pollen? Or something?
It tasted like Golden Grahams, except not as good.
Stupid bees.
The reason tours are so cheap is that they take you to all of these stupid factories in the hopes of making up the money they lost by having you buy stupid bee, leather, jewelry, and food products. A lot of time was wasted going to these individual markets :/
I'm sure all of the food here was authentically Thai (they had durian and mangosteen candies, dried squid, etc...) but none of it was something I wouldn't be able to find at 99 Ranch Market.
Our last stop before reaching Thailand was to the monkey show/elephant ride! As you can see, I got to take a picture being buddy-buddy with a (obviously sleepy) monkey. Also take a look at this suave guy:
The show was actually pretty sad. They had the monkey on a chain around its neck and the "trainer" would just yank on the chain to make it do something. The poor monkey got choked a couple of times :( They also made it do stupid things like jump through a hoop surrounded by knives, and then one on fire. I guess it's supposed to be entertaining? But it just put me in a worse mood.
But I guess I'm kind of a hypocrite since after that I just hopped on an elephant for a ride around the park. I wonder if it hurts it at all to have three people riding on its back? I hope not...
BUT YEAH. I RODE AN ELEPHANT. Sorry, Elephant, for making you carry me around...
Anyway. Aside from that I rode in a donkey cart. It wasn't very interesting.
After that we made it to Bangkok. Our first stop there was an upscale mall. Yeah, pretty boring, I've seen too many in Hong Kong already. My group opted out of that to see the four faced Buddha instead:
It's a bit weird to have this worshiping place out in the open in the middle of the city, but I noticed that religion is more apparent in Thailand (guess I'm just not used to it living in America):
The first thing I thought of when we got to Bangkok was that it looks (and feels) a lot like Vegas. The weather and walkways and such.
We had dinner at the mall-I-didn't-buy-anything-at and then went to a night market in Bangkok. They sell clothes and trinkets and souvenirs and such (a lot like Chinatown at home or night markets in Hong Kong - except a lot more elephant-themed stuff) and everything is suuuuper cheap. I bought a couple of T-shirts for 100 baht or so, which is what? $3 USD or something?
Just some pictures of the the ride to the night market/the decorations around the night market. I'm particularly proud of that first one :)
I liked Pattaya a lot! Lots to see and do. We also went to those tour supplements except instead of the bee place we went to a herbal medicine place as well as a jade factory. Oh and a pearl factory. It's so sad to see the same monkey still working there after all these years. It's so sad that these animals get exploited!
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