Thailand! Part 1!

So I got back from Thailand Tuesday night. It was ridiculously HOT. UM. Day 1!

Day 1: The plane ride was about 2 and a half hours from Hong Kong International Airport to Bangkok. Airports are pretty cool I guess. It's cool seeing the little cultural touches of whatever country you're in, even though most airports are all high-techish and look the same. I love anticipating what kind of plane food we'll get too, even though I'm disappointed 80% of the time. It wasn't bad this time though.



We got on the tour bus and headed straight for Pattaya, a city 165 km southeast of Bangkok, where we stayed for two nights. On the way we stopped at some kind of animal park that had some kind of obsession with mixing animals that don't belong together. They had some exhibit where they put a tiger, a huge pig, and two regular dogs in the same habitat. And they also had a HUGE, literally 6-foot-long pig nurse a bunch of tiger cubs. The tigers grew up nicer, or something. There was also pig racing, and this scorpion lady that just stands around all day with a bunch of scorpions on her shirt. Yeah. Lame.




I got a glimpse early on that some people are A-Okay with animal exploitation. All of the animals looked pretty unhappy. See this obese orangutan:

After the animals they took us to a "world famous" singing and dancing show. The majority of the performers are transvestites (none of the performers were women). Which is the only reason I paid 800 Baht for it. I wouldn't really say it was worth it. But I guess now I can say I've seen a tranny show in Thailand?





We had dinner at a restaurant across the street. Sadly, the food we ate here was the best of THE WHOLE TRIP, because the subsequent dinners were noticeably not as good. They weren't HORRIBLE, but this dinner was prettttttty good, probably because we had tomyum soup, which is a Thai specialty? I don't know, but it was really good.

After dinner we went shopping at a mall (I forgot the name already...) and the night market next door. There were a lot of transvestites walking around (I saw like, one in Bangkok). You can just TELL.

Oh, that's not a transvestite, I just wanted to show the mall. HAHAH.

I was pleasantly surprised by the hotel in Pattaya (not so much by the one in Bangkok). Except I can't understand why anyone would have a use for the window they put in the bathroom: