Thailand - "Ping Pong for you?"

Hello from Pattaya,

The seediest town ever. Yes Yes seedier than Vegas, Niagara Falls, Amsterdam (at least the seedy parts) and a few otehrs combined. Everywhere you look there are older, usually white men with young Thai girls.."Weekend Girlfriends". Anyway, an interesting place. Many Go GO Bars, Ping Pong Shows (and I don't mean the game), Transvestites (Thailand is famous for it's gender bending culture and cheap plastic surgery), markets, tourists, etc.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Mel and I are a few cities behind in terms of posting so let's catch up on Thailand. We started off with 4 days in Bangkok. Spent New Years eve at an open air market called Pat Pong which is lined with clubs and go go bars and tons of shopping stalls in the centre. We ended up at an open bar listening to a live duet (think American Idol rejects- William Hung- no wonder he thought he sounded good!). Everything from Fity Cent to Maroon Five. The oddest thing was the choice of song for the midnight countdown..Maroon 5..This love..odd odd, but fun!

Anyway, Bangkok has some great scams, all of them perfected and delivered with a level of politness you can only laugh. We got caught by one though. While walking around on day one a middle aged man asked us waht we were looking for..we were hungry and he seemed to know everything and since it was New Years eve nothing was open...he got a Tuk Tuk driver for us and explained everything to him..well that was a scam, the story goes he was waiting for his wife, but in reality he's a guy that gets business for the Tuk Tuk. The Tuk Tuk then proceeded to take us to all the hsopping places..we were so thankfull, these places were quality and cheap..that was a scam too, basically he gets a gas vouture when he takes us to these places...So whatever, we have watches and diesel clothes we don't need etc.. Also, the tailers here are really cheap. Mel got a suit and a dress and I got 2 suits (Italian Wool) + 2 shirts + 2 ties all custom made and fitted for $500 US..nice stuff.

After our 4 days in Bangkok we went slighlty North and West near the Burma border to a place called Kanchanaburi. The pics below are all from that trip.

1)Erawan Waterfall - This pic is only one of the 7 stages. Basically you hike up to each of the stages. About 2km walk up. Very beautiful, the toe hindered me from seeing the last stage, as I can't get it wet, but basically Mel climbed the rocks to get to the top!!!

2-4)Mel & I petting the Tigers. They're just slighlty bigger Tiku's :P. This picture and the next 2 were taken at a Monk run sanctuary for reclaimed animals. These tigers are taken care of and those that can be released in the wild will be. Very cool place.

5)An elephant Ride through the Jungle. Our elephant was cranky, and it's amazing how much persoanlity they have. Sadly there are only 2000 wild elephants left in Thailand. about 3000 are in captivity, 2000 in tourit traps like this one and others adn 1000 illegaly used in farming and the logging industry. We felt guilty about this one, but they are treated well and fed well...but yeah

6)For those of you that saw the Movie "The Bridge OVer the River Kwai", this is the bridge...well not really. The original bridge was built by POWs captured by the Japanese to create a railway from Thailand into Burma for Supply routes. I believe 17 people died per KM and a total of 17000 soldiers and civillians died in total. A sad place really. This bridge was rebuilt after the war with steel after the original was bombed by the allies near the end of the war.

7) Hellfire Pass along the railway above that killed the most people.

Cheers,
Sham
P.S. Toe is doing well and slowly healing, my diving plans are probably out the window for Thailand, will probably have to do that in the Cooks, but at least I get to keep my toe!!! :)
PPS. Personally I think he should just replace his toe with a steel toe. That would be v. cool. (Mel)