Thailand Part One, Or, "Tigers, Crocodiles, Elephants, Oh My!"

When we pulled into Thailand I didn’t know quite what to expect. For some reason, after India, I was expecting every country to be like India, which I know is not true. By “like India” I mean chaotic and kind of rough around the edges. But it wasn’t like that at all. The only downside was that the port was no longer in Bangkok, as it used to be years ago. It is now in Laem Chabang, which was about two hours away from the capital. I enjoyed a leisurely morning on the first day because of this – where are you supposed to go with only like an hour or two if it’s a huge hassle to even get out of the port? – then I went on a trip to Sri Racha Tiger Zoo. It was a lot like an animal park in the States. I didn’t get to see it all, but they had lots of tigers, crocodiles and elephants! We walked into the park and passed some crocodiles in an enclosure and a few elephants before the tiger show started. An elephant picked me up with his trunk! (You had to pay a little for it, but it was totally worth it!) I believe I put up a picture of that. The tiger show had about eight tigers perform for a little bit. It was kind of difficult to understand because the announcements were in Thai, but the tricks were alright. One of the tigers seemed like he wasn’t getting along very well with the handler, but that could have been part of the show, I’m not sure. They even jumped through hoops lit on fire! After the tigers, we went straight to another arena with a moat-like thing for the crocodile show, which turned out to be pretty cool – one of the trainers stuck her head in the croc’s mouth! They also took money from people after the show and put in the croc’s mouth. Between the croc and elephant arenas there was a huge moat enclosure under the raised walkway that we crossed full of hundreds of crocodiles. It was crazy. I didn’t even know crocodiles were native to Thailand. The final show was the elephant show, which was also pretty cool. About a dozen elephants were paraded around and did various tricks. They played basketball, threw darts (at one SAS volunteer!) and ate bananas from the audience (which they sell to you as you’re watching the show). One elephant also walked across two ropes suspended off the ground. Directly after all the animal shows, we were able to walk into the souvenir shop that also served as a place to get photos with a baby crocodile or tiger. It was so cool, except we had to wait in a line because all the SAS kids wanted to do it and I got about 45 seconds with the tiger since there was such a high demand. After that we had to get going and on the way out, I noticed that you could buy a plate with your picture on it – a photographer from the park snapped a picture while you were walking in. I avoided him, so there was no plate of me, which is just as well.

After that we went to this kind of bizarre place called Mini Siam. It reminds me of an over sized mini golf course without the golf. There are all these manicured displays of famous landmarks around the world, most are about waist to full size height, some are even larger. For example, there’s an Arc de Triumphe, Eiffel Tower, St. Basil’s Cathedral from Russia, the Busimbel from Egypt, the Trevi Fountain, Coliseum and Leaning Tower of Pisa from Italy, London Bridge (complete with model cars over a large pond that also contained some other displays and wound through the park). Can you guess what the two U.S. monuments are that are there? The Statue of Liberty and Mt. Rushmore. The other half of the park is obviously disproportionately dedicated to things in Thailand, such as the Grand Palace, the Bridge on the River Kwai (which I thought would be cooler if it exploded and rebuilt itself every ten minutes like something off the MGM back lot tour) and the Bangkok Airport (who knows why). The other entertaining part of the trip was that the Mini Siam park was located directly next to a McDonald’s! Of course, I had to go check out. I got a Happy Meal, which was pretty cool – it had a Spiderman toy! (I saved it for Tim. Haha.) But of course they had some interesting fair, including a DOUBLE Big Mac (eek! Four patties!) and a tuna fish pie of some sort. The coolest thing was Ronald McDonald doing the Thai wai, which is when you press your hands together in front of you and bow, a way to say hello (which is “sa wat dee kaa” thank you very much). The only bad thing is that they charge you for each piece of the Happy Meal, so French fries are extra a part from the drink and the burger. Interesting system.

Next, we were supposed to be going to a souvenir shop, which was what the guide called it, but the bus ended up at a place called the Gem Gallery with tons of jewelry. I actually didn’t buy anything, but they had this really silly dark ride in a conveyor-like car (reminded me of Spaceship Earth in the sphere in Epcot). The ride was supposed to show how gems are created and found and used mannequins and light effects, which was so bad that it was kind of cute and funny. There was a huge, classy jewelry showroom, but like I said I didn’t buy anything. I was going to buy something with my birthstone (extra souvenirs if you know what it is), like a necklace or earrings, but I didn’t like any of the ones they had. After that two other girls that were on the trip wanted to go to the city of Pattaya, which was close to the Gem Gallery. Everyone else went back to the ship. Pattaya is very much like any beach or shore city in the U.S. from my impression of it. About a thirty-foot strip of beach borders Pattaya before it gives way to a street and on the other side of the street are all kinds of shops that sell fake purses and things, beach gear and about four malls one right after the other. The beach, as I would find out later in the week when we came back, was kind of gross there was garbage floating in the water and little bits of wood and things, so I don’t think I missed out on too much by not going in the water. It was also almost dark by this time, so there weren’t many people on the beach. We got dropped off at this HUGE mall. It was seven stories with a bowling alley (yeah, a bowling alley!) and a movie theater on the top floor. There were lots of familiar stores, Puma, Adidias, Starbucks, KFC, Dairy Queen, The North Face and Ed Hardy among others. Grace, Sam and I split up and then met later so that we could go get some dinner.

We walked along the beach, which had many open-air restaurants and bars. We decided on a place and had some good Thai food for dinner. We were a little disturbed by the fact that it seemed that almost all of the white guys who came in there had two things in common: they were old and they had a young Thai woman with them. If you know anything about things in Thailand, you know what I’m talking about, or at least what I suspected. Can I just say...EW. Not only is that disgusting, it’s degrading and undermining the women there in Pattaya. I think I would personally beat the crap out of anyone who thinks that’s a good idea for a vacation. What kind of disgusting fiend would support that? For once (because in many of the countries we’ve visited, the men are the ones who judge us), I think I as a white woman felt like I had power to judge those terrible, vile, disgusting men (of course, there is a possibility they could have had positive motivations for doing such things). There was also a shirt I saw later that said “Good guys go to heaven, bad guys go to Pattaya.” EW. My feminist self was totally disgusted by this, as everyone else should be as well.

After dinner the mall was open for about another hour, so we split up again and shopped. We met a few other girls later when we were ready to leave and all five of us took a truck taxi back to the ship. The ride was really fun – these trucks have benches with cushions and a roof built over the bed of the truck and an open back with a step built in. It was really fun to ride in! I think it’s a good idea that could be adopted anywhere in the U.S. where there’s nice weather often and people only need to go short distances, but the government might frown on the no-seat-belt thing. Haha. That was a fun end to my first day in Thailand!