Thai Massage, I think yes!

Thailand has been amazing and I especially enjoyed all of the food I had so I will definitely miss that until I get home for a "Taste of Thai"! The first day we couldn't get off the ship for a while so we didn't get to go explore before our trip to the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo. This actually reminded a lot of the Bronx zoo combined with a circus. We were a little disappointed because we were hoping for a tiger sanctuary and it just ended up being shows of animals doing tricks. All that we hope is that they aren't abused, which is hard for us to tell. I guess this is the case with any of the ports we have been to but I noticed it the most about worrying over the welfare of the animals that were "performing". At the zoo we first ran off to take pictures with the baby elephants and then watched the Tiger show. This involved a lot of jumping through hoops.......literally........flaming ones. Then there was the crocodile show where people stuck their hands and heads in their jaws, I promise I'm not that stupid Mom. The funny part was that they actually sold skewers of crocodile outside right after the show, kinda screwed up. Last was the elephant show where they did a bunch of balancing things and actually had 2 SAS kids do some tricks with them. The entire reason for me going on this trip was so that I could feed a baby tiger so I was really excited to actually get to do that. Although I will say that my "baby" tiger was probably about the same size as me, not too comfortable while sitting on your lap I must say. They did have a really tiny baby one but it was wailing and I just felt bad for it I so I didn't want to bother it. It could barely even walk across the ground. After that we went to Mini Siam which has miniatures of a bunch of world monuments and Thai ones as well. Most of us wished this had been done later when we would've known what the individual Thai monuments were. They then dropped us off at the Harbor Mall near our port so we could get dinner. We had this "Hot pot" thing where you cook the meat in a stew in the middle of the table. Our tour guide told us it was Korean, but all I really cared about was that it was good food, which it was.

The second day was my trip to Bangkok to go see some sites and such. Bangkok was a little less than 2 hours away from our ship. We stopped at a mall early in the morning to pick up our boats to go down the river and canal system. The canals were really cool because there were so many temples along it as well as the neat traditional Thai houses. We saw a bunch of the temples from the river that we visited later. We got this amazing local Thai food which was one of my favorite meals from the whole visit. Then we visited the Wat Aron, sorry if I screwed this up, which is this temple with really steep stairs up the side of it. Its almost like climbing a ladder, but up the side of the temple, kinda scary, but not in comparison to bungeeing off the highest one in the world I guess. The next stop was a boat ride to Wat Pho which had the giant reclining Buddha. This giant golden Buddha was maybe the size of a building  it was so huge. The last stop was the Grand Palace which was so intricately painted and also had some ridiculous amounts of gold every. I think I might have gone partially blind because of it. There was also the Emerald Buddha where they change his outfits depending on the season. After taking some goofy pictures with the palace guards and funky statues everywhere we headed to one of the more modern buildings. This is what they themed "The King and I" after, with the combination of European and Thai designs. We finally headed back to the ship and got some dinner in Laem Chabang, our port city.

St. Patrick's day was probably my favorite of all the days in Thailand, because it was so ridiculous, although I will admit I have absolutely no Irish in me. In the morning we left early for the Pattaya Orphanage where we got to play with a bunch of the kids. the older ones were at school so we hung out with the toddlers mainly. This was also a school for the deaf because their facilities are so nice. It really was a nice orphanage, or at least better than what I was expecting, and they gave us a tour of their whole grounds. One of the little girls we were playing with actually was getting adopted that day so she was really excited and running around like crazy. Most of the adoptions from this orphanage normally go to Europe but there are some to the U.S. That was a really fun service and the kids really seemed to enjoy just playing around with people and all of the toys that we brought. We decided to stay in Pattaya for that night so we got to our hotel and checked in after the trip was done. The only thing is that a good portion of Pattaya was a red light district, or at least near the beach where we were, so there were a ton of older European men running around. Nobody really bothered us at all, even as 3 American girls, but most of the men related to us like we were their daughters or something, kinda creepy now that we think about it though. We went to a corner stop Thai restaurant which was really good and we got to do some people watching which was one of my favorite activities in Thailand. We did a little shopping, I might have a couple of DVDs that are not released in the States yet, whoopsies? Then we just headed to a corner bar so my friend could get a drink for her birthday, 21 of course. There we met Pang who was a 25 year old cocktail waitress at this corner bar (more people watching involved, and no it doesn't make us feel like creepers). She taught us how to play this dice game and then we also played Jenga and Connect Four with her, which we found hilarious later. We talked for almost an hour about her family in Bangkok and also her children who were 5 and 2. They lived with her parents, and apparently she was married to a Thai man but he wasn't a "good man" so she left for Pattaya. We decided that we wanted to watch the sunset on the beach so we invited her if she was off, but then we found out there was a little more to her cocktail waitress job than just serving drinks. She couldn't leave unless someone paid, which we thought about for a second, imagine that story of taking her to the beach with us! We decided against it in the end and watched the sunset on the beach, which was really gorgeous but the water was definitely not too clean. This meant that when we got back to our hotel we jumped in the pool quickly before getting ready for Kelly's birthday dinner. The funny thing is that Kelly is Irish and it was her 21st birthday so she was very excited. There were actually several Irish pubs in Pattaya so we went across the street to one for dinner, although I still got Thai food there. There we saw 2 of the med students from UVA on the ship walk past so they came and hung out for the rest of the night with us as our male version of protection. The funny thing was that we were more protection for them by pretending we were their girlfriends so the "ladies" wouldn't bother them. Overall Pattaya was definitely fun and we had a great time.

We tried getting breakfast at the hotel the next morning but it was only for two so we just left and got a taxi back to the ship to pick up our SAS trip. We headed to the Pattaya elephant village which I didn't feel as bad about because it wasn't a circus-like or touristy environment. They did have a Thai dancer performing with some live musicians for us first, but then all of the elephants came out. I actually got to jump up on the neck of one, bare back of course, and ride it was it went for its bath in the pond. I definitely got a little wet but it was really fun. We had 2 more rides with them later one and it wasn't as creepy about it because there were hardly an chairs on the elephants, but hopping up on their necks. The little kids of the professors on the ship were there and it was completely adorable to watch them in awe of the elephants. They even had a pregnant elephant, although I couldn't tell the difference. There was a mini drum show at the end and they showed us how the traditional Thai people used elephants for their work in farming as a demonstration. This was one of my favorite animal experiences for entire time in Thailand. After they took us to a souvenir shop, big surprise they tried taking us to jewelry stores every time. Normally I don't buy anything but I did get a pair of linen pants to wear in Cambodia so I can be a little covered up but not nearly as hot. After that we went to the Central mall, there are malls all over the place, and got dinner at this really nice Thai restaurant and then found some sticky rice with Mango on the street which was also delicious. We shopped for a little bit, which definitely did some damage but I feel that I got a lot for not too much money. Then we just took the taxi back to the ship and I hung out with the roommie, Cassie, watching my newly bought Twilight video, yes we are a little bit of nerds.

The last day in Thailand was pretty interesting. I went to the Nong Nooch "cultural" village. Now what I had expected was a rural village where we get to experience the culture a little bit more. This was another show environment, but I didn't mind too much because they had some beautiful orchids and gardens in general. It made me want to go back to Longwood gardens, ideas for the trip back up Dad? There was also a performance of different types of Thai dancing from the different regions in Thailand. This was really neat because they do the crazy hyperextension of the wrists that makes the hands look really graceful but incredibly painful. After that they did a mock Muay Thai fight, I wouldn't have wanted to see a real one because I don't think I could handle it, but this was at least interesting. The last part was another elephant show that was really circus-y but I've found that a lot of what we experienced in Thailand was really touristy. I haven't found too many people that got a real Thai local experience because most of the people don't speak English, unless it is a touristy place. At this place I also fulfilled the stereotype by getting some cheap Pad Thai but it was delicious. I swear that was the only time I got it so don't judge! We stopped again at the Harbor Mall on the way back but this time Rebecca and I went in search of a non-sketchy massage parlor. We found one and I got my first massage ever! This was 200 baht or the equivalent of around $6 US for an hour long ridiculously awesome traditional Thai massage. I also think this was one of my favorite points of the trip. I could have done it for longer but we needed to get back on the ship and work out our postcards. Thailand was definitely a shock to us but I enjoyed it because I never really felt as threatened as I did in some of the other nations. Nobody really harassed us at all and they were very friendly and nice people that didn't seem like they were always trying to squeeze as much money as they could out of us. It was a really neat place and I LOVE THE FOOD!!!!!