Travels - Thailand (July 2007)

Unfortunately, my stories for Thailand are brief as my visit to Thailand was also breif. In early July I joined our Asia Pacific audit team in Pattaya (South East of Bankock) for the final 3 days of the workshop that my team hosted. I found Thailand (like most of Asia) to be a bustling place with more motorcycles and scooters than cars by far. I also found it to be very, very wet as I arrived with monsoon season in full swing.  This meant that from the time I landed to the time I left it was almost constantly raining - at least a misty drizzle if not an out and out down pour.

I also found two things I absolutely loved about Thailand: the food and the people. While some of the food there looks odd (typical Asian presentation with scales, head and tail still attached), the taste of anything I tried was fantastic. Thai food has a variety of spices and a good amount of them are sweet and tangy just like I prefer. I quickly learned to dig in even if the looks turned me off a bit. A word of caution though - always ask how spicy something is first, especially sauces. Some Thai food is blow the roof off hot, hot, hot.  My favorites where a Mahi fish grilled in a sweet sauce, crab claws with a variety of dipping sauces, grilled and fried prawns and anything with pineapple.  The best pineapples in the world come from Thailand without question.

The people of Thailand also rate at the top of my list of things Asian. Thai people love to laugh and it doesn't matter if you know them well or not unlike elsewhere in Asia. Greetings are made with a formal bow with hands held in a prayer like position in front of the face. But in almost every case a grin is behind the hands. In shops on the street haggling is common but you can be assured of getting a better price if you can make a humorous comment or two. Koreans, Chineese and Japaneese lack this kind of informality and it made trips out to the damp street bazaar very pleasant.

Unfortunately, I saw no cultural sites unless you want to consider Walking Street in downtown Pattaya a cultural site. Walking Street during daylight is full of street vendors hawking goods. At night, the neon comes on and the vendors hawk...well they hawk adult "services". Bars are full of girls wearing numbers to help you pick from the selection of "merchandise" and each vendor carries a laminated card you can pick your "services" from. Well, I did say people here were freindly didn't I?

Anyway, Thailand is way up near the top of my list for places to return to. I can't wait to go back, see some sites, play on the beaches, take an elephant on a jungle trek and eat some more great food. We're currently making plans for a Christmas time vacation in Asia. I'm thinking Thailand's chances of coming out as our destination are pretty good.

Pattaya in a photo borrowed from the web.

Sculpture in Bangkok airport.

BH Cho (Korea) ,Sukanya (Thailand) and me (US) at dinner

The team enjoys some of that great Thai food.

Me on the walking street in Pataya. No, I am not headed for the disco.