A Big Welcome from Pattaya

Welcome to Pattaya, a resort town in Thailand, Pattaya is our next stop. We left bright and early this morning to go to the bus stop. Since our apartment, is within walking distance from the Ekamai Bus Terminal, it was a convinient choice for this weekends travels. We bought our tickets for the express bus to Pattaya, it only costs 3 USD. You can also take a taxi, we have taken taxis to Pattaya many times. The taxi fare costs around $30 USD. After we boarded the bus, the first thing I noticed was the tempature. It’s December, and even Thailand is getting a bit colder. So why is the AC turned down so cold? It felt like Antartica in there. I assumed that they’d want to save money instead of run the AC. But I assumed wrong. So lesson learned, next time I take the bus I’ll make sure to pack a warm sweatshirt. Once we arrived in Pattaya at 9:30, we encountered many taxi drivers and song thaew drivers(which is an open pickup truck that seats about 12 people). We chose to take the song thaew. The weather was perfect and the breeze was just right. The driver took us right to our hotel which is named Hard Rock. When we arrived, we were greeted by very friendly staff. Whenever, we go to Pattaya we always stay at the Hard Rock; we’ve just had really great experiences. The check in staff member’s name was Nastya, she is very kind and helpful. Since we are a Hard Rock member, our room was available then. We were able to change and start our day! One thing I absolutely love about Hard Rock is that at their pool they have activities. Their first activity that we participated in was rock climbing. It was so satisfying to ring the bell at the top of the rock wall and have everyone cheering for you. Also, in some of the activities you can win a free drink. For kids, a soft drink and for adults a beer. It is a great reward for all your hard work if you win. It was a great atmosphere. For lunch, we ate outside of the a Hard Rock Cafe. I got the Classic Club Sandwhich, which is super filling and so delicious. We participated in many more activities throughout the afternoon including golf, mini olympics, water polo, and bingo. In bingo, I wasn’t so lucky but my brother was. As the sun set, our group head out for church. We chose a Catholic Church named Saint Nikolas. We took a song thaew, it was very easy and efficient. The church was quite small but very welcoming. After church, we walked for a very long time trying to find some type of transportation to take us back to our hotel. After what seemed like 30 minutes we found a song thaew.  It seemed that the driver either forgot we were still in the back or got lost because we knew we weren’t in the right area. So, my mom pulled out google maps and helped the driver find the way to the hotel. We were so pooped at night, that we just treated ourselves to room service. The room service was so good, me and my brother shared the apple cobbler. BTW, birthday cake❌ apple cobbler✅. Overall, Pattaya is so far, so good. Although Pattay has a bad reputation with some people, personally I don’t see anything wrong with Pattaya.