We decided to stop in Pattaya for the night on the way to Koh Chang. I can't say I liked it there much. Although it might not be a fair assessment of the city since we stayed directly next to the red light district. It wasn't something we planned on, but since the bus dropped us off there we decided to stay in the area. It's always overwhelming being dropped off in a new city. Thailand isn't unlike Mexico or Cuba in the sense that Taxi drivers swarm tourists immediately. I always feel like they're trying to take advantage of me (and they likely are) so we dodged into an alley by a McDonalds to regroup and try figure out what to do next. As we were trying to find a free hotspot, we noticed a hotel at the end of the alley called the Lido. It looked out of our planned budget, but we figured there was no harm in inquiring. We entered the lobby and spoke with the lady working the desk. Turned out our suspicions were right, the rooms were $50 CDN per night. We asked if there were and double rooms to reduce the cost, but they didn't have any oddly enough. Since we were a little overwhelmed by the city and tired from the bus ride from Bangkok, we voted on staying and splitting the cost of two rooms three ways. We got the keys and made our way to the rooms. Let's just say I'm not sure how $50 is justified. The rooms were musty and smelled like no one had stayed in them in awhile. That's when I realized we might be the only people staying in this fairly large hotel. It creeped me out to be honest. Have you ever see the episode of Vice Guide to Travel: North Korea where they stay in a large fancy hotel, but since it's North Korea they were the only ones there. It felt like that... Crossed with the spookiness of the hotel in The Shining.
We were getting hungry so we decided to try find something to eat. Usually we wouldn't eat anything but Thai food since its fucking delicious, but since we were in the red light district the food was less then desirable looking. McDonalds it is! The menu was pretty much identical except for a few items like hot wings and spinach pies. After that we grabbed a beer and headed to the seawall that overlooks the ocean. Jordanna really wanted to go swimming, but by this time it was dark and didn't look safe. She ended up heading back to the hotel instead, while Erin and me checked out the red light district.
In between the brothel bars and ping pong shows there were bars with muay thai boxing rings in the middle. This seemed interesting to me so we sat down and waited for the fight to begin. As we waited I quickly caught onto the scam. The staff would herd people into the place and serve them a red slushy drink. Once the place filled up the fights would start, but they were ridiculously staged WWE fights ... That wasn't the scam though. It was the bill for the drink. We paid $15 CDN for red bull and vodka!!! I'm assuming the others paid outrageous prices too because everyone immediately got up and left after the fight.
No comments:
Post a Comment