Pattaya and Ian's Bike Trip

There were two reasons Cindy and I were going to Pattaya: we wanted to squeeze in a few days of diving before Cindy left for Canada AND Cindy scored us a few nights at another Marriot hotel using her points. Otherwise, we never would have gone to Pattaya.  Pattaya was close to Bangkok so it was easy to get to for a few days of diving – taking the bus was easy and cheap. The diving wouldn’t be great but it would give us an opportunity to do some diving together.

Pattaya was notorious for its sex tourism – I knew this but I had no idea how bad it was until we got there. Discos, open beer bars and go-go clubs were not confined to one area. They lined both the main and side streets; worse yet were the amount of older heavy set white men with young well-made up Thai women, some looking 16 years old. It was appalling. One night Cindy and I went to a British pub for dinner and every single table, except our own, was occupied with white men accompanied by Thai women. It was disturbing. I was glad to be diving all day so I only had to witness this when we grabbed a bite to eat.

I decided to use Mermaids Dive Centre for diving – they received decent reviews and the female manager was phenomenal with answering emails. Unfortunately, the dive guides were not very good.

The company picked us up and we arrived at the shop in no time. Cindy and I went inside and I met the manager who was quite friendly. We were then taken around the back for our gear. After that, we were sort of forgotten. No one told us anything so we just stood around waiting until finally we were ushered into a van – we had no idea where we were going, how long it would take, etc. I found it all rather strange. After about 30- 40 minutes, we pulled off the main highway towards a harbour and pulled up alongside the boat.

A foul odor hit us as soon as we stepped outside – the harbour we were in held several boats that fished for cuttlefish so that explained the smell. It was disgusting and a sarong over my nose barely helped. The boat was large and I watched as one of the guides got into it.

Now, Ian and I have been in and out of many boats on this trip and some of them have been tricky indeed, but I have never seen anything so dangerous as this one! Any description I could give wouldn’t do it justice but I can say it involved stepping onto a jagged rickety log sticking out of the water then climbing over the boat rail all while the boat is moving up and down – I hope that gives you some idea of the entry into that boat. For someone tiny or someone older with bad knees (which describes one of the divers), it was a challenge. One of the dive guides actually said to me: if I saw how you get on and off this boat, I'd never want to dive with this company again.

Anyways, Cindy and I managed, found our seats, sat with our sarongs over our noses and listened to our little orientation session for the boat. We were travelling another 30 – 40 minutes to the Hardeep wreck where one group would dive first while the rest of us sat on the boat waiting our turn. Again, this was odd to me. I had no idea we’d be waiting while one group dove before we’d move on to another site where the rest of us would then dive.  I would have liked to do 3 dives but they said that was impossible. A very strange arrangement set up to save money I suppose.

On route, one of the dive masters came up and asked if I’d like to do the wreck. I really wanted to but then I couldn’t dive with Cindy as only advanced divers could do the wreck. Cindy told me to go ahead so down I went to 25.9 metres to the ship. The current was incredibly strong and we had to hold onto the barnacle covered rope to get down to the site otherwise we’d be swept away. Luckily my dive guide had extra gloves to lend me or my hands would have been a mess.

The ship had sunk June 1^st 1945 and it was full of holes. I followed my guide into the ship’s belly where there wasn’t any current but also, not much to see. We spent our time swimming against the current to the front of the boat then letting it carry us back to the end – I wasn’t impressed and in fact, found it all rather tedious. Fighting the current also meant we’d go through the air faster than usual so our dive ended up being a mere 33 minutes; my guide who was a lot younger than I ran out of air as fast I did.

After that dive, I stuck with Cindy and didn’t do any more wreck dives. The sites we dove in were once used for navy exercises and there seemed to be a lot of unexploded ordinance among the coral that, needless to say, we avoided touching or going near. I did 6 dives while Cindy did 5 because she was flying and couldn’t do the last one.

We saw turtles, huge 6 banded angelfish, porcupine fish, blue spotted stingrays and the usual suspects: groupers, fusilier, sea cucumber, beaked butterfly, etc. On my last dive, I watched in astonishment as both my dive guide and a certified DM kicked coral most of the dive! I couldn’t believe how seemingly oblivious they were.  Not only to the coral but to me - I stopped to point at a ray trying to get their attention before finally giving up and swimming to catch up to them. Imagine if I were in trouble!  

I was glad to have that opportunity to dive with Cindy but I’d never go back to Pattaya nor would I ever recommend that dive company.  Except the manager is amazing; later she hooked me up with Scott at Mermaids in Bangkok and he helped me get a prescription mask made which was a huge undertaking on his part so I’m forever grateful for that….It’s a shame about the guides in Pattaya.

One night as I sat in the room in Pattaya, I received a text from Ian informing me that there had been a serious earthquake in Sumatra just like the one that had caused the tsunami in 2004. I immediately got on the internet and sure enough, Thailand was issuing a tsunami warning for the Andaman Coast. The Phuket airport was closed and people along the coast were being evacuated to higher ground.  Even though I knew I was safe in Pattaya (it was protected by Southern Thailand and in the Gulf) I was still a bit freaked. The ironic thing was, Cindy and I had wanted to go to Koh Lak (on the Andaman Coast) to dive but it wouldn’t work with our schedule.

Everything turned out fine, the warning was cancelled; no tsunami - thank goodness!

We took the bus back to Bangkok for one night before Cindy left on an early morning flight for Canada. I was there to see her off - a lovely 22 hour flight ahead of her but hopefully a great 3 weeks behind her.

I returned to the hotel and caught some shut eye before going back to the airport to meet Ian arriving from Chiang Mai. It was so good seeing him after way too long. Ian caught me up on his solo bike trip complete with photos.

Ian’s Bike Trip:

He rented a Kawasaki Versys 650, the biggest bike they had.

It was a great way exploring the countryside of northern Thailand. The sights were amazing and the people lovely.

Ian did get caught in a few thunderstorms and had to sit them out under a bit of shelter but other than that, the weather was the usual – hot and sticky. Some of the roads were interesting. This one had fallen completely away –

He said mostly the driving was great going around lovely curves and up and down the hills. However sometimes it was a bit hairy with cars coming towards him passing people blind on curves leaving him little room to get over. That’s how they drive here.

He visited several temples –

And at one temple, some little monks were having an afternoon nap.

He saw so many waterfalls he stopped taking photos of them –

The Songkran Water Festival was on for the last 4 days of Ian’s journey. This festival represents the Thai New years and a new beginning with water a cleansing agent to wash away the previous sins. It started as water being poured on another’s feet but has since turned into an all out water fight with many tourists getting involved. Sometimes Thais drive around with huge barrels of water on the back of pickup trucks and they douse people with water as they drive by. In towns, people line up along the street with water guns and buckets and hit passing scooters, pedestrians, and pickup trucks.

Ian spent 4 days totally soaked and more than once, got a bucket of water in the face while driving his bike on the roads. Not fun. His phone died from getting wet so much. Overall though, he had a blast.

Back in Bangkok

In Bangkok we decided to stay at the Admiral hotel and got a suite for about 70 bucks. It had a small kitchen so we could make some meals should we choose to. It wasn’t a bad location, very close to Terminal 21 so we saw a few movies over the next few days.

Mostly, we did research. As our time was coming to an end, we had to do some careful planning.  It was hard to believe that our New Zealand trip was soon approaching as it seemed so long ago that we had booked it.  Ian took on the task of renting us a campervan for NZ while I searched for a liveaboard stay in Komodo National Park.

Our next adventure was one we had been looking forward to for a long time – Sipadan.