Friday 23rd September

Of course I didn't sleep in this morning, despite my long trip the previous night and day. Every week-end I used to sleep in until 10 or 11 at least one day to catch-up on sleep I'd missed during the week as I had to get up for work at 7am - here, I get up at 6am every second day for tours or buses but can't sleep in past 8an even when I have nothing to do!


First item on the agenda was to drop in my laundry. Everywhere else in Thailand, laundries seemed to be on every street corner, all offering their services for 30 baht a kilogram or similar. Pattaya was a different story though. I ended up finding one in Soi 6 (for those who know Pattaya, you're probably wondering what on earth I was doing in Soi 6 - good point, in fact several people have wondered what I was even doing in Pattaya in the first place!) That done, I set out to find breakfast. That also seemed to be far more difficult than it should be - I ended up walking half an hour, finding very few places that did breakfast (and those that did seemed to only 'sets' which had far too much food and were far too expensive) so I ended up as a typical Westerner at Starbucks for an English muffin and frappuccino.

I spent an hour or so walking the beach strip - I always walk, probably far too much, in every city I visit as a) I find it's the best way to see the town and orient yourself and b) I'm too tight to pay for a taxi! Actually until I met up with Alan on Saturday night I hadn't used public transport in Pattaya at all, even though my hotel was at the north end of the beach and it was boiling hot! I also arranged for transportation to Siam Reap in Cambodia for Sunday - apparently an 8 hour ride, even though Cambodia is only about 300km away!


I had an early lunch as I was being picked up at 1:15 for the 'Gibbon Adventure'. This involved an hour's ride into the rainforest of Thailand (about halfway between Bangkok and Pattaya) to spend a few hours ziplining and abseiling through the rainforest. My group consisted of 3 Egyptian men, 3 Russians, and myself. It seems that Pattaya is almost like a Russian town - every store has signs in Russian, travel agencies are focussed solely on Russians etc. When we read through the safety cards before we started, the two languages offered were English and Russian - our guides even spoken Russian! I asked one of the group why there were so many Russians in Pattaya and he said that when Russians travel, they go to one of three places: Turkey, Egypt, or Thailand.


For several hours, we 'flew'through the skies on the ziplines - 24 in total, with the longest at 300m. There were also several abseiling opportunities and suspension bridges. The guides at first were taking it easy with me since I was a girl, but they soon realised I was fearless and started sending me down the ropes faster and rocking them for some fun! One of the guides was a lot of fun, when we reached the end of the adventure he said to me,"Ï think you should let me keep your camera forever". "Why?" I asked "So I can continue to take more photos of you" he replied. (I think that was a Thai attempt at a pick-up line?)


We were back in Pattaya at about 7:30pm - I had a brief walk around the city before heading to bed like a kid at Christmas - tomorrow was Grand Final day!!