Pattaya Thailand

We tried our first attempt at meeting Fred on a business trip.  He was going to be Pattaya Thailand for the weekend without much to do.  He had been there before and said the hotel he stays at is really beautiful.  We decided to give it a try and come visit him.

Being rookie travelers we hadn't thought through some thing fully.  I bought tickets to Bangkok and then we would be taking a car service the 1 1/2 hour drive to the beach resort.  I hadn't realized there were actually 2 airports in Bangkok and I had picked to fly into the airport that was an additional 30 minutes further from Pattaya.  So our car trip would be almost as long as our flight.

Mistake number two- we opted to fly up on Sat AM and then drive over to a beach resort Sat afternoon during the hottest time of the year (hello beach traffic).  That 2 hour drive ended up being 3 3/4 hours long- Longer than the flight to Bangkok.  So we arrived frustrated but that beautiful hotel and pool soaked away the stress of the day.

We had a wonderful buffet dinner at the hotel afterwards and all the pain of getting here was forgotten.  

The next morning we had planned to drag the girls to see a golden budda in Thailand- there are tons everywhere there.  However, it was going to be the hottest day of the year so we thought sweating to see a gold statue and take a few photos might cause a rebellion and I would never be able to drag the girls to see anything different again.  We know we will have an opportunity to get back to Thailand so the budda would wait and we decided to do what every almost 13year old girl wants to do- go shopping.  We ended up at a really nice, cool mall that had over 300 stores!  Turns out we have one child that loves to shop and one not so much, so Fred and Katie decided to take in a movie while Jen and I continued to plow through the stores.  We got some really great bargains!!!  

Post shopping we had a hot pot meal, basically asian fondue.  With full bellies we (st)rolled home and relaxed the night away.  

If one shopping outing wasn't enough, we had a small mall attached to our hotel that had two must sees. There was an Auntie Ann's Pretzel stand and a Dairy Queen.  We don't have either of these in Singapore so we HAD to stop by.  Just to make you all crazy with envy of how cheap things are in Thailand- $1.00 pretzels and $.65 double dip cones!

Singapore is so expensive these great deals make traveling totally worth it!

By the way, we did end up seeing the beach, but preferred the pool for swimming.

Not sure if we will actually be back here- that car ride after the flight was really tough, but now that we know what mistakes not to make, if the right opportunity comes up we might just have to come here again and see the golden budda in Pattaya.