Pattaya, Thailand: coming to terms with it all - Travel Writing from Travel Insights

Seeking Nirvana

Pattaya, Thailand
by Simon Dean
IT'S 8.30am, it's Monday - I am pretty sure it is Monday - and I'm lying in a foetal position underneath some plastic chairs in Bangkok airport. Pattaya is 140km southeast of Bangkok

My sense of well being is not helped by my brutal hangover nor by a minor head injury sustained during a three hour minibus ride with my head wedged against a curtain hook. I have been up since 4.15am having had one hour's sleep, and a 13-hour flight looms in front of me. Trying to piece together the previous night, I can recall only disturbing opaque images of flaming, primary-coloured whiskys that tasted like gelatinous petrol; many, many embarrassing games of pool, and a best-of-30 series of the popular children's game Connect 4. Beyond that lie some troubling, deeply ambivalent feelings about the whole affair.

This wasn't necessarily what I'd had in mind for a trip to Thailand: a short-stay, last-minute, internet deal for which there had not even been enough time to get the jabs. I more had in mind a whirlwind sightseeing tour of Bangkok's cultural highpoints combined with a few sedate days of winter sun, reading and reflection on the beaches of Pattaya. Ahhh, perfect.

I should make something very clear. This is not about travel. Travel is barters and bargains, 12-hour journeys on cramped provincial buses battling the symptoms of Mwengie fever with cheap brandy and pants stuffed with toilet paper. It is about terse but ultimately redeeming encounters with sellers of boiled crab in small fishing villages. It has something to do with the smell of Authenticity. No, this is categorically about tourism. I'm expecting vouchers and pamphlets, maybe 12 hours of a dodgy tummy after a bad clam on the Island Cruise excursion. I'm expecting polite and ultimately unredeeming encounters with Judy and Keith in the breakfast buffet bar. I am expecting the smell of a slightly blocked toilet that a hotel odd-job man will come and fix. If he is efficient, I will probably tip a few baht into his hand with a beatific smile, which tries to say that although yes, he is in a service role I consider us to be in no way unequal.

Fatal Attraction

Mwengie fever is contracted from the flies that dwell in the snout of the Phut-Tiem Wading Pig. Or something. The "Infectious Disease" section of any Thailand guide book runs to about 90 pages, and outlines in vivid medical detail the risks you run from a variety of mites that can cause, among other things, fatigue, nausea, fainting, vomiting, blindness, hallucination, paralysis, heart failure, lung collapse, internal bleeding and bursting hips which release a fluid that is toxic to kittens. Against this I have a fluorescent bum bag style pouch, marked with the words FIRST AID! in urgent purple capitals, containing one pack of aspirin, five "soothing" wipes and a pair of nail scissors. I could actually hear the germs laughing at me.

I'm actually looking forward to my first package tourist experience. Looking forward to escaping the one-upmanship that tends to accompany independent travel; where no matter where you've been, there is always an Australian in the next bunk who did it five years earlier when it was cheaper, life-threateningly harder to get to, and way, way more genuine. After all, although Thailand is pretty much the centre of the backpacker universe, "The Beach" that I intend to find is going to feature an Irish pub selling Guinness with umbrellas in it. To paraphrase singer songwriter Helen Reddy, "I am tourist, hear me roar". Grrr.

Being an impetuous web-idiot, I did practically no research before booking the thing. It was cheap and the photos looked nice, and that basically was good enough to part me and my credit card number. So, it was only later that I discovered that Pattaya (leading industries: water sports and sex tourism) might not be the type of place that a northern-European gallery visitor such as myself would normally choose to relax in.

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