Our first week in Pattaya is proving to be quite an eye-opener! Truly, I was not that excited to come to Thailand, primarily because of my overreaction in 2020 to the crowds and excessive pollution of Bangkok. But this town is chill! It has almost 100,000 people, yet traffic is quite manageable.

We recently went downtown at 0800, and had no problems with rush hour anything; there was none! Scooter riders are courteous, and they are not trying to outrun the lights, and with a series of one-way streets, everything flows nicely. Car drivers are very slow and cautious, but I’d rather that than some of the wildness we saw in Vietnam.

We’ve found several well-stocked, I mean really well-stocked grocery stores, with a good selection of local as well as Western products, along with a quasi-Walmart store (Lotus) which has just about everything. A few days ago I had two cases of nostalgia, as we found a Turkish restaurant with something I truly love–simits (very hard to find)—and in Turkey they are sold on almost every street corner, plus I caught my first flick in a while, Deadpool, which I rate 4.5 stars, but definitely for Marvel & superhero movie lovers.

Within a very short walk or ride are several nice restaurants, and we found our first night market, which consisted of several dozen kiosks of delicious food for very good prices. We’ll be here about 2 months, and so far I’m enjoying everything about Pattaya. The city has a bad rap in certain corners and I plan to write some stories to offset that with the GOOD around here. Even though it’s rainy season, we haven’t really seen any yet, just a threat, and maybe a few light sprinkles, which has been a pleasant surprise since the overcast skies keeps it cooler. Our resort is located outside town, and is very private, plus our scooter cost all of 80 some dollars for the month. But best of all are the people: they are kind, respectful and sweet, as we also found in Bali and Vietnam. But there is a factor here that we recognize could change things in the future.

There is more Russian spoken around us than we’ve ever heard, and more Cyrillic writing on signs. We were told that the wealthy Russians are buying a lot of property, presumably as a hedge against troubles in their own country. Is that a factor for US? Not sure yet.

I’ve made note of a few differences between Vietnam & Thailand:

> credit cards: Thailand seems to be more restrictive on minimum purchases, even at major stores and chains. It ranges between $6.00-9.00 USD which is a hassle because that requires us to use and carry more cash, which I avoid.

> left side driving vs right side driving: aside from the easier overall driving conditions, I find it more comfortable to drive on the LEFT side…this from a right side driver all my life. Left land driving seems to be more fluid on corners and turns where there is two-way traffic.

Along with this post are some pictures of a really cool 3D optical illusion museum we went to last week. We went to one in Mexico when we were stuck there, but this one was far better.