Day 23: (Almost) Halfway

Edit: It appears that despite two semesters of calculus, I am unable to do simple arithmetic.  23 is half of 46, not 56.  To be fair, though, my calculus class never covered basic arithmetic.

This morning, Greg and I woke up at 6am, checked out, and ate breakfast as we waited for Mark to arrive.  He lives in Bangkok and would be traveling to Pattaya with us.  When Mark didn’t show, Greg must have tried to call him ten times.  We even tried to find the number of his apartment building, so they could go wake him, but we had no luck.  Finally, we asked to be let back into our room so that we could go back to sleep while we waited for Mark to wake.  Finally, at about 8:30am, Greg got an email that Mark had finally been woken by his fiancée after he turned off his alarm hours ago.

When he arrived, we rushed off to the airport, where we rented a car to drive down to Pattaya.  Luckily, we got the car quickly, and once on the road, we moved quickly.  We made it to the hotel with ten minutes to spare, so Mark and Greg quickly checked in and left me to take the stuff to the room as they rushed off to their meeting, just making it.

Today being (almost) halfway through my trip, I relaxed for most of the afternoon.  I walked along the beachside for a ways, looking at the sea, islands, and everything going on in the city.  At that time, there actually were very few people out, both locals and tourists seemed to be avoiding the blazing hot sun.  The beach is rather interesting.  At high tide, it is extremely small, probably no more than ten yards wide, but at low tide it extends to more than fifty yards.  In fact, there are defined “swimming zones” where boats cannot go, and the buoys that mark these zones are completely beached at low tide.

The view from our hotel room.

Our hotel

Looking down the beach at low tide.

We may go to that island tomorrow.

After finding some lunch, I headed back to the hotel and jumped in the pool to cool off.  I relaxed and read by the pool for most of the afternoon, until Greg and Mark returned from their meeting.  When they returned, we went out to dinner at a nice bar/restaurant, where we shots a bunch of games of pool.  After shooting on the huge tables in Cambodia, this normal table seemed tiny, and the games went incredibly quickly.  I got some much needed practice, and actually managed to beat both Greg and Mark in a game.

Pool #1

Pool #2

Greg shooting pool

After dinner, we headed down to “Walking Street,” which is an absolutely crazy pedestrian street.  It is lined with bars and shows of all kinds.  There were girls dancing in some places, ladyboys wandering the streets, and tons of other crazy stuff.  One place had a boxing ring, where fighters or audience members would take to the stage either to fight or to do some other crazy thing.  As we passed, there was a Korean lady getting a giant snake placed on her shoulders.  We went up to several bars, where we played some of the bar games, which ranged from a basic luck dice game to Stonehenge Jenga.

Walking Street

One of many places on Walking Street.

Stonehenge Jenga

After several hours seeing tons of stuff on Walking Street, we finally headed back to the hotel, and went straight to bed.  All in all, it was a great (almost) halfway day!