The strays of Pattaya

Sitting in some shade waiting for our Uber the stray dog wanders over. She’s cute, the right size, medium and apparently friendly. Her fur is shades of brown and white with floppy ears. I put my hand out and she dutifully licks it. In my other hand is the ice cream cone we’d bought from the stand. Of course it’s hot,  it’s Thailand in July. We had spent an hour at the Giant Buddah that sits in the hills above the city and affords expansive views of the sprawling city and bay of Pattaya .  It’s breezy up here thankfully as it’s another humid afternoon , I say afternoon but it’s humid at 7 am.  I share the remainder of my ice cream with the stray who licks the ice cream out of the cone first then crunches away. Our Uber arrives and we head back down through the city and to our hotel. 

Sadly this is not a normal vacation,  though I’m enjoying my first time experience in Thailand. Its people seem as warm as the climate but my brother is in the final stages of cancer, turns out the final week, and we return to the hotel to check on him and his partner and caregiver at his condo. He lives in a delightful complex with pools and gardens full of palm’s and colorful foliage and the hotel adjoins the complex and shares the facilities. His cool shady patio is covered with  plants in pots  and multiple chairs and a table. As an artist this is my brothers favorite place to paint. With the tropical foliage and heat and in his vibrant colorful loose brushwork paintings of locals there are shades of Gauguin.

In the warm evening we walk across the gardens  to see him.  He is sleepy. He has incurable late stage colon cancer and the hospital declined further treatment except palliative care. He signed himself out and returned to his condo a month ago but he has become weaker almost daily. His partner is a natural caregiver fortunately. When we arrived last week he greeted us warmly and told me I’m not as good looking as my brother. I’ve always known this.  He hugs my wife and admires my son’s height at 6’2”.  We are asked to come back for dinner the next day.

The meal is delicious ; Thai food by a natural cook.  Colorful and flavorful. I talk with my brother who can’t leave the bed let alone his bedroom while my wife makes stilted conversation with our host whose English is self taught and better than I had anticipated. I realize it’s easier for him to text as we have been doing over the past weeks  than actually speaking . My son enjoys second helpings of the Tom Yum. I tell my brother Nick what we have been doing today, he knows all the sites and streets we’ve walked on.   He likes my upbeat commentary on events of the day. The vibrant city that he loves is still out there.   He is weak though he still has his wit and his memory is still good. But he eats little. He wants to sleep but has trouble with it. He awakes throughout the night,  he tells my wife , and doesn’t really know what’s reality and what’s not in the dark warmth of the night.  

We leave to come back in the morning. The pool is inviting but they close it at 8 pm , why so early?  We find a BBC channel in our room and I go out to the local market to get some beer for our fridge. It’s still warm but a light breeze cones off the sea a few blocks away and rustles the palms.  The AC is very effective  in our room for an older unit, and the room is large with cool tiled flooring and twin king size beds.  I should say rooms. It’s so affordable we take two rooms and enjoy the space. 

The main beach in Pattaya is lined with bars across the busy street facing the water. Happy hours are competitive. The bars are semi deserted in the late afternoon  and don’t really get busy till after sunset. Pattaya is a night town. The beach is wide and miles long with water rentals lining the broad sidewalk . The beach is mostly empty too. It’s low season and the Europeans and Russians ( are they still slowed to leave? ) have not arrived in serious numbers yet. I’m reliably told they will after November . 

“Walking Street”  starts where the beach ends though many of the bars overlook the water and smaller patches of sand. It’s a mix of  casual restaurants , fashion shops and plenty of bars many with dancing. With the neon lights reflecting on the night water  it’s a colorful vibrant atmosphere with thumping club music and some pretty good cover bands competing for your attention. There’s no lines to get in ,  no dress codes. There’s drinking age is 19 and I’m told ID ‘s are checked. The girls outside the bars are quieter than their counterparts on Soi 6. Most hold up pictured menus of food or drink specials.  

Heavy drops of rain fall and the street clears in a few seconds, everyone knows what’s about to transpire. The warm rain crashes down and we run too , under a shop fronts canopy and stand with others for at least 15 minutes, my wife films a few minutes of it. It’s symphonic , the heavy rain overflowing gutters and canopies and bouncing off the now empty sidewalks and puddled street. After a few more minutes groups of locals walk by, two to a large umbrella,  prepared for the sudden dramatic but brief downpours.

At the top of Walking Street  there are a few empty Tuk-tuks with drivers smoking and chatting to each other in groups. These are open sided pick ups with benches and railings and canvas tops . We show a driver our hotel address on the phone and the driver punches address into his gps and quotes us a rate which seems reasonable , and he says he won’t stop for others. Only us. The ride is the best way to see the city especially at night: it’s breezy and the sights and sounds of Pattaya after dark are enthralling. The next day we buy an umbrella as insurance. Then maybe it won’t rain again, though in truth we like it and hope it will. 

The sea is amazingly warm, my son and I walk in slowly in the early morning and we lay on our backs. No waves and it’s easy to just float around. The morning is overcast and muggy. We are at a smaller beach within a few minutes walk of our hotel. At the end of the beach  it’s shady with large smooth rocks to sit on , a very pretty area . Under the acacia trees are food vendors grilling fresh fish and vegetables in hot sauce and serving iced cold beer.  Local Thai’s sit in groups in the shade and enjoy breakfast with cold beers. What a great way to start a Monday. I laugh to myself thinking of the comparison with rushed commuting to the office in traffic back in California.  

We walk back from a newly found dinner spot and stop at the ubiquitous 7-11 store for hotel fridge supplies. We are getting plenty of exercise wandering the local back streets. There is a mound of sand left by builders I assume and atop is a stray dog enjoying his perch. We buy him a sausage inside and break it in two for him. He sniffs it and doesn’t eat it. We can’t be the only ones who offer him 7-11 snacks. He does look  pretty well fed. The next day we pass by and no dog, but there is still one half of the sausage, we joke clearly he wasn’t impressed. 

We visit with my brother after breakfast:  before exploring Pattaya again and finding a lunch spot. Later my brother’s partner drives us around  and points out a huge modern shopping center on multiple themed levels , that we visit later in the week, and then asks if we’d like to see the infamous Soi 6  near the main beach. . We drive down  the relatively short sloped street that ends on the main beach road  it’s daytime but it will be closed to traffic soon. The street is filled with girls dressed alike calling out to , mostly, Euro males who walk between the bars.  The street is literally just bars,  it’s ground zero for the sex tourism industry Thailand is known for though it’s by no means exclusive to here, but it’s certainly in the open and tolerated. I’m not going to judge , though  I’m not going to participate either.  Driving back to the hotel we pass massage parlors with bored looking girls and some guys sitting outside . There are dozens of them,  I count 8 parlors on one street.

Another evening we walk one of the cities night markets. We buy a few gifts for friends and family back home and some clothing for ourselves. It’s humid even late from the earlier rain. My wife trips on a loose rope and  falls . Her knee is scraped and bleeds but she’s a trooper about it and we clean it with wet napkins from a friendly market stall. We find another tuck-tuk to take us back to the hotel. More hair raising and likely more fun would be to take the 3 person sidecars attached to a small motorbike taxi. But I’m not brave enough. 

The next day I walk to local market for a few supplies with my son, A friendly looking stray dog pads along behind us as we walk back through the side streets to the hotel. He gives up when he correctly surmises that we don’t have anything edible. Perhaps he thinks we are strays here too. 

We eat at a well known British pub which serves Thai food as well as Brit staples, and has excellent reviews on its diverse menu. My son is now eating Thai curry for  two meals a day , one day it’s three. 

We swim again at our local beach in the evening it’s much busier than the morning. We listen to German, Italian ,  and Slavic voices. Mostly younger families. They sit in the shade on a wall at the back of the beach or the steps leading up to the gardens of the hotels that  back up to the beach.   The water must be 80 something degrees. We swim up to the platform floating off the beach and debate jumping off. In the distance darker clouds form and  it will rain tonight.

My brother passes the next day. The final days are taken up with the depressing but necessary post death formalities. Including contacting the British Embassy as Nick like me is a British citizen.   I’m grateful for the time I had with him here. I’m glad I came. I know why he loved living here now. 

We flew out : Ana Air from SFO to Bangkok VIA Tokiyo

We flew back : United Airlines from Bangkok to SFO VIA Hongkong 

We stayed at;  Wongamat Private Residences and Hotel, Pattaya

We visited:  Beach St markets and restaurants, Terminal Shipping Center, Central Pattaya Shopping Center, Jontien Night Market, Walking Street, Soi 6, The Giant Golden Buddha, and various local street markets and cafes near hotel ( always the most affordable)

Pattaya is more international than I’d anticipated, and more cosmopolitan,: the malls were better than the US equivalent. The public bathrooms everywhere were immaculate ( I almost took pics) . Restaurants included Italian ,Chinese . Japanese , German , Russian , French, Vietnamese, British and American and that’s just what I observed. 

#Thailand    #Pattaya