Beach Road Safari Park

Pattaya is heaving. The city is in the middle of a tourist boom and looks significantly different from this time a year ago. The bars are packed and the streets are overflowing with tourists, propped up by a healthy dose of US marines here for some R&R. A number of ships recently docked in the port just north of Pattaya and ever since a large number of rather stacked, thick-necked, buzz-cut Americans have been trawling the bars of Sin City. Driving back from the cinema at around 11pm last night, we spent a good half an hour crawling down Beach Road in horrendous traffic. The upshot of this was the best people-watching I think I have ever experienced! Men with huge bellies flopping out of the bottom of their brightly coloured floral shirts, men who looked like they hadn't had a proper meal in years, short men, tall men, men of all nationalities. They were all out last night.

To our right was the beach and the promenade that runs alongside it where, with the setting of the sun, the ladies of the night start to appear. By 11pm they lined the street. These are the freelancers, usually the ones who didn't make the cut at the bars and clubs but sometimes women that prefer to stand and wait for men to come to them rather than having to dance for their money. This makes for a real assortment of women - some struggling to keep their 'curves' in their short, tight dresses, some making sure they stay slightly in the shadows to hide their less than attractive faces, all mixed in with some girls who are rather more pleasing to the eye. Of course, there are also those 'women of the second kind' as the Thais like to call them. Amongst all these women, and in the darkness of the night, the ladyboys can often be difficult to distinguish from those with two X chromosomes, especially, I should imagine, after a few Singha beers.

Amongst the sad, desperate men, walking down the road clutching bottles of beer and ogling the women for sale, were ordinary tourists who wandered around open-mouthed, taking it all in, just as we had done when we first arrived. On several occasions we spotted Russian women who, from behind, looked just like one of the hookers on the promenade, dressed as they were in their short skirts, plunging necklines, and towering heels. How they managed to walk down the potholed pavement without falling over, I don't know. I expect there are a more than a few heel-related injuries in Pattaya each night.

By the time we reached the end of Beach Road, turning away from Walking Street, the destination of most of the walking traffic, I had seen more than enough - there are only so many beer bellies a person can take. It was time to leave the safari park.

Big Forehand? Big Ego

The club at which we play tennis is actually part of a hotel and therefore most people using the facilities are hotel guests. It's easy to spot the relatively few long-term members - they're the ones you see week after week at the gym, the pool and on the courts. There is one member in particular who stands out, which I am sure is precisely his intention. Big Frank. Outside the club's reception there is a white board on which there is a space for you to write your name and phone number if you want to be available to be contacted to play tennis with another member. There is also a space for you to write a comment. Presumably the idea of this was that people could write down which days they are and aren't available. Big Frank, however, took this as an opportunity to show off, as we have since learnt he does whenever he can. He wrote 'big forehand'. When we first saw that, without having met him, we knew he was a prat. Since having the honour of seeing him action on several occasions, I'm surprised 'big forehand' was all he boasted about.

Big Frank likes to play tennis bare-chested, which I find highly inappropriate. We are not playing beach tennis - some sort of decorum should be upheld. At first I thought that, although still inexcusable, perhaps he was merely hot. But no, I recently saw him remove his shirt as soon as he arrived, before flexing his guns a few times. He is also in the habit of dropping to the ground in between points and doing push-ups, as well as calling out 'come on, give it to me' whilst playing. The Husband once shared the changing room with him and witnessed him shaving his chest in the sink. Apparently he also likes to wander around the changing room completely naked, seemingly encouraging other men to look at his package. You will perhaps be surprised to know that he is not American but completely unsurprised to find that he is French.

Anyone For Tennis?

I have been to a few professional tennis tournaments around the world but have never been to one quite like the Pattaya Open. It was truly an 'only in Pattaya' kind of a day. As a WTA event, it's on the women's tour, earning the players points and a nice bit of prize money, so we assumed the organisation would be slick and efficient. Of course, we forgot that we were in Pattaya, which runs to its own beat. I had booked tickets online which had been posted to me a week before the event, so we went straight to the court, bypassing the crowd at the ticket desk, and handed our tickets to the usher. Usefully for an international event with spectators of all nationalities, he spoke absolutely no English but we gathered from the grunt and finger pointing back towards the ticket desk that there was something wrong. Slightly irritated now, we navigated our way through the throng of people making their way to the court and stood, like the polite English people we are, at the back of the crowd. There was no form of queue whatsoever and it became increasingly obvious that if we were going to get our tickets sorted out before the match started we were going to have to take a slightly more forceful approach. This is where being taller than pretty much all of the Thais helps considerably. I waved the tickets over their heads and grabbed the attention of the rather fraught looking man behind the desk. He took my tickets, looked at them and aged another few years. Not a good sign.

Five minutes later, our tickets were handed back to me but with different seat numbers written on them in pen. "I upgrade you," I was told. It would seem that our seats had been given to someone else, and, judging by the baying crowd surrounding the desk, we weren't the only ones. Not a good start, but if our seats had been upgraded who was I to complain? Upon reaching our seats, I realised that our 'upgrade' consisted of being a mere one row in front of our original seats. We had also been given seats 30, 31, 32 and 34. Our upgrade was soon turning into a downgrade. Luckily, the man who held the ticket for seat 33 was on his own so happily sat in seat 34.

It soon became clear, as the match got under way, that many people had been given the wrong seats as latecomers hurried to their seats at the change of ends to find someone else in them. Cue mass confusion and more than a few arguments. Given that there was only one point of access to the stand, people were then left standing with nowhere even to perch as the match resumed, which was very off-putting for the players and annoying for the rest of us as we had to crane our necks to see the tennis! A large percentage of those with seat issues were Russian which made a bad situation even worse as they continued to argue when the players were back on court. The poor umpire really had her work cut out for her trying to control the spectators as the security team did absolutely nothing!

We seemed to be sat in Camp Russia. We were surrounded by them, many with Russian flags and all with bellowing voices. The final was between Vera Zvonareva of Russia and Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand and since Pattaya is basically made up of Russians and Thais, there was fierce competition both on and off the court. The Russians cheered and chanted every time Vera won a point, drowning out the poor Thais. One particular incredibly annoying child (whose parents seemed to have disowned him and had sat somewhere else) would chant and cheer after every single point. Tamarine had her own supporters however, notably in the form of a bunch of Thais dressed in national costume, one man wearing a dress, with huge Thai flags, oversized racquets and even musical instruments. It felt at times as though we were at a football match rather than a tennis match, especially when several fat Russians behind us (one sporting a 'Good Guys Go To Heaven, Bad Guys Go To Pattaya' t-shirt) started to shout 'Out!' in the middle of any points in which they felt Vera had been unfairly treated by the linespeople. Not quite the done thing. It did, however, make for rather a carnival atmosphere around the court, not something I've ever felt at Wimbledon!

To be fair, the linespeople were making some rather bad calls. Not only that but they took a distinctively Thai approach, only calling several seconds after the ball had landed. Apparently, there was no rush. The ballkids, too, were extremely relaxed, sauntering over to pick balls up, and sometimes not picking them up at all. The players had to point to a ball on the court on more than one occasion!

Eventually, we just relaxed into it too. There was no point getting frustrated at people having loud conversations mid-point, or answering their mobile phones, as it seemed to just be accepted. This is Thailand and they were doing things in their own unique way!

Is She or Isn't She?

It proudly billed itself as 'The original transvestite cabaret show', so how could we not go? I've been told that not going to Tiffany's when in Pattaya is like going to Paris and not visiting the Eiffel Tower. I'm not sure they're quite the same thing but I certainly didn't want to miss out on an entire evening of marvelling at how a man could look so much like a woman. And besides, Thailand is famous for it ladyboys. On the whole, Thai society is far less disparaging towards transvestites and transsexuals than the West, with the result that many live openly, and proudly, as such. There are a great number in Pattaya, and it's often hard to tell them apart from genuine women. The majority of them are slim with smooth skin and glossy hair but they are peacocks - they love showing off and flaunt their femininity in everything they do, from the way they dress to their effeminate mannerisms. So, that beautiful girl sashaying down the pavement, swinging her hips from side to side and grinning and winking at every man she passes, is probably a transvestite, or kathoey.

When you consider all this, Tiffany's really is a must-see for any visitor to Pattaya, which is something the city's tourist board has obviously milked for all its worth considering the sheer number of coaches in the car-park, disgorging its passengers like products on a factory belt. Most of the coaches also managed to turn up late, meaning that the first ten minutes of the show was spent getting up to let people pass down the row and craning our necks to see the stage between the bodies of late-comers sauntering in with their brightly coloured, e-number packed sodas. The theatre is a gaudy looking building, designed to resemble a palace (but one which was built on a tight budget), complete with white columns and lit up like a Christmas tree - I'm sure the Russians love it. The show itself was pretty ordinary -the dancing was amateurish and it was all mimed, however the costumes and set design were rather spectacular, as were the ladyboys themselves. Some were really quite beautiful. And I suppose that is the point of such a show - it's a spectacle and everything was purposefully over-the-top. You don't go to a transvestite cabaret show to watch world-class dancing and singing after all.

Whistles at the Ready

Thailand is awash with what must be one of the most pointless job roles in the world - the parking attendant. Usually dressed in the uniform of a guard, complete with cap, the parking attendant can be found in almost any car park in Thailand. They will be heard before they are seen - the high pitched toot of a whistle blown over and over again signals their presence. Parking attendants seem, in fact, to be surgically attached to their whistles, like a child with a beloved toy. The whistles rarely leave their mouths, blown without abandon, whether the situation necessitates it or not. I can just envisage the scene at Parking Attendant School: a classroom of men, whistles at the ready, waiting for the teacher to mimic a car approaching them. All at once, every single man in the room (for it seems to be a job only men are allowed to do, I am as yet to witness a female parking attendant. Perhaps we don't have the lung capacity) blows for all his worth. End of lesson, certificate given to all.

Often, the role of the parking attendant isn't even to assist in directing you into a space, they merely stand at a bend in the road in the car park, helpfully pointing you around said bend. Just in case that bend completely confused you, causing you to crash in a mad panic. Then again, I suppose that isn't an entirely ridiculous scenario. This is, after all, a country where the right cash in the right pocket will earn you a driving license. You only have to witness the terrible driving on the road here to appreciate that perhaps, for some, the shrill sound of a whistle is music to the ears.

Playing Chicken

There is a flock of chickens living on a patch of undeveloped land next to our flats. A man comes by on his moped a few times a day and feeds them, occasionally separating them into little groups under big woven baskets. I'm still not sure why. They are the skinniest chickens I have ever seen. They are certainly fed enough so it must be because they're Thai chickens. Just as Thai people are smaller are slighter than those in the west, Thai chickens have different physiques to their counterparts in colder north-western countries. It makes sense I suppose - an excess of feathers in this heat and humidity would be rather uncomfortable I should imagine.

They actually live in a coop across the narrow street from the patch of land they run around on and we occasionally have to wait in the car for them to run across. This can take a while as they tend to panic - some run straight across on their skinny little legs, some turn and run back the way they came from, and some simply run around in circles. Like headless chickens in fact. But with their heads intact on their scrawny little necks.

There is a cockerel living amongst the chickens who seems to have a problem telling the time. He crows, as expected, early in the morning, but then continues to crow in erratic bursts throughout the day. Perhaps he just has lots of naps. He is a Thai cockerel after all.

Look At Me, Look At Me!

We were driving home from a restaurant built into the rocks, overlooking the sea, after a quiet dinner with friends, when we heard it. The most bone-jarring music, the kind you feel before you hear, thumping out of a line of cars. These weren't ordinary cars however, they were 'I have a very small package and therefore need to compensate by pimping up my car' kind of cars. You know the sort - huge sound system with woofers and sub-woofers installed so that the whole car moves when the music, which seems to be programmed to only play at such a volume that you'd be able to hear it a mile away. Neon lights lighting up the car like a Christmas tree. The car so low on the ground you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a Flintstone car, waiting for the driver to put his feet down, pick it up and run with it. There were a row of probably about ten of these poser-mobiles parked up near the pier, most with their doors wide open, presumably in case you had a severe hearing problem and couldn't hear the deafening music. It was so kind of them for sharing their noise with us. It made our night.