Tuesday, October 12

Our last two days in Pattaya were pretty typical of this vacation for us…in the morning, we had breakfast at the hotel, then I went swimming in the ocean while Roman played guitar under one of the umbrellas set up on the beach. 

I also collected some cool shells…

And took my time getting into the water...

And did crossword puzzles...

Roman also bought us some heart-shaped marshmallows from a little girl selling them on the beach...

For lunch one day, we got some brilliantly orange steamed prawns from a passing vendor, which came with a spicy chili lime sauce. As we were talking to the seafood vendor, another vendor quickly appeared at our side with more offerings, and we bought some sticky rice from her, to eat with our shrimp.

We also wandered Pattaya, eating pineapple on the beach, and checking out cool trees...

View of the tree from below

View of the tree from the front (and me, well-swathed)

In the afternoons, we hung out in our room, used the hotel sauna, and played around in the hotel pool…

I found Roman in the pool, creating a message...

And I tried to look like a fancy bitch in our opulent hotel lobby...

For dinner on Monday, we took two songthaews to get to the Naklua Fish Market, and then walked another ten minutes to Mum Aroi, a restaurant I’d read serves some of the best seafood in Pattaya. On the way there, we passed cool murals, street food carts, lots of street dogs, seafood restaurants, and a small harbor.

Seafood restaurant right on the water

The restaurant was huge, with giant tanks (well, more like giant cement tubs) filled with fresh seafood outside. It was so vast and white from the outside—and the lobster prices posted on the tanks were so high—that I was afraid it would feel intimidatingly fancy on the inside, but that wasn’t the vibe at all. It was one giant, open-air restaurant built right on the water, and the tables were full of families—everyone else seemed to be Thai—enjoying big plates of steaming seafood. It felt festive and celebratory, but not at all formal.

For dinner, we ordered clams with butter and garlic…

A mixed seafood spicy salad…

And prawns fried with garlic…

And oh my god, it was so good. The clams were satisfying, but nothing too out of the ordinary, but everything else! The seafood salad was a mix of unusual, fresh, and beautifully prepared ingredients—scallops, shrimp, squid, crab, different types of fish roe, and greens (maybe seabeans?), all tossed in a spicy, limey Thai dressing.

And the prawns! They were so fresh and so good. The garlic! The shrimp heads! It was kind of a transporting meal—for a while, we didn't really talk—we were too absorbed in the experience.

We had said we might take a taxi back home, but we ended up walking back through the neighborhood, still giddy from dinner (and kind of in need of the exercise). We passed the same seafood restaurant on the way back, now luminous in the dark.

And then we got on the first of two songthaews that took us home.

On Tuesday evening, we returned to our favorite pizza spot for dinner...

Still working on that Influencer face...

And then we spent the rest of the evening wandering the back streets of Pattaya, checking out cheap clothing stalls, sipping on fresh coconut water, and watching foreign men cozy up to younger Thai women—maybe the most common sight there is on a Pattaya evening.

And I crouched in terror at the sight of this ferocious beast...

We ended our night by sitting on the beach, eating fresh doughnuts and looking out at the green lights of the squid boats on the horizon.

I am sad to be leaving Pattaya. It is, of course, so relaxing to be on a beach vacation. I love staying in a nice hotel—I love having our room cleaned every single day, sitting on the balcony with a cold soda, and swimming in our pretty tiled mermaid pool. And I love a beach town—I love that you can walk right along the ocean, that the air is fresh and there’s little traffic (at least, during pandemic times), and that there is amazing and inexpensive fresh fruit and seafood everywhere. And I love not having to work—not having to lesson plan, or struggle with Zoom, or have any obligations to worry about. It is easy to be in a good mood, and to not have an anxiety when life is like this.

Haha, OK, did I just summarize why vacations are nice?

I am also a little anxious to start going into school on Monday, since I don’t really know what that’s going to entail, and I’m not terribly comfortable with uncertainty in general. And the kids are supposed to come back November 1, and so I'm also nervous about that very new upcoming experience.

But. None of that is here yet. I am going to try and maintain some of my vacation vibes with me when I get back. My life in Bangkok isn’t hard, but any routine can sometimes feel like a grind—the teaching schedule, the technical glitches of teaching online, the Bangkok traffic and pollution. I feel like this is a cliché, but the break from my routine does give me a chance to appreciate things in a different way, and I want to try and retain a little more of that feeling back in Bangkok.

Rainy morning on our hotel patio in Pattaya