I notice this morning that somebody has hung a sign on my door during the night which reads "Please no molest". Always nice to know the management has my best interests at heart... I'm already quite at home in this hotel. To get to reception from the street, you have to walk along a private driveway which makes me feel like royalty. After experiencing the dilapidated condition of the streets beyond the hotel, it's like stepping into another world: the trees play lift music at you from hidden speakers, and at any moment you expect a little man to appear from nowhere shouting "Da Plane, Boss, Da Plane..." and for Ricardo Montalban to emerge from the trees to fulfil your every dream. But I digress. I'm staying on the 5th floor. On the 4th floor, rather puzzlingly, is the lobby, and then on the lower levels we have the two Olympic swimming pools, fitness centre, two private beaches, Shopping Mall, five restaurants, Thai Massage Suite with ten private rooms, Conference facilities, Ballrooms, Banqueting Hall, two full size indoor squash courts, three tennis courts, and a partridge in a pear tree. I awoke this morning to the sight of the sun rising over the sea outside my balcony, and wondered briefly where Thailand had been all my life. After a while, I dragged myself out of bed and headed once more for the beach road, where I ended up at 10.00 this morning sitting in a shop with the quaint and not altogether authentic local name of Mister Donut. Cup of coffee and box of Donuts packed away, I felt like I could finally face the day - So I headed over to the travel shop to book a day trip tomorrow to the beautiful nearby island of Koh Samet, which my trusty guidebook of Thailand promises me will be a trip I will not forget. I've also extended my stay here until I leave for Phuket in five days time, courtesy of American Express, so I can kick back and relax for a while without having to worry about returning to dreary Bangkok on Saturday! A typical day here in Pattaya goes something like this: "Oh what a pleasant day, think I'll go for a stroll... My, it's a bit hot out here, probably should've worn a hat... Where did that mirage come from?... My legs appear to have stopped functioning... Please call me an ambulance for these third degree burns!"
Around mid-day, the sun decides that it's about time it made an appearance, and it suddenly goes from being hot but tolerable in the morning to being like Death Valley on a bad day. Still, nobody tells muggins here this, do they?
So, like mad dogs and Englishmen, I went out to find somewhere to get my first roll of film developed and to buy some more for Koh Samet. I should have suspected what was coming from the fact that even the dogs were laying in the street, tongues hanging out, lapping hopefully at puddles and barking "Kill me now" as I passed. I'm not going out in the mid-day sun again without a ten gallon tank of water strapped to my back, I can tell you - And I have the third degree burns to prove it. Much to my surprise, the shop said that my film would be back in two hours. This impressed me - Back home, the current situation is that if you take a roll of APS film to be developed in a small local chemist, the shopkeeper looks at you as if you have just told him that you intend to make love to his daughter and does he know the fastest route to the local Ann Summers store, and then he has to consult with somebody else on the phone to decide how much to charge. Then he informs you that they don't know what APS is and that developing my film will involve sending the film to Thailand for processing where they can do it in two hours(1). So, what are my impressions of Thailand after the first week? Well, apart from Bangkok with its all-enveloping smell of Sulphur from the drains, I could spend a lot longer here. The only mild irritation is all the street vendors trying to sell me stuff I don't want wherever I go - And if one more beautiful nymph grabs me by the arm on the street and says "I come with you now - We go Focky-Focky", I think I shall scream. And there's something you don't hear me say every day. (1) Obviously, since writing this journal we've gone from APS to Digital photography so this situation has not only got better but the whole concept of taking film to a shop to develop is becoming pretty much obsolete. This also explains the lower quality of photographs on this trip than on my later travels, as all film taken here had to be developed and then scanned and converted to digital later.