I had posted on 21st July 2011 that I’ll be starting this travelogue just after this trip is completed in the last week of August.
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/route-...bangalore.html
Because of my work at office and sometimes because of my laziness, I’m able to write it now. Here it goes…
Prelude:
After our Leh plan got cancelled for this year, I hadn’t been to any trips for 3 months.
My wedding anniversary was fast approaching…my wife and I wanted to plan a vacation.
This time we thought if one more couple can come along with us, it would be more enjoyable.
My friend also wanted to take his wife for a trip as a birthday gift for her.
So we decided that we will go for a long drive along the coastline of Kerala.
I started planning and also started a route query thread on TBHP as in the above link.
After all the suggestions I got from bhpians we were ready with the route.
One Saturday in July, we four sat together to make the hotel bookings.
We called up the shortlisted hotels and noted down the availability and the prices.
The lodging cost came up to 37k per couple for 6 nights (thanks to the Rainforest resort in Athirapally which was 10k per night).
The rainforest was the choice (read order) of my wife and I had no option
The fuel cost would come to approximately 7k per couple mine being a petrol car.
On makemytrip.com home page, my friend’s eye caught an ad showing Thailand trip for 21k per person
He showed it to me and we then showed it to both the ladies. Their eyes were gleaming already
After that we enquired in makemytrip and two more travel agents who had arranged some of our previous trips.
After calling the makemytrip executive, what we realized was that the 21k was ex-Kolkata price and ex-Bangalore price will be 32k per person (both excluding visa).
And it was a group tour with the dates fixed.
For the same Itinerary, one of our travel agents gave us a rate of 30k per person including visa.
This was a customized tour for we four and dates were flexible to our needs.
Although Thailand issues on-arrival visa, we didn’t want to waste time at the airport for the same.
So we decided to get it done before our journey. So the 4nights-5day package was finalized.
Thailand, here we come…
Our luggage before check-in
The twin-V of a Harley at the BIAL
Scale model of the HD
The disc
I can keep looking at it...
Day1: 27 Aug 2011 00:30 hrs
“Thai airways flight TG326 is ready for takeoff. The journey will take approximately 3:30 mins…”
As the captain announced these words, I could see the happiness on my wife’s face, this being her maiden flight out of the country.
Of the four of us, only I had boarded an international flight before this.
We landed at Bangkok Suvarnabhoomi airport at around 5:45am Thai time.
As soon as we landed there, we headed to the meeting point as instructed by our travel agent.
Enroute we met Kannada film star Shiva Rajkumar.
We had a small chat and a snap with him and reached the meeting point.
A designated person was holding a placard with our name on it and received us.
We were immediately transferred to a Toyota UV which would take us to Pattaya.
By the time we walked to the vehicle which was parked at a fair distance, I had already seen 250 toyota vehicles.
By the time we reached Pattaya which is around 300kms in 3 hrs. I had understood the true meaning of the word DOMINATION.
Roughly 7/10 cars were Toyotas with 2/10 being Hondas.
I realized that the Maruti Suzuki domination in India is nothing.
We reached the hotel (Golden beach hotel Pattaya) around 10am.
Our hotel in Pattaya
Double Decker tourist buses...the bottom deck of this bus was used as a home by the bus driver's family
The hotel was bang in the city centre which later helped us a lot.
The check-in time in Pattaya is usually 2PM so we were told to wait.
We tried to convince him to give the room earlier, but no luck.
After some time, our travel agent came in search of us.
She explained our day’s program which was a choice between a visit to a village called Nong Nooch and a tiger zoo.
We left the decision to our wives and they opted for the tiger zoo.
We told our travel agent that we will not be getting the rooms till 2PM to which she told us not to worry.
She went to the reception and spoke some alien language
and finally we were given the keys to our rooms.
We got fresh and went out for a stroll to have our lunch at McDonald’s close to our hotel.
The jet ski...
On the way we also bought a Guava. They were the biggest of Guavas I had ever seen.
Look at the size...
The vehicle to take us to the zoo came on time and in 45mins of time, we were at the zoo.
Sriracha Tiger Zoo
The taxi driver bought the tickets for us and told that he would be waiting outside by 4:30PM and he left.
The main attractions of the tiger zoo were an Elephant show, A crocodile show and a tiger show
The elephant show: this was a nice show with elephants of different ages performed many tricks and was a nice 30mins.
In this show, I got the meaning of the word domination in a different sense.
50% of the people there were tourists from India. India is truly shining.
Some pictures…
Rope Walk
That cute lady was lucky...
Target Practice...
"Look ma, No hands"...
Cha cha cha...
We are twins
Then we headed to the Crocodile show, the one which I had seen on discovery channel and also I had seen a mishap video from the same show. I was looking forward to this.
I must say that my mouth was open in awe throughout the 30 min show.
The boy and girl were playing with these dangerous creatures like they were toys.
Check out these pictures to get an idea of what I’m talking about…
"Can you please come this side?"
"Say hello to the viewers"
"Hello...anybody there?"
"what have you got in there?"
"Let me see if you have teeth"...
The bed is so soft...
The first kiss...
Good night...
Sweet dreams...
I thought that we were in the tiger zoo to see tigers…at last time had come for it…a Tiger show.
Even here, a boy and a girl were playing with tigers like we do with our domestic cats.
It was a nice show and it brought back my childhood memories of Jumbo circus at Mysore during Dasara
Hello everybody...
Long jump...
Ring of fire...
"Lucky we are outside the tiger cage"
We were then taken to a place where we could feed baby tigers.
It was very nice to hold a baby tiger in your hands, but I felt sorry that the cubs were kept starving so that they come to us when we hold the feeding bottle :(
It was time to go..we bought some souvenirs and came out of the zoo and the taxi was waiting for us.
Although the crocodile show was good, you’ll not repent if you miss this Sriracha tiger zoo.
Day 1 to be continued...