ChrisandCin

Wow, this chair was last cleaned in late November. Have a look at how much dirt there is in the air here !

The before....

The After ....one wipe with the vacuum after 2 months!

Gross ..imagine what our lungs look like!!

We all know that Thailand is what must be the sex capitol of the world, but Pattaya takes it to a whole new level. The place is full of middle aged men, mainly from Australia and the UK. This is weird as its also full of Russian couples and families from everywhere just on a holiday.

Beach side bars at night

You see some men who really are questionable…. in the morning you will walk along the beach and notice that the bars are already pretty full of single men waiting for the girls to turn up to work, its 9am and they have their first beer in hand. You also see a lot of men in wheelchairs and disabled men (ie on crutches minus limbs) getting their sexual needs satisfied. Thats something I have never seen before…

Another thing which is strange is how the sex industry is there, its openly there and available, but they aren’t in your face and harassing you . The girls stand quietly along the beach at night, and the bars are just full of happy drinkers… what is sad the number of old men who obviously have wives and kids at home as you can see most all have wedding rings on.

It was time for a escape, so we booked a cheap flight on Air Asia. Great airline, cheap in the basic fare but when you put in the addons it gets pricey. Word of warning, always pay the $10 extra per seat and get Row 1 or a emergency exit row. All other rows have about 3 inches of space between the seats!! Also book and prepay for your food before you travel as you need to pay cash onboard and they dont always have the choices.

We chose Pattaya because although it has a seedy side, its a cheap place to stay on the beach. To get from Bangkok airport to Pattaya takes some planning, we found on Tripadvisor.com a taxi service which we booked online. It was Baht1000 from the airport to Pattaya and Baht900 for the return… the trip was about 1hr 15 min each way. The cars were great, one was a a Toyota Cressida, the other trip was in a Toyota Innova van. Too book your transfer contact  this guy…

P.T. Taxi service pattaya

340/11 3rd road pattaya chonburi

mobile 0863921240, 0854449035

www.pttaxiservice.com

p.t.taxi@hotmail.com

For hotels we  found the Siam Bayview Hotel looked good, we got a Oceanview room with breakfast for $81 per night on www.agoda.com. When we checked in we were pleasantly surprised to be given a upgrade to a suite… which was a huge room!

Ocean view from the hotel room

Every morning at 7-10 am hundreds of man people parasailing

The hotel suite

Looking into the room from the Balcony

Inland view , from the bedroom in the suit

Apparently on a Indian train there are western style toilets… although there were none in the carriages I had access to. All I saw were these starting block toilets.

If only you could have shared the smell! It was gross, the pee and poo also goes straight out onto the tracks. And people dont stop using the crapper when its at the station, so you can imagine what a Indian train station smells like!

(remember to click on a pic to enlarge and get the full effect!)

Indian toilet paper... if there was water you would fill this germ ridden cup with water and wash your pooy butt!

The shit and pee goes straight out onto the tracks!

The door lock, complete with huge ass gap so people can see you!

Filthy sink

In continueing the adventure here is what its like in the 2nd class A/C cabin of the train…

You are assigned a seat/bunk. In the 2nd class section there are 4 people to a cabin, on a hard as rock seat, or you pull down the seat back and you have a hard as rock bed!

Each bunk comes with a set of sheets… look over them before you use them, one in our group got a sheet that was covered in driedblood!

Like old hospitals sheets

The end result...

The carriages are very dirty too, and the 2 trains we traveled on where also full of cockroaches…lots of them!

The trains themselves are actually quite small , and smelly. People are smoking, people are just smelly, but you get to enjoyall the smells. My suggestion is to wear a strong perfume!

Looking down thru the carriage

Airconditioning, I think its full of bacteria but its better than nothing

Smelly

Inside the cabin

Yes that window is that color due to dirt

The inspector, checks your ID and seat (there is one per carriage!)

3 years in, and this is my first journey on the Indian Railways. Now I had some high expectations as people talk as if the railways here are the best in the world… so I was skeptical.

I knew the stations stunk, as I had on a previous trip gone and observed a train station in Barielly and notice the shit and pee from the trains goes straight out onto the tracks, then a person comes along and washed it away (ie disperses it into the stones around the sleepers).

So our train is going to go through a Maoist area, which means there are no trains at night. Our train is actually scheduled on the ticket to leave at 10pm, but in fact it is scheduled to leave at 4.30am!! If you werent told this I guess you would do to the station at 10pm and sit all night!

The Rourkela station on arrival at 4.15am is packed with sleeping bodies … there is also a ominious huge blood stain/puddle as we walk into the station… I dont want to know what happened there.

Rourkela Station with people asleep everywhere

Strange place this station, there are no signs and no one to help. If it wasnt for the hotel driver we wouldnt know which platform to go to.. we go to platform number 4.

Platform 4 rourkela

On arrival on the platform a train sits… its not our train. According to the scratchy speaker system which is really hard to understand our train is 30 min late and will arrive after one more train has come and gone.

Then we hear an announcement that the train we need is arriving on platform 3… so off we go trudging over the bridge to platform 3.

But wait this isnt our train

We get there only to find it is in fact not our train, we can hear the announcement on platform 4 saying the next train to arrive on the platform is the train we need! AHHHH. its not 5am!

The old diesel clunker to take us to Kolkata

5.20 am on platform 4, our train rolls in. We scramble to find the 2nd Class AC train carriage, as Indian trains are put together in a hit or miss affair, and they are all different. In our case, the 2nd class AC carriage is at the rear of the train! We board the train, and it sits and sits and sits… finally at 7am it leaves!

(next the cabin and bedding)