Pattaya for the weekend! - Café Con Monica

Helloooo! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! Mine was interesting to say the least but still a good one! After a very difficult first 2 weeks and things going oh so wrong I have decided to genuinely embrace everything as an experience. I will be moving to China sometime in mid-August as things did not work out at the school I am teaching at now. There was a lot wrong with the school and some with me as well. Most of it was out of my control but I have definitely learned a lot. I know now that if you do not have some of the requirements for something you should be ABSOLUTELY positive the job is secure and they are offering exactly what they say they are before you spend so much money on a flight. So here I find myself in Thailand, thousands of miles away from home and dealing with some not so good and some great!

I taught all week with some of the similar problems discussed in my first post about being here. But some of the other teachers and my roomie Caligirl all decided we should go to Pattaya on Saturday. It is supposed to be about 2 hours away by train or bus. So we decided to hang out on Friday night and then get up early Saturday and take a train down. Unfortunately when we got to the train station we learned that they do not run to Pattaya on the weekends. So we took a bus instead. We arrived in Pattaya and went straight to the pier to take a ferry to the Island Kohlan so we could spend as much time on the beach as possible. It was amazing and beautiful! I know I love summers in Chicago but seriously…so freaking beautiful and its not even one of the prettiest islands there are here. We all managed to get sunburn just on the ferry ride to the island and not realize this until much later. I faced up to my fear of small boats and rode my first Longtail ever! I also got in the water which if you have been reading my blog for awhile you realize is NOT something I tend to do very often.

After coming back from the island we got some Italian food that was SOOOOO good! Then everyone fell into a food coma and went back to the hotel to sleep. I stood up and had to check out the town. Pattaya is well known for its nightlife and I was not going to miss it! BUT, of course, by the time I ventured out (Alone) I found out that because of an election that day all of the bars/clubs were closing early and no alcohol was being sold after 5pm. What kind of luck do I have??? I went back to my hotel and sat down to people watch and ended up meeting some of the Pattaya United soccer players who asked me to walk around with them and we all ended up at a hookah place a bit away. It ended up being a great night and now I have 4 new friends in Thailand! So glad I didn’t go to bed early that night!

Sunday’s attempt to get home quickly resulted in a almost 4 hour trip home. As with most things in Thailand doing anything takes forever and when Thai people do not know what you are saying or the answer to something instead of telling you they do not know they will tell you something else or say yes to save face.(I might have to write a whole post on this another time) So it took us ages to get home. Then it was relaxing and back to school on Monday!

and now the fun part! Pictures!!!

Some of us on the way

On the Pier

on the ferry

Longtail boat

Our beach for the day

my view

Smiles

heading into the fun part of town

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