Thailand...Shockingly Amazing

I'd never been a traveler until Prasi happened to me. The conversion process was slow and steady and now it's complete after our 12 day trip to three far eastern countries - Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. While I mostly have only good things to say about the latter two countries, the outright highlight of the trip was the 5 days we spent in Thailand. Malaysia and Singapore are great cosmopolitan countries but I've seen nothing quite like Thailand. I mean it has an identity of its own. Everything is so open!! Do what you want, where you want, how you want, when you want and so on. The culture coupled with all the amazing water sports, the Tiffany's show, the cheapest stuff (their attention to detail in replicas of international brands is excellent), the beauty of their Buddha temples..all led to a jaw dropping experience. The only downer was the smell of the food. While I consider myself quite tolerant of sights and smells of all sorts of food, the smell of Thai food completely knocked me out, the sight of it I was still OK with. After asking around, we found the smell to be caused by fried garlic, but I still think there is something else to that smell. Someday I'll find out. Oh! and the unusually high water level in their commodes was also weird!! In all we visited Bangkok, Pattaya, Kuala Lumpur, Sunway Lagoon, Genting Highlands and Singapore.

This was a nice moment in Safari World and Marine Park in Bangkok. The tiger was literally just one big pussy cat. He kept adjusting my hand with his left front paw, so that he may drink the milk right. I completely loved holding him.

This statue at Marine Park kept cracking me up. This kind of defines Thailand's spirit in a way. Every time someone walks past the statue, 2 jets of water would squirt on that person. Look closely at the picture to see the jets of water squirting.

The Orangutan, Sea-Lion, Dolphin and "James Bond" shows were good fun. Considering the sheer number of Indians in the crowd, the DJ at the show got the crowd going by playing Himesh Reshammiya (love him or hate him, he's FAMOUS) followed by a patriotic Indian song.

The Reclining Buddha was so overwhelming that i couldn't stop taking the same picture in the same angle over and over again. Its magnificence has to be seen to be believed.

The skytrain was a great way to get around the city of Bangkok, and it was from one of the stations that we saw a street with Bangkok's famous nightclubs. We managed to walk in one of these alleys in the night market. There were quite a few excited "businessmen" trying to sell us a good time through live beer shows or DVD sex!! We didn't take up the offers, so we'll never know what either of them constituted, but I'll never forget the one pimp who on seeing us, went "AAAHHH!!! I can see it in your eyes. I know what you want. Ok!! C'mon C'mon" Talk about a pull marketing strategy!!

Walking Street in Pattaya was the experience of a lifetime. We had never seen anything even remotely close to it. While the streets in the night market in Bangkok had a shady red light area feel to it, this street was so brightly lit and teeming with life and every other shop was a beer bar with special offers lined up. I couldn't wipe the grin of my face when walking through this street, cos I had never imagined something like this existed. The Tiffany Alcazar show was like watching a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie live with so much colour and gigantic sets and it was performed entirely by (as our local Thai guide put it) boy-ladies. Yes, the "girls" in the pic were men once upon a time.



The adventure sports in Pattaya were also great. Para-sailing is totally awesome, especially if you do it with a dip in the water included. You feel so light and free when you're up in the air. The under-water walk and jet-ski ride were also good fun. The beach in Coral Island was beautiful, but unfortunately, we spent too little time there.

The most impressive thing about KL was the street decorations. Sunway Lagoon was enjoyable with the artificial beaches and water rides. Genting Highlands was impresessive and Prasi and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in our first visit to the huge Genting Casino. We ended up playing only slots for about 4 hours but it was something we'll never forget. The cable car ride down from Genting was pretty scary considering the speed at which the car was travelling.

The highlight of our trip to Singapore was the Songs of the Sea show in Sentosa Island with brilliant laser lights on the beach. No picture can do justice to just how spectacular the show was. We did not get a chance to experiece the night life, so I guess our Singapore experience is still incomplete. So one more visit to Singapore is pending.