Pattaya: The Place I Started to Like Seafood

Wow!!! This past week has been absolutely amazing! I’m so thankful for Marie’s host family (and my 3rd host family) for taking me along to Pattaya!! We did so many fun activities and delicious food!

We left Phrae on Monday at 8 pm, and arrived Tuesday at 6 am! We began the day by visiting a local fishing market. It was so cool to see the market wake up with the beautiful sunrise!! There was lots of interesting seafood, there was everything from fish, squids, jumbo prawns, and clams. Then we went to a cute cafe, to pass time before our hotel check-in. The cafe is called Nitan, which is our host brother’s name!! I got chocolate caramel milk, which is delicious! Thai people really love their cafes!! Then we went go-carting. I forgot how much I miss driving haha. I was the fastest driver for our round! I think driving on I-10 is very good training for go-karting lol 😆.

For lunch, I was very adventurous. I tried crab curry, grilled squid, shrimp, and fried shrimp cakes. Surprisingly, I liked it all!!! This was a big step for me, as I normally hate all seafood.

Afterwards, we went to a floating market. Marie and I got to drive a mini boat around it!! For dinner I tried more seafood, and was able to eat spicy food, another feat for me! I think I’m successfully building my spice tolerance 🌶️. One of the dishes is made of coconut trees. The other one is fried small fish. They tasted like french fries.

Wednesday was an exciting day on a boat! We went fishing and snorkeling. There wasn’t a whole lot of fish, but our guides took some cool and funny pictures of us! Using the fish we caught, we ate sashimi and grilled fish. It was so delicious and fresh! One of the small grilled fish is mine. The sashimi is was caught by our host brother, Satu. We also rode around on a “banana boat”. It was so much fun to get flipped off of it haha.

On Thursday, we went to a waterpark. It’s the biggest waterpark in Thailand! For me, it was very similar to typhoon Texas! The rides were almost identical. Marie and I had to get new swim outfits because Thai people wear swim shorts and rash guards over their swimsuits 😆 It was nice though because I got sunburned on the boat ( sorry mom 😘).

I also need to give a big shoutout to the absolutely gorgeous Thai sunsets!! It might’ve been the prettiest one I’ve seen.

Today (Friday), we started the 8 hour journey home to Phrae. We were able to stop in Bangkok on the way for lunch and to visit a mall. It was so exciting because the mall had lots of western stores like H&M, Sephora, and Uniqlo. I also tried the most famous Thai tea brand here. In addition, after 2 months of wanting labubus, Marie and I were able to buy them today! They had a whole store of them. Tonight I will be packing for our Phuket trip! We leave Phrae at 5 am tomorrow to catch our flight out of Chiang Mai.