I've written about visiting places in Honolulu, and about travel themes and culture there, and about visiting Ayuttayah back here, in Bangkok. But I've not covered what local travel is like, recently, beyond that. There's something really special about visiting local areas in Thailand, which I probably won't do justice to here, but I'll make a start.
Pattaya; not exactly for families
Pattaya is definitely one of the main sex tourism resorts on Earth, so it's not really for families. We go there sometimes to go to local water parks, mostly, like to Ramayana, which is really in Rayong, the next area over. We go out to eat, or to malls, back in Pattaya, and we did make it to a Harborland play area this time. But in general most of what goes on there is not for us.
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photo credit |
One might wonder how evident that sex tourism is, if you don't go to the main red light areas. Pretty evident. The beach ends up being a center for working freelancers, and there are massage places and strip clubs all over. It's not as crime-oriented as one might expect; the feel isn't too seedy, beyond selling sex being the main running theme. It seems safe enough otherwise. You might get overcharged for parking, or something like that, but scams would typically be pretty tame. The deeper you would get into the experience of vice the more risk you would probably experience, especially with a lot of drugs and alcohol involved.
There are some expat families there, and I guess not all tourists are there for that main draw, so "normal" tourists are also around. It is strange seeing tourist families with kids, but then we were there with kids.
Ramayana water park
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the kids' play area there, from many years ago |
This time there were a lot of Russian and other origin area tourists there, maybe a lot of central Asians, where it had seemed Thai and European in the past. That didn't change anything for me. I would think that for "higher society" Thai families it might; I might be missing quite a bit about standard perceptions of class levels related to different origin areas. Or maybe I'm not; it's a stretch for me to represent a standard Thai "hi-so" perspective.
That park is nice; it's much better than a local Wet and Wild in Honolulu. It's bigger, and the slides are better. There are lots more seating areas, including plenty of deck chairs that recline or resemble beds. The Lazy River is kind of massive; it takes awhile to go around it. There's a separate smaller kids area, which we finally didn't even visit, since Kalani is older now. They rent "cabana" huts for a private space sort of experience, at a fairly low cost, for something like $30 to $45 for different sizes, but the ordinary pool-side seating is pleasant, of course including sun umbrella coverage.
Some of the most intense slides are a bit much (with all of them listed here). Two involved drops; they start by literally dropping you, by the floor under you just disappearing. This video shows what one is like, how you just speed up to city road velocity and then rocket through a loop.
I didn't take any pictures of the park this time, beyond Kalani doing a zip-line themed biking attraction. It seemed ok. The chain came off the bike on a third (bonus) trip across that cable, so the guy working there needed to walk on the line (of course on a harness), and push her the rest of the way. It seemed the best part, to me, adding uncertainty and thrill to it, but then I wasn't stuck on the bike up on a cable.
Value is a repeating theme across everything you do in Thailand. It doesn't cost that much to go to the Harborland play areas I'll mention, or to this water park. Maybe around $40, for standard entrance? Food didn't cost that much in it, or anywhere else. Everything is inexpensive.
If that value came with working through rough edges that would be one thing, but it's not like the older local parks where things feel a bit worn; it was pretty well maintained. Since it was a good bit newer than the Wet and Wild I mentioned it felt newer. Locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms were clean, and everything worked.
I suppose Harborland (play area) sites may or may not be like that, depending on their age. They look fine, but that equipment takes a beating, so they either stay on top of maintenance and repairs or else some of it doesn't work. Given how the infrastructure is the thing, the slides, bikes, an art and craft area, trampolines, and so on it's not such an important theme. They have varying electronic games in different sites, and sometimes those break. We did a trampoline game version in Pattaya that was nice (of course that worked), where you could play basketball or different games, with it tracking your movements through basic image recognition. That's a good intro to say more about those places.
Harborlands
We've been to three in the past month, in Bangkok, Pattaya, and Sriracha. Sriracha is Japanese themed (aesthetically; there isn't much that's functional from that theme). It's also the oldest, and a bit of extra wear and tear showed that. None of them are really dated in Bangkok, but an electronic game or the like may not work in one.
I'm not so worried about safety; they seem to be over-designed, to avoid issues that might involve risk. And basic; they're just crawl spaces, slides, and so on. It's nothing like an amusement park area. Kalani always loves to play in kids' bike spaces, which I just participated in this last time, maybe for the first time. 79 kg is definitely over the weight limit, but that bike seemed really durable.
There are ball-pit areas, and games related to shooting foam balls in for-purpose play spaces, or places where you feed plastic balls up into a vacuum hose and chute section, then they collect and fall on you.
One might wonder how a 57 year old can appreciate those forms of play, scurrying through small crawl spaces, and going down slides, or roller-surface based sled ride tracks. We first took Keoni to the Funarium, a related play space area, back when he was 2 or so, so that was 15 years ago. It just seems normal to me. I enjoy seeing the kids enjoy those places, and if it involves me crawling around some too that's fine.
Fairly aggressive water slides are something else. Either you stay adapted to having that kind of experience or else you can't handle it, in middle age. Keoni and I did a lot of those Ramayana slides in fast succession once, maybe 5 years ago, and I started to get motion sickness from it. He and I did those drop slides four times this visit, the most I ever have, by a lot. It was intense.
One guy there, a muscled-up 35 or so year old, kept going down the simpler drop slide and screaming with excitement. When Keoni first did the "Aqualoop" version he was visibly shaken, and swore he would never do that again. But we went back up, almost immediately, as soon as he regained equilibrium. I guess it's a little like taking drugs; you do get a crazy adrenaline rush from it. Not so much in Harborland, but the small drop slides there affect you more than you might expect, just doing a 15 foot vertical drop.
It's all something of a workout. I missed a couple of slides (back in Ramayana), when the kids went on two person versions, but we went on close to 15 slides, walking up 3 or more flights of stairs each time.
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a smaller, more local, less safe park version |
I get it that lots of parents might be more into dropping the kids off, or viewing them from a distance, instead of actually playing with them. But why not play with them? It's pleasant making art when Kalani does, and I liked figuring out how to play a couple of basic tunes on a tiny piano (organ). She gave me an extended check-up in a kids role-play area, but that quiet time came after a few busy days, so after the checkup I laid down to get a nap.
Oddly mobility is a factor. If you never did much for exercise, and stayed active, those slides, in both places, would probably throw your back out. The wear and tear is beneficial, to me, all light duty enough.
Local people, local feel
This part is mostly transparent to me, because I already live in Bangkok, most of the time, but the local people are really nice in different areas. I think that stands out most in the quieter and more rural areas, which isn't exactly where we went. But a street food vendor in a busy urban place isn't necessarily so different than one in a quieter rural town market. Maybe less rushed, so a little more conversation might come up. My Thai is limited, so that only goes so far, but the kids aren't shy about talking to different people, and they are completely bi-lingual.
Keoni and I walked out to a night market and temple area at a local island just off Sriracha, when Kalani's meal ran quite late at one Japanese restaurant. The infrastructure was impressive; a large durable plastic deck walkway built out for half a kilometer or so could've let 1000 people walk at the same time, or more. We had been to that temple before; it's a typical Chinese temple complex (closed at night; we didn't visit it this time).
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a local art fair, in an old part of Bangkok, but the comfortable feel is the same |
The feel is what stood out. Those local places are really informal and comfortable, and family oriented. None of the homeless population themes or potential crime risk issues come up, that are always something to watch out for in US cities, ever, in any form.
I tried to think of what space would be that comfortable in feel, and family oriented, back in Honolulu. Waikiki, their beach resort area, is nice enough, but there's a much different energy to it. It's more hectic. People are in a hurry to get wherever they're going, and the mix of different types of people adds a unique feel. It's not dangerous, or off-putting, not really involving tension, but it's not relaxed either. People smoke weed everywhere, but that just becomes normal. That Thai food court / market space was as relaxed as kids playing at a park, which may not be as relaxed in the US now either, since parents would need to keep an eye out for whatever might happen there.
It's possible that some of it is just in my own mind, but my impression is the exact opposite, that it's a real local tone or feel. Others may not consciously experience it, but it's there for them too.
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we visited the Khao Keo open zoo on this trip |
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that monkey threatened us, as in he communicated a threat |
I'm from a local area in the US, where people tend to be a bit relaxed, and life is slow in pace. But public gathering spaces kind of went by the wayside there, quite awhile ago. The mall went dead, and local park spaces never were a main theme. People gathered around a fire pit in their own home, with family, are relaxed, and social, but you need to set that kind of thing up, it's not there to visit by walking to a nearby park or outdoor food court space.
They have food trucks in Waikiki; that's perhaps the closest one could come to that theme. But seating would be limited, and it's never a gathering place.
There was a large park on the land side of that island walkway, where people were running, and that's another example of what I'm getting at. It wasn't busy, but a couple of dozen people were there to walk or run, even though it was around 9 by then, getting late for that. Of course we didn't see a single homeless person; again that's not standard local Thai theme. There was no graffiti, no litter.
In Honolulu not only are there homeless people living at essentially every roof-covered bus stop, we saw drugs being sold and smoked off foil at one in Chinatown earlier this year. So that was free-base cocaine, or meth? I don't know; we didn't ask. Over in the plaza space, walking there, we saw two guys with a large sized blowtorch, and what looked like chem lab equipment, smoking something else, or maybe the same drug, again I don't know.
It's not just about drugs and homelessness; the feel is different beyond that. Thais wouldn't understand what you mean if you told them about these issues, or crime risk. They wouldn't know what gang culture means; they would be thinking of biker gangs, or groups of motorcycle taxi drivers not getting long with the group the next soi (alley) over. Apparently there is organized crime in Thailand, of some type, but it's as much a part of their lives as the mafia is in the US; it's just not. They would probably ask you which parts of movie experiences relate to real life, and if you would need to be in a city slum to experience that. They don't have slums with organized gangs in them, in the same way, so their questions would be based on what they've seen of Hollywood movies.
I don't mean to say that Thailand is universally better than the US, related to culture, feel, and drug and crime issues. To me it feels safer and more comfortable. You don't have to worry about being one block too far over, or what time of evening it is. I lived in Baltimore, right out of college, and that was another extreme, where being in the good area only protected you so much, and there was real danger within two blocks in most places. That's missing in Bangkok, and certainly in Sriracha.
One strange part is that a sex resort like Pattaya also feels generally safe. It's nasty, that's for sure, but you seem to have less chance of getting mugged in the worst parts of Pattaya than in the better parts of Baltimore.
Thais are friendly and open too, as rural people tend to be in the US. That gets criticized online, as only superficial, tied to appearance but not real feeling, but I think it's both.
