After an earlyish night and feeling greatly rested, we spent the morning exploring Beach St (which is along Pattaya Beach) and came upon a gathering of food motorcycle carts, where we procured breakfast in the form of coffee (it’s an addiction), beef noodle soup, and a spicy mushroom lemongrass soup. Those mushrooms were deliciously painful to down, and the coffee was very helpful in cooling down our mouths (and stomachs).
We took a shared minivan out to the Thousand Year Stone Park and Crocodile Farm. The place actually started as a rich man’s personal collection, and was later expanded out to include shows and other touristy things.
The park itself is really well done, and the landscape is quite appealing. There were rocks of every shape and size intermingled with plants on hills and around a waterfall. It was a nice place to take pictures and climb around, though you had to be careful of the giant ants crawling around. After awhile we made our way to the crocodile pools, and here began the most disgusting walk I’ve ever had through an animal park of any sort.
It started with pools of crocodiles, where dozens of them are jammed together in a pool. Carts in shades viewing areas were selling chickens for tourists to feed to the animals with a long pole. Continuing along, the path led to an elephant enclosure, where about a dozen elephants were chained to trees and slowly picking at branches on the ground for leaves. There were four elephants strapped ith seats, ready to be ridden. You also had an option of buying milk or bananas to feed them with.
Then came the crocodile show. Not only was the announcer loud and the music obnoxious, but the performer used means of prodding and poking to get crocodiles to keep their jaws open. He would pull them by their tails out of the water. At one point, he demonstrated locking a crocodiles jaws open, and sticking his head inside. He then proceeded to reach into the crocodile’s mouth, play around with its tongue, then reach further into the stomach and pull out some undigested food. It was disgusting to say the least.
The worst part came after the show. There were groups of tigers (white and regular) and bears bunched up in cages clearly too small for them. Tigers and cubs were lined up in a row, chained and sitting for tourists to take pictures of (or with if you paid). The animals were a sad sight, and most of them were pacing what little space was in their cages, or sprawled on top of each other.
As we continued onto the pond where you could see the giant Mekong catfish, we passed by birds in cages. Some tourists were feeding chips to parrots and once again I wondered at how stupid and insensitive people could be. At the pond, we bought a plateful of fish food and tossed some out at a time. The fish in the pond are quite vicious, and swarm to get to the food first. Some of the catfish just open their mouths above water, swimming to gulp in as much food as possible. It’s kind of funny to see, but you start feeling bad when you see the smaller fish nibbling at the catfish or thrashing around to get to the food. The catfish each had wounds of some sort – you could see patches of pink skin where there should have been scales. The mystery of these injuries was quickly solved when a Korean family came by and the father picked up a plate of food, dumping its entire contents in one spot. The fish started fighting each other for food, and it was a sorry sight indeed. Perhaps the one area that I might have approved of in this sad menagerie was ruined by the stupidity of tourists.
Overall this place made me feel terrible for the animals, and I can’t imagine why it’s rated so highly on TripAdvisor.
In any case, we came back, took a nap, and decided to go for a long walk on our way to Jomtien Beach. There’s a path that runs along the coast past the lighthouse, that seems to have seen better days before but is now broken down and not visited at all by tourists. We followed it along the coast and up to grab dinner (at a French restaurant full of white people, where we were the onlynones to order Thai dishes) and watch a cabaret show. The place is called The Venue, and there are three shows a night, starting at 10 pm, featuring 4 main lady boys as well as a good assortment of backup dancers. It was a good amount of fun, dancing, and lip syncing (though the rest of the crowd, apart from us, were old fat men with a pretty lady or boy or two, in some cases) on their arms. It was just a little uncomfortable. We left after the second showing as the pouring rain finally let up, and hopped on a shared taxi back to Walking Street.