Travelling with us on board the cruise ship was a travel guide who’d give free talk and info sessions about the ports and places that we’d visit. Amongst the usual topics about the places to see, things to do, the food, the people and culture, the money and general travel tips, he’d also talked about two things that I found enlightening.

One was about how people who can afford to go on cruise holidays measure happiness and how that affects our perceptions of people who we think are poor. He said that although these people might seem poor in terms of money or material possessions, their happiness might not necessarily be tied to their level of perceived wealth.

That made sense to me. Here in our “first” world we strive for personal betterment usually in the form of a job promotion or better profits from our businesses. We do this because this gets us more money, and that allows us to buy more stuff. Sometimes this pursuit for more money and stuff makes us lose sight of the costs involved: longer hours, stress and perhaps the requiring of cold and unscrupulous, or even illegal methods, and the deterioration of personal relationships.

And are all the extra stuff that we buy necessary for true happiness and self-worth? I don’t think so.

The other thing he talked about was what constitutes a good bargain. He started out by saying that unless you have a local person with you, you will always end up paying more for the same thing than a local would, especially in shops and areas that tourists flock to. So, instead of trying to avoid being ripped off, we should first think about what’s a good price for the thing that we are buying and bargain towards that.

We should bargain, no doubt about that. But if we end up paying more or less what we thought we should be paying for it, then that’s a good bargain. And sometimes, especially when the local currency is lower than your home currency, pause and think about how much money in real terms that you are actually penny-pinching over.

When I saw what the city looked like from the ship, I thought that this might be an alright place. Something like Pattaya perhaps. However, it turns out that that was not to be. The one thing that stood out the most was that there doesn’t seem to be proper waste collection as rubbish and plastic bags were strewn everywhere.

I’m an open-minded traveller and I don’t expect the creature comforts that I get at home. I can deal with rudimentary sewerage systems (I can attest to that because I’ve been to the toilets in a train station in China’s country-side) and rubbish if the sights that a place offered were worth the trip. But alas, I can’t decide on that because we never got to see everything that the place had to offer.

That said, what I did see were quite pretty and charming. Like this Buddhist temple above and the cemetery beside it.

I saw a lot of poor people, especially around the tourist sites.

You’d feel sorry for some of the kid beggars but then you’d see them give whatever they collect to an adult and you wonder if you should be encouraging the kid’s situation in life.

Not all were beggars of course. Like this girl who was walking by us. She seemed contented just skipping and toting that pink bag of hers. Is it patronising to say “the best things in life are free” here? Whatever, it was how I felt.

One of the places that we were meant to stop at was the central market.

But upon seeing the crowd, our seasoned tour group (who has seen more than a few markets of this type) decided to forgo the adventure. How lazy and spoilt we were.

Is it bad to like only the beach resort of a town and nothing else that it has to offer? Because that’s how I felt when we walked into the Sokha Beach Resort for lunch. Besides the awesome buffet lunch, the best part of our time was having drinks underneath a cabana on their private beach.

I will end with two random shots. These are pictures of the Cambodian Royal Family that were inside the hotel.

And this is a sign inside the hotel. Yup, durians are as bad as weapons because durian burps and farts are très deadly.

In a way Sihanoukville, much like Koh Samui would be a nice place to chill and relax by the beach if that’s your kind of holiday. The people are friendly and food is very cheap. Once they improve their infrastructure and waste collection I think it can be just as successful as the Thai island.

After the day tour of Bangkok, and after dropping off those who didn’t want to go, on the same night we attended Tiffany’s Show in Pattaya which is about 30 minutes from Laem Chabang Port.

They do 2 shows a night and we arrived after the end of the first one.

The lady boys are out in their costumes letting the tourists take photos with them. They “recommended” a tip of 40 baht for a photo.

The show itself was fantastic. The lady boys were pretty. I mean REALLY pretty. And they moved like girls. OMG. I was sexually confused at the end. Hahah! And as this is Thailand, the King’s image is not far away.

And one thing I found out and which our tour guide told us later – the Russians are the biggest group of tourists in Pattaya. Which was even more evident in the next morning.

And at this very nice shopping mall, there were Russian property agents stationed throughout selling apartments and condos. I find it fascinating that the Russians have chosen Pattaya as their favourite place in South East Asia.

Pattaya has a sleazy reputation that is not so obvious during the day, even though you can see quite a few obese/old white men holding onto Thai women. The closest thing to sleaze in the daylight were these toilet signs at the Pattaya Floating Market.

I will finish up with these two photos. Mango with sticky rice is the bomb.

In Thailand they count the years not by how long it’s been since Jesus was born, but how long since Buddha was born.

And one last thing, all of us had a Thai massage session before we visited the floating market. It was good and all but I don’t see why people crave it. Maybe it’s because I can crack my own bones already.

After Koh Samui, the ship docked at the port of Laem Chabang at approx. 7:36am on January 11th. In case you are wondering how I’m remembering the exact docking times and dates, we were all given a cruise log showing exactly those details.

Here’s another view of the ship at port. At 9 floors, it’s huge. One walk around the circumference of the third deck (where the lifeboats are stationed) was about 1km.

For the ship to be able to dock at a port means that we don’t even have to wait and take the tenders to shore. We can come and go as we wish. However, Bangkok proper was about a 2-hour drive away from the port. Actually, according to the little brochure that we are given for each port – it’s a 2-hour drive without traffic. And that’s what we saw as soon as we hit the outskirts of Bangkok.

Our first stop of the day was lunch at an awesome restaurant that serves Royal Thai Cuisine. My photos won’t do it justice so I’ll just leave you with a link to their website: Bussaracum. It’s expensive compared to local food (~ 900 baht, or about A$30 per head) but the buffet is sublime.

After lunch, we went on a drive through Chinatown just for a look-see. And we got more traffic.

Chinatowns the world over look the same, and I dare say smell the same. And yes, those are shark fins that you see in the photo below.

Check out those crazy wires. How would they ever fix a problem if something needs fixing?

After the drive, we went on a walking tour through the Bangkok Flower Market – where florists would buy flowers wholesale.

The flowers were CHEAP. These garlands were selling for 10 baht.

And these roses? 130 baht for 50!!! Kinda shows ya what a rip-off buying roses during Valentine’s is. Oh and monks buy flowers too apparently.

Next up, The Grand Palace.

And it was grand.

Very grand.

It’s not as big as The Forbidden Palace in Beijing but it is magnificent nonetheless.

We finished up at the palace by about 4:30pm and we headed to Siam Paragon for an early dinner and a bit of shopping. I didn’t take many pictures because I was hot, thirsty and hungry by then.

It is meant to be big and awesome but we only had one hour at the place so we just headed straight to the food court to stuff our faces. Why did we only have one hour at the place? We hit traffic on the way in. On our way out to go back to the port we got stuck in more traffic for a good half an hour. I mentioned traffic a lot, haven’t I? Next time I visit Bangkok, I’m gonna stay in an inner-city hotel and use the mass-transit train.

That night, after some of us got dropped off back at the ship, the rest of us continued onto Pattaya to watch a really good lady boy show. I’ll write about it in the next post.

Looking through my photos, I realised that I didn’t take that many photos of life on board the cruise ship. It was a wasted opportunity that’s for sure but at least I got some anyway. The above photo shows the view from the basketball court on the top-level of the ship, right under the ship’s chimney/exhaust.

The next two shows the outdoor pool.

We only got to enjoyed it twice because out of the four full days at sea, the weather was only nice for two. We used the heated indoor pool and spa on the other days. Sorry, was too busy enjoying them and forgotten to take photos. Heh.

Being an American ship, the food on board were American too and that means high-fructose corn syrup.

Things with high-fructose corn syrup tastes just as sweet as things with real sugar in it but somehow lacks the mouth feel of things sweetened with sugar.

Also US beef don’t taste as good as Aussie beef. It’s true. But what was really good were these Alaskan King Crab legs. The legs were so big you eat them like lobster meat.

A cruise holiday is really good if you like lazing around and eating all the time. But it did felt like too much of a good thing to me over the course of 14 days.

We set sail from Singapore at approx. 8:46pm on January 8th. After a day and a half of cruising, the ship dropped anchor just outside the port of Na Thon of Koh Samui at approx. 7:56am on January 10th. At around 8:30am our family gathered at the ship’s lobby and got ready to get on one of the tender boats to get onto the island.

The tenders are actually also lifeboats.

The time from the ship to shore took about 20 minutes.

Greeting us at the port were tour guides including ours and taxi drivers.

The first stop was Na Muang Falls.

Like a lot of places in Thailand, there is a shrine nearby.

It’s rocky in parts but you can swim near the falls.

As it’s thirsty work trekking up hill to see the falls, you can buy a coconut for 20 baht which is about A$0.70.

Speaking of which, our next stop was a coconut plantation.

Where we got to see this … monkey picking coconuts.

And do this … monkey sitting on your shoulder.

The next place is one of those places where humans have arbitrarily deemed a tourist spot because of funny looking rocks – the Hin-Ta and the Hin-Yai (a.k.a Grandmother and Grandfather rocks). What you are seeing below is the Hin-Yai. You don’t need me to point it out to you right? Alright, fine – it’s the one that looks like a penis.

The Hin-Yai rock was a bit trickier to get to (I had to beaware of slippery) so I didn’t get a picture of it.

What does it look like? It looks exactly like what you think it’d look like. 100% anatomically correct even.

On the road again …

Next stop, a wet market. Feels like a wet market, smells like a wet market. There’s a sizable Muslim population in this area which makes for an interesting mix of people and food.

After stopping for a very ordinary (but apparently expensive) lunch which wasn’t even Thai (!) at a very nice hotel with a very nice beach front, the last place on our itinerary was Wat Phra Yai (a.k.a. Temple of the Big Buddha). The Thais are quite direct when it comes to naming places.

I climbed up at these steps, prayed at the foot of the Buddha, and enjoyed the cooling sea breeze for a little while.

When we got back to the ship at around 4:30pm we were all very tired but I quite enjoyed our first day of sight-seeing. Besides the places that we saw, I think Koh Samui is a great place for a nice and quiet beach holiday. The next morning, the ship will be docking at the port of Laem Chabang and we will be touring Bangkok and Pattaya.

I arrived back in Perth Thursday morning and I’m only just got to feeling “normal” again. I was quite lazy and cbf the past few days. Long holiday was long and sooo relaxing.

I’ve got plenty of photos to share and I will start with some taken on the first day. This is our first view of the ship at Singapore Harbour Front.

The baggage drop was smooth going but the check-in process was quite hellish. I estimated that we must have stood in this long line for at least 45 minutes.

A lot of the guests were elderly and I can’t imagine it to be a pleasant experience for them. I think a better way would be to hand out numbers to groups of guests and process us in batches, while allowing the rest of us to sit in a waiting room of some form.

This is what the corridors leading to the rooms look like.

This is what the cabins look like. It was small but cosy and just out of the photo to the left was the bathroom and toilet. The one that my brother and I shared was cheaper and had no port holes so once the lights were switched off, it was pitch black.

This is the view from the top deck looking out at Singapore harbour as the ship pulled out of port.

I will end with a shot of this – these hand sanitizers were everywhere on the ship. They take hygiene very seriously and they were very reassuring.