Thailand: What’s not to like?

When our host from the Tourism Authority of Thailand announced that we would spend two days in Pattaya, my brain went into lockdown. I don’t like the beach: something in the combination of bright sunshine, sand, hordes of holiday revelers and the smell of sunblock in the withering heat makes me violent. This sounds absurd for someone who’s spent her entire life in an archipelago, but there you have it. I am an indoorsy girl, and this usually means air conditioning.

My brain rebooted when I entered my room at the Amari Orchard hotel in Pattaya. I didn’t have to leave my very pretty room with the huge bed, the flat-screen TV, and the big bathtub right behind the bed. There, through the plate glass wall next to the swimming pool 17 floors below, was the big blue sea. The Great Outdoors meets The Great Indoors.

In the 1960s Pattaya was the choice vacation spot for thousands of American servicemen in the Vietnam War. Today it retains all the features of Asia’s first Sin City — streets lined with go-go bars blasting music, strip clubs, drunk and wide-eyed tourists (now Eastern Europeans) gawking at the merchandise — but the seediness has been tempered by the opening of family-friendly up-market resorts and facilities for diving, parasailing, and other water sports. If anthropology is your thing, a late-night stroll down “Walking Street” with its clubs, massage parlors, restaurants and the omnipresent 7-Elevens should give you enough material for a dissertation.

On the first evening we took in a show at El Alcazar, a theater featuring transvestite performers. Thailand is known for its medical tourism — according to one travel agent in our party, gender surgery costs a mere US$3,200, and the waiting list is 120,000 applicants long.

The show was sold out, the audience composed mainly of Indian and Russian tourists. Being from Manila, we have very high standards for drag shows — we like to think we invented them, or at least refined them into an art form. The El Alcazar revue was brisk and professional — elaborate sets including a replica of a museum, fabulous costumes, and attractive performers. The choreography was on the conservative side, and as for the “girls,” they might as well have been natural-born females — very demure and lady-like. Not campy. The overall effect was not comic or racy, but genteel. Three performers lip-synched to Dreamgirls. In Manila, this would be a prelude to a duel in which each performer attempts the funniest, most outrageous version of And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going. In Pattaya it is the show itself. El Alcazar sticks with impersonation; in Manila the showgirls are not merely playing, say, Diana Ross, but making fun of her, of themselves, and of the audience.

Then again, Manila is more postmodern than most cities.

After the show, the performers proceed to the parking lot to pose for photographs. The charge is 20 baht (1 baht = P1.4) per picture, as an Indian tourist discovered when he snapped a few without paying. I don’t know how he/she spotted the miscreant in the crowd, but a towering transvestite appeared next to the man and reminded him to pay up. The man protested his innocence, to no avail. “You pay,” said the tranny, in a tone that said, “I’m a lady, but I can thrash you.”

The following morning, we visited Suphattra Land in neighboring Rayong, an agrotourism destination. Agrotourism is aimed at urban folk who live in concrete and steel towers, do not get to see enough trees and growing things, and need massive doses of fresh air. In short, I am the target market of agrotourism. Whoever planned Suphattra Land has obviously studied my ilk: the orchards are very neatly laid-out, there are refreshment stands, water coolers and souvenir shops, and plenty of clean washrooms. And lots of shade. You get around in open tramcars. The planners took into account the language barrier and solved it by putting large signboards everywhere. The Tourism Authority has tourism down to a science.

Fruit doesn’t come fresher than this — you can pick it right from the tree and eat it. For the lazy, friendly staff are perpetually peeling and chopping fruit for you to sample. They also prepare a dip made of sugar, salt and chilis. You can have your fill of mangosteen, pomelo, dragonfruit, longan (lanzones — ours are sweeter), rose apples, rambutan, mangoes (our mangoes still rule, but theirs are bigger), santol, marine plums, durian (our Davao variety is stinkier but sweeter), and others. There’s also a live demonstration of how bees make honey. Several busloads of well-behaved schoolchildren in white uniforms with colorful fish designs were touring the orchards. No boring navy or plaid for Thai schoolchildren.

Lunch was at Tamnanpar, a restaurant in a lush forest setting. Diners feast on classic Thai cuisine on huge wooden tables surrounded by replicas of nine Thai waterfalls. It is very hard not to get a good meal in Thailand — even the roadside stalls and pushcarts are amazing — but the food at Tamnanpar was excellent. As if the setting were not relaxing enough, there is a spa in the complex. My lungs, which are used to processing whatever oxygen molecules can be found in Manila’s pollution, gobbled up the fresh air.

Afterwards we visited the Sanctuary of Truth, a replica of an ancient temple that is being built by the sea on Rachvate Cape. Construction of the privately funded Sanctuary began in 1981; the objective is to build an all-wood structure that would “preserve and revive Ancient Knowledge.” The finished teak temple will be about 20 stories high, nearly every inch of it carved with images and religious motifs. Visitors may tour the surrounding acreage on elephants, or watch a dolphin show.

Joyce remarked that the Sanctuary of Truth was sort of an Asian version of Gaudi’s unfinished Sagrada Familia, except that the design is much older. What if Antoni Gaudi had indeed returned as one of the builders, and was working off the karma of his uncompleted masterpiece? The eccentric maestro would’ve felt right at home in Thailand. I propose a new ad for Thai tourism: “Thailand. What’s not to like?”

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For tours in Thailand, call the Tourism Authority of Thailand at 911-1660, e-mail dave.dejesus@gmail.com or tat_mnl@pacific.net.ph

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