Laos – Vientiane and Luang Prabang
Pattaya – Playground of Thailand?
if you can picture Las Vegas with smaller casinos like clubs, a lot of drinking places, very raunchy entertainment venues, people pulling you into their establishments and a very large arrangement of visitors from all over the world…and a beach that isn’t quite clean enough to swim in, you have Pattaya. It isn’t as much a family place as a large single’s bar with hundreds of restaurants. Phuket is much more family oriented while Pattaya absorbs most of the fringe elements from around the world; some rich and quite a few are just looking for a cheap place to be entertained in almost any form imaginable. This is the wild entertainment center of Thailand where it takes some doing to find Thai cultural treasures. One stands out, The Sanctuary of Truth, an interesting and encompassing introduction to Buddhism and influences from many other ideas from many places on earth. Pattaya is an hour from Bangkok and originally started as an entertainment beach for US military personnel during the Vietnam war. It has it’s attractions, the lights and noise, but for people traveling to Thailand for culture it probably isn’t a place to visit. Go and enjoy if you are looking for wild fun, but hold on to your valuables!
There is such thing as a free haircut
in Vientiane we saw a sign reading “free haircut” so we stopped since I needed to get a very serious trim.
These guys most likely have finished some training and are doing free haircuts to get experience with different types of customers’ hair. They set up a little space on the side of the road where people can stop and get their free haircut. Their next step will be to get a job in a barbershop or hair salon. But of course we bought them each a nice cool drink.
