Pattaya Fire Air and Water

In Pattaya, Thailand, there is an annual Fireworks Festival. This year, it happens to fall on the Friday and Saturday just after Thanksgiving (in the US, which is not a holiday in Thailand.) But that made it a perfect set up for Alrica and I. Both of our jobs are closed for Thanksgiving. So we took a bus trip from Bangkok to Pattaya.

My picture doesn't do justice to the fireworks

Bangkok is not on the Gulf of Thailand, but is upriver from it. Pattaya is on the Gulf of Thailand. So we got on a bus which took a bit more than two hours to drive to Pattaya. We are staying in a nice room that is just a block off the beach. And the beach is the location of the Fireworks Festival.

View of the Gulf of Thailand from our balcony

We arrived on Thursday and got settled in. We did some exploration of the region around where we are staying including a romantic walk along the beach. We stopped for dinner (pizza) at a cute outdoor plaza with lots of food stands. It's much like a park with food trucks all around, except the stands aren't trucks.

The plaza full of food (one of many in Pattaya). Also Alrica.

Naturally, the fireworks don't happen in the day. So on Friday, we took a snorkeling trip. A bus picked us up at our hotel and we drove all around Pattaya picking up other people. Then we headed south into Amarin City Village. Here we got our life jackets and got on the boat. It made three stops for snorkeling and one just for relaxing at the beach.

Heading down the dock to the boat

It was an interesting company because one of the big features is that they take lots of pictures, including underwater pictures. At the end, they dump them all into a Google Drive and you can go hunting for the ones you want and download them. But it isn't just the pictures of Alrica and me. It's the pictures of everyone who was on the boat with us. So there is a lot of hunting. Also, they were obsessed with gestures. We pointed, gave two-finger peace signs, three-fingers I Love You in sign language, the Korean finger hearts. What's amusing is that it isn't always obvious who the person is behind the mask and the fish. It was easier to find the pictures of me, as I was wearing a blue swimshirt. I was the only one in that shade of blue. But Alrica was wearing a black bikini, and she wasn't alone in that. Still the front of her mask was white, she didn't have on a watch, and so bit by bit we were able to, by process of elimination, figure out which ones were here. (And some of them look like her, so it wasn't always hard.)

Alrica signs "I love you" to the fish

Snorkeling is a lot of fun. It isn't hard to do, and one can see a lot of fish. When we went snorkeling in The Philippines, I learned the real secret of it. Don't look down. I don't mean this like when you are crossing something high. You aren't afraid of falling, the buoyancy of the water isn't going to let you drop. But if you look straight down, you won't get to see as much. You have less field of vision, and your presence often scares away anything nearby. Looking more in front of you means you get to see a lot more.

Peace Clown Fish, Peace.

We got to explore a whole section of coral reefs too. It was an unexpected pleasure to have this underwater view. Not only could you see the coral well, but you would be swimming along, rounding a corner, and then it looked like you were at the entrance to a canyon. A canyon of coral. You had to be a bit more careful here because the waves really could push you into the rocks and corals. They are sharp! How do I know? Well, I wasn't careful enough. But I just got scratched up a bit, not even blood. So it hardly counts.

The couple that dives together thrives together. That's a thing, right?

Hanging out at the beach was fun. I tried the standup paddleboard (though it was a kneel up paddleboard in my case. I didn't manage standing, and I was wearing my glasses so I didn't want to try for fear of losing the glasses if I pitched into the water.)

Paddle on, kneeling man.

After we got back, we cleaned up a bit and then headed over to the beach. There are hundreds of food vendor stands along the beach road. We bought some meals. Alrica got a pad thai, I got a pork with rice noodles, and we got some meat on sticks to share. It turns out the pad thai was quite spicy whereas the pork with rice noodles wasn't spicy at all. So we traded. We found a spot on the beach to sit (surrounded by our fifty-three thousand closest friends) and waited for the fireworks.

When they came, the shows were very impressive. There was music being broadcast and the fireworks were (sort of) timed to the music. But that wasn't the impressive part. There are just so many artistic fireworks out there. it is amazing to see what they can do, how they can be timed, the colors and effects like sparkles or streaks. And they are loud! Before the show began, we saw some bats in the sky hunting for dinner. I felt a bit bad for them, because once the fireworks were going, that has to interfere with their echolocation, doesn't it? Maybe the frequencies are far enough apart that it's no problem, but those loud concussive blasts must do something.

A still picture can't capture the sparkling effect, but imagine it.

Luckily I am not a bat and I was not hunting for insects. (By the way, if I were hunting for insects, there are food stands selling various cooked species of insects, so I could have gotten my fill without any need for echolocation.) For me, the fireworks were delightful and desoundful.

No, I didn't get to have a traditional Thanksgiving. But there is sure plenty I'm thankful for.