Pattaya Beach Adventures

View of the USS Stetham from the pier on the way in.

Security on the ride into the port.

After 5 weeks underway, we rolled into Thailand on Feb 19th. We escaped the boat about as soon as we could catch the bus downtown from the ship yard. The center of operations for our liberty events was the Hard Rock Hotel, and after realizing that it was probably a much nicer hotel than we booked, we piled into one of the many "cabs" lined up on the street to get to our rooms and set up for the weekend. First items of business for most of us were food, massages, and new suits (yes, another one). Luckily there was a tailor next door to the hotel, a restaurant inside the lobby, and massages at the hotel and in several beach-style spas within a short walk of the front door. We had plans to head downtown that night, so we had to accomplish the rest of the stuff pretty quickly. The massage felt like heaven after weeks of sleeping on the boat and spending hours a day hunched over in the helicopter, not to mention walking around on steel decks every day. While it would have been amazing to just lay down for the rest of the night, I was getting hungry, and we had some partying to do after that. The hotel restaurant served some amazing curry, and despite burning my tongue on a boiling hot pea and sweating through the whole meal (it was SPICY!!), it was some of the best chicken curry I've ever had... not to mention the delicious spring rolls to start the meal.

This was actually one of the few times we were inside for the ride. Mostly we rode around in the back of covered pickup trucks.

The Hard Rock Hotel - gorgeous pool complete with a trampoline that I really wish I could have tried out!

Thanks for the smile, MarkEveryone met up for an evening on the town, and boy what a night. It started pretty early, and we saw everything from Thai boxing to snakes, and even found some grasshoppers to eat along the way. I don't think I'll be adding that to my list of favorite dishes anytime soon. Mark W and I were the last to leave the last bar (or so we thought) but when we got back, the other Mark was nowhere to be found. Turns out he was inadvertently hiding in the bathroom and got left behind. He made it back in time, thankfully, and we all got to bed to get ready for some shopping and sight-seeing the next day.

Scorpions, grasshoppers, and maggots - - - Oh my!

the term "tempting fate" comes to mind.

Hangin' with the Captain on the streets of PattayaCaleb and I started the second day by trying to find a good place to get some real internet, and the best we ended up finding was a hotel lobby downtown. The connection was free, but it wasn't quite good enough to get much done, so I mostly just caught up on a few emails before we headed back to find everyone else. We stopped for some Indian food on the way back, and once we were again filled up with curry, chicken, and rice, we rode back to the hotel, I found time for another massage, and we gathered the troops again for the ride to the det party. Everyone who wasn't on watch met up at one of the more popular hotels to meet up, get some food and drink, and start the evening off right. Dinner time followed at a delicious seafood place where Ziegler opted for 2 different shark dishes. Not only was it the most expensive meal any of us had, but even his impressive appetite couldn't quite polish it all off. Once we had enough to eat, we walked around trying to find some more fun, but everyone was still pretty warn out from the first couple of days in the sun and the late night before, so we rolled back early for bed. It was a good decision for me, since I had to get up early to stand watch on the boat the next day.

That scale is in Kilograms - that's one BIIIG lobster.

Playing with my new camera. View of the city from our dinner on the second night.

Duty was pretty uneventful, which was very good, and I actually got a lot accomplished. I definitely wanted to get a nap at some point, but once I made a few phone calls, did a load of laundry, worked out and watched a movie, it was time to start checking people in. Not everyone had hotel rooms, and a few of us had the lucky job of making sure they got back on time and didn't get into any trouble once they got back to the boat. Good thing nobody kept me up too late, and I could get plenty of sleep before the last day out on the town.

I had signed up for a mountain biking trip for the last day, but by the time I got done with my shift of duty and made it all the way back to the Hard Rock, the group would already have left, so I opted for another relaxing day on the beach, another massage, and a bit of shopping as well. I met up with some of the enlisted guys from our det and walked to a few markets to bargain for some high-quality products, buy a few of them, and then look for Josh and Mark to see what they were up to. Surprisingly, they wanted to get some shopping done, so we rolled back down to where I had just left to see basically what I already did... but somehow I still found more to buy. We took our bags of goodies to find Ziegler once he got back from his trip to Bangkok (he didn't have to stand watch), went to pick up our suits from the tailor, and by that point, it was time for dinner and the ride back to the boat. As you may have noticed, I had enough time to update a blog entry before we made it all the way back to the ship, but by the time I finished that, this liberty stop was at an end, and it was back to work for us.

Aaaahhhh..... gotta love time away from the ship.

The rest of the float back to Japan and the first week back in Iwakuni (for the last time) will have to wait for another day, but hopefully the stories and pictures from this chapter will hold everyone over until then!

Sunset from our hotel window... not bad, eh?