Today is Thailand. Are we ever blessed to have now been in two cities in Thailand. This city, Plunket was the major city that was hard hit by a Tsunami a number of years ago where hundreds of people were killed. They have rebuilt the city and it is a major tourist destination.
There is no large pier at Plunket so we had to tender in to
the city. The ship arrived in the port
at 10:00am and started the tender service shortly after that.
When we arrived at the pier, our guide was not there but he
arrived shortly after that. We were
supposed to have an English speaking guide for a 6 hour tour of the major
sights of the city. The only problem was
that our guide really didn’t know how to speak English and we didn’t realize it
until after we were moving in the car and started to ask questions.
So, basically for a very cheap price, we went to some
interesting and fun destinations and he took us to where we wanted to go, but
we never heard anything about the country or what we were seeing along the way.
He gave us a book of pictures of the major sights in the
city and he asked where we wanted to go and that is how we communicated.
Our first stop was a tiger location where you had the choice
of going into a cage with a large, medium or small tiger. We choose the large tiger. Yes, we really went into the cage. There were 4 tigers in this very large
enclosure and we were with a guide from the facility. We could hold the tail, and touch anyplace on
the tiger up to the shoulders. It was an
amazing ten minutes that we had. They
were not chained, just sitting there freely.
We also will post a great video with the tigers later.
Our driver then took us to the original town which had a lot
of neat shops and then we traveled a little ways to a cashew factory. This was amazing to see. Each cashew is taken one at a time and placed
on a machine that pushes down on the shell and breaks it. They hand-pick out the cashew and then it
goes to another person who uses a tiny knife to scrape away the skin. No wonder they are so expensive as they are
very labor intensive to produce.
Next on our tour was to go to a bee factory and we were
introduced to all kinds of honey, including Royal Jelly that goes on your face
for a better complexion. They said that
this was very expensive in the US. We
didn’t buy any.
We next went to an elephant village where they were riding
elephants, but not like we did a couple of months ago. This was set up to give a lot of tourists a very
quick ride. They also rode on a seat
with a guide driving the elephant on a short walk – it didn’t look like fun.
We however, paid $2 to feed an elephant and was that ever a
lot of fun. The elephant even wrapped
his trunk around each of our necks and gave us a kiss on the cheek. It was just fun and we will download a video
when we arrive in Singapore.
After that we went to the largest temple in the city and it
was huge and in addition, they were having a festival there and had dozens of
booth selling everything, including a lot of local foods.
We had a noodle & shrimp dish, a strange desert and Ed
ate a serving of beetles, grasshoppers and slugs as well as a couple of other
types of bugs. They were good!!
Then it was back to the port to take the tender back to the
ship.
We met Brian and Sandy for dinner and talked about each of
our adventures and had a good meal.
Then we went to the show at 10:30pm and onto the casino
where both Ed and Barb lost just a little.
Tonight we set the clocks forward another hour and tomorrow
is our last day of the cruise and it is a sea day.
Night for this blog.
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| Barb with a tiger. They were not chained |
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| Ed with a tiger |
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| Barb getting kissed |
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| Cracking the shell in the cashew factory |
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| Thailand Pork on a stick (we think) |
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| Eggs, noodles, bamboo shoots and ? made a great lunch |
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| Lunch |
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| 7 types of bugs for desert!! |
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| Yes Ed ate them!! |
