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Many residents of our vast Motherland are eagerly awaiting the summer season to go on holiday to the Black Sea, and maybe even to neighboring countries, such as Abkhazia or even Turkey. They book guest rooms and tickets for passenger trains heading south almost six months before their holiday. Some are incredibly lucky and buy a tour to Turkey in advance, as travel agents say, with a huge discount, because this is an early booking.
However, the best taste for any connoisseur of recreation is to go to tropical countries in the most uncomfortable and frosty season in Russia, where there is eternal summer, where you can bask on the warm sand and plunge into the gentle waters of the ocean, getting fantastic impressions, and most importantly, a boost of health for almost the entire year.
One of the most popular destinations in winter is undoubtedly the Kingdom of Thailand. Luxurious resorts, amazing climate, and most importantly, tourists are loved, waited for and know how to please everyone, regardless of desires and needs.
We are no exception and almost every year we try to escape from the dirty, gray and not very pleasant winter conditions of our homeland to the country of a thousand smiles. This time we were lucky to visit a unique region in January 2025. For our vacation, we chose the resort of Pattaya, since we have already been to the island of Phuket in Thailand, which is considered one of the best resorts in the kingdom, more than once, but we have not yet fully explored Pattaya.
When going on such long trips, we never buy tours on our own. Most often, we have to contact travel agencies, where they select the right region, hotels and flights for us. As practice shows, independent flights and hotel reservations are not much cheaper, but there is some guarantee that you will definitely be waited for in the country where you are going.
This time we chose a flight with Aeroflot, which was supposed to take us from Moscow to Bangkok, and from there by transfer to a coastal hotel in Pattaya. The tour from Biblio Globus from January 18 to February 1, 2025 with flights, transfers, and hotel accommodation, where there were good breakfasts, cost us 230 thousand rubles for two.
The night flight from the capital of our country to the main city of Thailand is quite tiring and takes about 10 hours. Although Aeroflot planes, and these were huge and not yet old Boeing 777-300, have a good cabin layout and are comfortable. Oddly enough, even the multimedia systems built into the passenger seats worked properly.
The nice and smiling flight attendants did everything they could to make the flight go smoothly for the passengers. They fed us twice, even very well, which was good news. We can say that the long flight went smoothly and without incident, which cannot be said about the return flight from Bangkok to Moscow. But that is a completely different story, which you can read about by clicking on the link below.
At the exit of the huge Bangkok airport building, comfortable buses with a transfer guide were waiting for us, like in the photo above, and they took the guests of the Kingdom of Thailand to local resorts. Although the distance from Bangkok to Pattaya is quite decent and is about 120 kilometers, but on modern highways our transfer reached Pattaya in almost an hour.
In order not to bother tourists with long and tiring rides around the hotels at the entrance to the busy area of Pattaya, tourists from our bus were seated in small minivans and were then purposefully delivered to the nearest hotels.
For the next 12 days we chose the Long Beach Garden 4* hotel, which is located in the northern part of Pattaya and has access to Wong Amat beach. The hotel has several buildings, one of which is multi-storey, its own swimming pool and a small line of sandy beach on the shore of the Gulf of Thailand.
Although, as for me, pushing and queuing for sun loungers, jumping up in the morning to take a dip in the pool and the sea next to the hotel, is not a very good idea. Wong Amat Beach has an extended coastline and you can easily find a not very crowded place on the soft sand on the coast and calmly enjoy the clean, which is rare in Pattaya, waters of the Gulf of Thailand.
Although our hotel had quite decent and varied breakfasts, it is simply impossible to survive the whole day on one meal a day. For this reason, we found several pleasant local catering establishments near the hotel, where we dropped in to satisfy our hunger, which definitely comes after an active holiday on the coast.
Of course, you can eat at the food stalls, it's much cheaper there, but we haven't decided to try this experiment yet. As they say, health is more important. Although it depends on the person, many of our compatriots, even with children, use the services of local street vendors and eat with pleasure at the food stalls and local markets, where the food is actually much cheaper than in cafes.
Prices in local cafes like the one in the photo above are almost standard. Of course, it depends on what you order. Regular rice with shrimp, an omelette or fried chicken wings can be bought for 120-200 baht per serving, which is 360-600 rubles. So you can eat very well for two for about 1,000 rubles and up. It depends on your appetite. We had enough.
Plus, of course, there are fruits. Where would Thailand be without them? Almost every hotel, and even markets, sell fresh exotic fruits everywhere. It is simply impossible to resist. And the prices are reasonable. For example, the local fantastically tasty mango costs 100 baht for three kilograms. Where can you buy three kilograms of juicy fresh mango for 300 of our wooden rubles? Only in Thailand.
So if you roughly calculate the cost of food, plus add to this trips to the 7eleven store for water and snacks, then per day we approximately had about 2 thousand rubles at a minimum. It turns out that for 12 days of living in Pattaya we spent about 24 thousand rubles on food. And on top of that you still need to buy souvenirs, local alcohol and of course excursions.
There are a huge number of excursion programs in Pattaya. It is up to everyone to decide what they like. At least boat trips to local islands, at least to Bangkok, where by the way we were last year, at least to other countries. Many are not interested in this type of leisure at all. People just fly in to lie on the beach and drink local rum.
We have long dreamed of visiting one of the most famous ancient attractions in the world, which is located in Cambodia - this is the architectural complex of Angkor Wat. From Pattaya you can get there by bus or simply cross the border between Thailand and Cambodia by land.
Although the route is not short - about 400 kilometers, but the excursion lasts for two whole days, which means that you can get to know the life and history of a unique and incredibly colorful country - Cambodia in more detail. It is clear that such trips are not cheap and it is really not worth looking for a shortened version in street travel agencies.
We bought such an excursion from a hotel guide and for two days from January 25-26, 2025 it cost us 20 thousand baht for two. Which in our rubles is about 60 thousand. I agree it is not cheap, but it is worth paying such money for a dream and we did it.
Having summed up the whole trip, we can make a calculation of expenses. We paid 230 thousand rubles for the tour + self-catering, souvenirs and three liter bottles of local Sang Som rum in the Duty Free shop at Bangkok airport, it comes out to about 27 thousand rubles. In addition to all this, a luxurious two-day excursion to Cambodia is another 60 thousand rubles.
It turns out that for the entire adventure to Southeast Asia in January 2025 we paid 317 thousand rubles. This is what a winter vacation in tropical countries is like.
Good health and happy travels to everyone.
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