& Sons (Part 3)

Leisurely breakfast, a little time by the pool, and some quality time with the ivories.

I will miss this piano

Then we all headed out on foot, in an impromtu rain shower, to a nearby massage place.  Thailand has a reputation of questionable "massage" parlors, but it also has many legitimate places offering massages at ridiculously low prices.  No one should visit this fair country without enjoying this opportunity.

Savanna Massage is a chain with shops all over the city, the closest just a five or ten minute walk away.  We left our shoes at the door, and requested Thai massages for all - Tim Sr. added a foot massage as well.  They first wash everyone's feet as a ritual to prepare you for the massage.  This, to me, is almost the best part.

We were led upstairs to a hall of tiny rooms with raised floors, mats and pillows laid out with a set of cotton "pajamas" to wear.  All our rooms were adjacent, and the women chatted between the walls, evoking the old Elaine Benes nail salon episode from Seinfeld.  The hour-long Thai body massage

...includes rhythmic pressing and stretching of the entire body. This may include pulling fingers, toes, ears, cracking knuckles, walking on the recipient's back, and moving the recipient's body into many different positions.             - wikipedia

Some of it was a bit painful, and not entirely relaxing, but felt good for the most part.  The cost of the hour-long massage was around ten dollars.  How much would you pay for that in the US?

It was fairly late in the afternoon when we finally finished, and Mick picked us up for our last night out in Pattaya.  We wanted to get up to Buddha Hill before sunset, and the traffic was uncooperative.  It was twilight by the time we reached Wat Phra Yai (Thai name of the hilltop temple).  The 18-meter-high Buddha is easily visible from the bottom of the naga-protected steps, making for a reverent ascent to the top.  The city lights were just coming on, and the crowds were gone, making for a lovely visit.

People worshiping at the shrine

The boys wanted to visit a music store in town, so we battled our way through the traffic to Sukhumvit Rd. and the music store with the big guitar out front.  Our musicians enjoyed checking out the instruments, and tested some electric guitars before each deciding the prices were too good to pass up.  They both got nice guitars and cases at a good price.  (We nearly had to buy a few more acoustic guitars when I knocked one into another with my backpack - yikes.  Luckily no visible damage was apparent.  I decided it was better if I waited in another part of the store...)

With two satisfied customers in tow, Mick fought his way through the congestion to another of our favorite restaurants, Cherry's, for a late dinner.

Saturday morning, the guys got packed up and we spent our last hours enjoying the view on our deck.

Then we packed up the car and headed for Bangkok.  We wanted our guests to experience some of what Bangkok has to offer, if only for a bit.  The drive was long, especially once we got into the city.  We finally found our way to the Jatujak market, that huge weekend market that has a bit of everything.  By the time we found a place to park, it was late afternoon.  So we hoofed it through the crowded, smelly streets and entered the market at the entrance nearest to us, which turned out to be in the pet section.  We encountered row after row of puppies, fish, snakes, turtles, birds, squirrels, bats...plus all manner of pet supplies.  This seemed to be quite the opposite end of the market from where we'd entered before, and it took a lot of wandering to finally get to the non-pet sections.  We enjoyed browsing the myriad of goods; Mike picked up a shirt and some bandannas for his soccer team.  We enjoyed a nice fruit smoothie, browsed some more, and eventually made our way back to the car, using our spatially-talented son's sense of direction (you know the one).

Our car was boxed in, with cars parked perpendicular to the normal parking spots.  So Mick got out and pushed a big car out of the way - what is he, Superman?  Apparently people leave their cars in neutral so they can be shifted out of the way when necessary.  Wild.

I'd planned one more stop in Bangkok, but the traffic was bad, and the day was quickly disappearing.  Instead, we made our way toward the airport, and looked for a place to grab some dinner.  The area near the airport was quite a mix of businesses, like Pattaya.  We eventually settled on a place called The Zone, and made our way to the back to the air-conditioned section.  The waitresses were provocatively-dressed, and I'm not entirely sure it was a straight-up business, but we had a decent meal.  We still had time to kill before the boys needed to be at the airport, so we asked Mick to just drive until we found somewhere we could walk around.

We wound up at the Paseo Mall, a two-story, open-air mall with a strange, eclectic mix of cowboys and Christmas decorations.  We wandered around the shops, saw some kind of music show, and some Thai clowns making balloon animals for the kiddies.

We sat outside for a while, but the mosquitoes were being mean, so we headed inside Starbucks to while away our last precious minutes with our boys.  I'm afraid it was a bit of an anticlimactic ending to their visit, but we appreciated having them near for just a while longer.

At the airport, Tim went inside with the guys to make sure they could get their guitars taken care of, and I waited in the car with Mick.  His comment to me after the boys had gone - "Your sons look very same Kuhn Tim.  If I see them alone, I know they Kuhn Tim sons!"  Ah, yep.

Love you, boys - thanks for making the trip <3