Every few months I travel to various countries within the Asia Pacific and Africa region for work. This month my job took me to Thailand for two weeks. Although having visited Patong Beach, Phuket Thailand in April this year, my visit this time was to our new manufacturing facility in Rayong where we build the all new global Focus. Rayong is essentially a manufacturing city just beginning to develop and thus there is not much in the form of hotels, entertainment, shopping, etc. As a result, traveling Ford employees stay in Pattaya Beach, a tourist destination similar to Phuket. The only down side is the one hour drive to work and back in a shuttle captivated by sub-standard road infrastructure, traffic congestion, motor scooters and very aggressive driving (an adventure each day!). For this work trip we decided to take the boys out of school for one week and have them experience Pattaya Beach. I arrived in Pattaya the first week by myself and was joined in the second week by Natalie and the boys.
When visiting this region all Ford employees stay at the Holiday Inn Pattaya. This is a very nice hotel located right on Beach Road, situated right on the water. Our room was on the 25th floor with a spectacular view of the city. There was one main restaurant in the hotel we ate each night at for dinner, convenient due to my late hours during the week. The hotel has a very nice kids pool with a water slide that the boys utilized all week and then there was another infinity pool that looked onto the Gulf of Thailand. The hotel staff was great and the friendly Thai staff quickly become good friends with the very social Cooper and Brady Bond.
The first week while traveling alone I was able to get a chance to experience golf in Thailand. This was a real treat for me as I was able to gain access to Amata Springs private Country Club. This is where the Asian Amateur is played, host of the PGA Thailand Golf Championship and also the course Tiger played in his return to Thailand (yes kind of a big deal ;) I had a wonderful day golfing and made some great new friends at the club. The highlight of the round was a chance to play one of the only floating island greens in the world that is only accessible by boat. Throughout the round I would look at the island green visible throughout the course and hope that I would hit a solid shot and not land in the water! Finally arriving at the hole, nervous while addressing the ball I hit a firm 9 iron 140 yards landing 6 feet from the hole leading to a par! The rest of my week was filled with work and anticipating my family arrival.
Natalie and the boys arrived on Friday evening from the airport so we had the weekend as a family to enjoy Pattaya. The weather was generally on and off again rain as Sept/Oct is the rainy season in Thailand, however the rain seldom lasts all day and we were still able to fit in many fun activities. One of the destinations was the Centara Grand Mirage Beach resort. This is another hotel in Pattaya but they provide day passes to their swimming pool which is beautifully situated on the beach with water slides, lazy river and a few rock formations to jump from into the pool. The boys of course had a great time.
Another great activity was visiting the Khao Kheow Open Zoo. We all had a blast, it was unlike any zoo we had ever been to in the past. What made this zoo so unique was the golf cart we rented to ride from each exhibit. The highlight was the best wild animal show we had ever seen complete with tigers swimming in the water to hunting down game twenty feet in the air. The boys were able to feed so many animals with fresh fruit and vegetables we purchased before entering the zoo and also have their picture taken with many animals.
On another day Natalie and the boys spent an afternoon at an Elephant Sanctuary. Here they were able to ride, pet and feed elephants. The most exciting part being the hour long trek through the jungle and water!
Lastly Natalie and the boys visited the Tiger Zoo in Pattaya. Here they had pictures with many animals and were even able to hold a baby tiger and alligator. They even had the chance to bottle feed milk to a baby tiger!
We all had a great time while visiting Pattaya and looking forward to our next family vacation in 5 days to Bali!!
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