Королевство Сиам Kingdom of Siam

We went to Thailand for the first time, before that we rested in Turkey, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and finally got to the Kingdom of Siam. Rested with a group of 5 people. We arrived at the hotel at about 11 o'clock, tired but excited (it took 2 days to get from home to the hotel). The rooms were decorated very quickly, we bought a standard, a 3 * hotel, we were pleasantly surprised that the rooms were very good for a hotel of this category: a spacious room, new furniture, a plasma TV, new plumbing, there is a separate shower and bathtub, a large balcony and great view (I was missing only a hair dryer in the room). After a shower, we decided to immediately go to get acquainted with the hotel and the surrounding area. It turned out that we were settled in the main building (I don’t remember exactly, about 7 floors), where there was a reception and a breakfast restaurant. On the territory of the hotel there are also 3 three-story buildings, outwardly very nice and two swimming pools. Our men then regretted that we were not settled in three-story buildings near the pools, later their dream came true, but not at all as expected. On the penultimate day of our stay at the hotel, we received a notification about the need to move to standard rooms, as it turned out, we had been living in deluxe rooms all this time (there were no places in the standards). The standards were just in the old three-story buildings and turned out to be so miserable that we were simply horrified, it’s good that we spent only one night in them. Old curtains, moldy smell, Soviet-era refrigerator, shower - a hole in the floor of the toilet room behind a curtain, faucets leak, the toilet does not flush. In general, buy only deluxe rooms in Prima Villa (on the spot you can pay extra 500 baht per day - about 18 dollars). The hotel is located in the second line, about 200 meters from the beach, in the first line opposite the prima villa there is the Centara Grand Mirage, a huge hotel with ugly architecture, if from the side of the prima it is still nothing, then from the sea it looks disgusting. Nearby there are 24-hour shops with everything you need (except for hairspray - it is not found anywhere in Thailand! ) And street vendors with various goodies. To the first street (where tuk-tuks go), stomp in the opposite direction from the sea for 300 meters, if you wish, you can, of course, take a taxi directly from the hotel. The beach is very personal (not the cleanest as they wrote, but better than in the center). There are more merchants on the beach than vacationers, do not get bored and fall asleep in the sun until you buy something from them. Do not be afraid to bargain - prices are discounted up to 50%. Also, the prices are good at the night market and in Bangkok, and in the shopping centers of Pattaya the same product is more expensive. Breakfast at the hotel is standard: eggs, sausages, vegetables, noodles, rice, toast, jam. Not thick, but tasty. You can have lunch and dinner everywhere, cafes, restaurants, eateries, bars at every step, the impression is that even the locals do not cook at home, but eat in the city. You can buy food on the street and sit by the pool. There was not enough dairy products (what was - some kind of surrogate). Nearby there is a Russian restaurant with a European menu, but there are high prices and small portions. The hotel mainly rests Russian-speaking (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs) and Chinese. The excursion program in Pattaya is very rich, it’s impossible to cover all the programs for a vacation trip, we took the Kwai River, Samet Island, Nung Nooch Park, Khao Kheo Zoo, an introductory tour of the temples of Pattaya from our tour operator, drove to crocodile and snake farms for free. The rest is excellent, if not for such a long road.