Jomtien Beach

A beautiful sunset

Us at the beach!

Enjoying the beach. By this point the umbrellas had been taken down and the sun was setting.

Greg reading the last of his book.

A view of Pattaya.

Yesterday we got up, made some sandwiches, cut up some pineapple, packed our beach bag and headed to the beach!

First Adventure: Getting to the Beach

We knew we wanted to get to Pattaya, Thailand and had our GPS unit to help us get there. We quickly realized that I should have looked at a map before leaving. It took us awhile to get out of Bangkok and I eventually just found a town on the GPS located by the Gulf of Thailand and guided us there. The problem with that was, it was far away from Pattaya and far from the expressway. We added an extra hour to our trip. We arrived in Pattaya about 3 hours after leaving.

2nd Adventure: Finding a good beach

We arrived to Pattaya to find it bustling and jammed packed full of people enjoying the weekend. We navigated to the road directly by the beach and saw the craziness that people had warned us about. While we believed there was beach, you couldn't see much of it because it was lined with umbrellas and chairs and vendors. The main street was jammed with cars, stores, restaurants and people. It was crazy. We took a loop north of town and then decided to head south. We ended up stopping at a look out point for some good views. From there we could see an island off the coast that we know you can take a ferry to and we decided we wanted to look that up before coming down again. After the pit stop we headed farther south and found Jomtien Beach.

This beach had umbrellas, vendors, and people, but not as many. We easily found a parking spot and navigated the beach. The weather wasn't too sunny and our PB&J's weren't holding us over, so we hopped back into the car and drove the entire stretch of beach. We spotted and then returned to a little restaurant called Cafe Le Mar. We ate with a view of the ocean and then took advantage of their chairs on the beach.

On the beach I ordered a water with ice, Greg had a beer and for a little over $3 we enjoyed the beach complete with a place to sit and beverage to drink. We stayed until sunset. Reading, swimming and just enjoying the view.

The ocean itself was actually quite dirty. There was garbage in places and the ground was sandy, so when the waves were coming it wasn't that clear. Greg did see many small crabs though and it was nice to see many locals enjoy the water as they got off work (many just jumping in with their clothes and then watching the sun go down with friends). The journey home took just about 1 Hour and 45 Minutes. It was a great day on the beach!