Thailand

Panda Garden at Nong Nooch Village

We left Singapore about 2 PM on Monday and crossed the Bay of Thailand over the next two days, landing at the port of Laem Chabang at 10 AM today. The port is just outside the beach resort town of Pattaya. We saw a lot of condominium towers and restaurants to serve the many who escape winter here. Our tour went to Nong Nooch Village, which was primarily a themed garden. First was a French garden, but after that each garden had statues to set a theme: penguins, mastodons, flamingos, tigers, and turtles. While the statues were different, the garden plants were not varied. They also featured a show with Thai dancing and Thai boxing (very staged). The best part of the show were the elephants who played basketball, rode bikes, bowled, and painted rural scenes.
We didn't get back to the ship until 7 PM, an hour past our 6 PM early seating. So we ate at the buffet, only to find out the next day that only 150 of the 1100 people showed up for dinner. They encouraged us to eat at our regular seating up to 7 each evening.
After dinner they had a local dance troop come in and entertain with dances from the various areas of Thailand. The costumes were fantastic.