When you are about to leave a beautiful place and suddenly you realize its time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
Day 1: September 3rd, 2016
A new place, a new beginning, all excited to move on to my next destination on a belief that the best is yet to come.
Packed all my bags all set to go, checked out from the hotel at around 11:00 am and spent my last few hours in Phuket, enjoying the serenity of the beautiful Pantong Beach.
At around 3:00 pm in the afternoon I got a pick up from the hotel lobby and started heading towards Phuket International Airport.
Finishing up with all the baggage and security check formalities, I boarded my next flight Boeing 747, one of the world's largest airplanes, the JUMBO JET. 😝😜
Being in air for an hour the flight landed back at Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Bangkok. A representative was already at the airport Exit C Gate 10 to pick me up. We left the airport at around 5:30 pm and headed towards my next destination.
Almost in an hour, reached in the most happening city of Thailand, Pattaya. He dropped me at "The Season Pattaya". Received my room keys from the reception, the staff accompanied me to show my room.
Happiness is jumping, playing and relaxing into the swimming pool after a long tiring journey and that took me two hours to freshen up. 😁
It was around 9:00 pm I started walking up the roads, there were a lot of Indian Restaurants nearby (Punjabi Tadka, Delhi Darbar etc.). After the dinner walked up to the main street near Pattaya Bay and sat there for a while.
At around 12:00 am it all started becoming live, as I kept walking along side Pattaya Beach, I reached the best place to be at Pattaya.. "THE WALKING STREET".
As I entered the street I saw a lot of pubs, bars, clubs, shops etc. alongside, loud music, folks high on music and drinks enjoying to their fullest, people coordinating and dancing on street, it felt like a heaven on earth.
My favorite part of the trip was walking this street, seeing folks celebrate their lives, living the moment, leaving behind all their regrets, fears, worries and sorrows.
It was around 4:00 am, got a two wheeler taxi from the walking street and came back to my hotel to relax a bit and be prepared for the next day.
Day 2: September 4th, 2016
Morning 9:00 am, a van came to pick me up from Thai Sky Adventures and all excited we headed towards the venue. It took us two hours to reach the main office of Thai Sky Adventures.
Went onto the reception to fill up the required forms, signature on the terms and conditions after which I got my badge written as v+s (video+snap) which costed me 20K baht for ski diving and 4.5K baht for v+s.
The venue was over crowded and there were a lot of folks from different places, came to experience the thrill. Finished my brunch and waited in common room along with other folks.
After a long wait at around 3:00 pm a diving instructor called my name. As he was tying the safety belts around me, he gave me certain instructions to follow while jumping from the tandem.
We were all set and as we walked towards the tandem, I felt butterflies in my stomach.
My diving instructor Mr. Troy Pullman was walking beside me, with much curiosity I asked him, "what if something happens while jumping from the tandem?".
He smiled back at me and said, "you are so light weight, you will easily fly in air so don't think so much, just follow my instructions, relax and enjoy the dive."
We sat inside the tandem and it started moving up. I was all excited, getting clicked with him before my jump.
As the plane reached to a certain height, Mr. Troy whispered in my ears, you are all properly tied to me and I will not let anything happen to you, just enjoy the dive.
At that very moment I believed him and my fear was gone and I was ready to jump.
As we reached 14000ft above the ground, he opened the tandem door and we were literally hanging out of it. The cameraman did the first jump with his Go-Pro fitted on top of his helmet and on a count of three we jumped out and flipped in air.
It was all magical and such a beautiful moment of my life watching the earth from a different view.
I could not imagine I was able to do it and was literally flying in air above the clouds like a free bird.
Soon after 10 minutes he opened the parachute and made it move left, right, in circles, we were dancing in air, taking rounds of the whole place, it was so much fun, I did not wanted to land on earth.
We flew over to a certain height and then he instructed me to lift my feet in air and start running as soon as we land.
As we moved towards the ground, I followed his instructions and landed safely.
After the landing he asked, "Would you like to go for it again?". I took few seconds to come out of that inertia of motion and said, "Definitely why not, I came to Pattaya especially for Ski Diving".
All throughout the journey you keep meeting some inspiring people and he is one amongst them with a very enthusiastic and encouraging personality, its his job to jump so many times everyday from 14000 ft. above and he loves it.
His inspiring nature made me forget the fear and I still remember his words after my dive when he told me," Since you have done it once, you are already ahead of most other people in this world and I am proud of you..!!"
A jeep carried us all back and we moved back to the venue and collected all my ski diving snaps, videos and certificates. Biding goodbye to Mr. Troy and Thai Sky Adventures, I left the place and moved back to my hotel.
Day 3: September 5th, 2016
After the morning breakfast, I went to the Pattaya Bay and a boat carried us all to the Coral Island. There was a guide to instruct us about the whole day plan.
We started with parasailing and I was the first one to go for it in the entire group. I wore a safety life jacket and they tied me with a parachute and a boat started dragging me as I ran towards it and started flying in air over the water.
It was always on my to do list and I loved being able to fly over water literally. The boat took a round and dipped me in water for a second and then landed me back.
As we finished with parasailing, another boat carried us all to a place where they conduct undersea walk for all the tourists in coral island. An instructor instructed us about various hand signs to be followed under water in case of any emergency like 👌 means OK and 👍 means get me out of water etc.
Being little scared I was the second person to go for it and they had put a glass helmet on my head which was connected to oxygen cylinders kept on the boat and as I went inside water a life guard was there with me.
I felt a sudden pain in my ears like they were about to burst because of sudden pressure change and I started showing him 👍 sign. He tried to make me calm and gave me signs to hold my nose and breathe out heavily after which I felt much better.
As everyone was walking under water, we saw a lot of fishes floating around us, some beautiful coral reefs and life guards taking our snaps.
They also carried some bread loafs with them and they gave a piece of bread loaf for us to hold to attract more fishes towards us and as I held the bread loaf in my hand, I was surrounded by a lot of fishes, it was an awesome experience to be able to breathe under water and play with all the fishes around you.
We were supposed to normally walk on water but there was a moment when I lost balance and suddenly started floating up with all the water starting to fill up in my helmet.
Suddenly the life guard got hold of me and pulled me back towards the ground and saved my life.
After this incident he was constantly supervising on me as I walked by the coral reefs playing with the fishes.
In about 30 minutes we all came out and another boat carried us all to the shore where we went for Jets-Ki and Banana Boating. After my lunch at around 2:30 pm spent sometime at the beach side in Coral Island, then a boat carried us all back to Pattaya Beach and I reached my hotel at around 6:30 pm.
After a bit of relaxing, as I started walking by I met this Indian Aunt and Uncle who was there with me in the Coral Island Tour. Aunt suggested me to go for No Oil No Cream Massage of Nantika Physical Thai Massage Parlor which she just took and came back.
As I moved forward, I saw that Parlor fully crowded with lot of folks lined up to get a massage. Since it was a long and tiring day I decided to go for it.
As I went inside, a lady came to me and started suggesting their packages. Initially I thought of going for foot spa but then I decided to go with the Aunt's choice of No Oil, No Cream massage which was costing me around 350 baht.
The lady asked me to remove my foot wear, washed my feet and then asked me to go upstairs. There was a huge room with lot of curtains.
She handed me over a pair of coffee color traditional clothes to change and then started with the massage. It felt like I did the wrong choice as she was literally trying to break my bones by playing Judo Karate with me. Seeing the weird expressions on my face, she started laughing and said," I think you came here for the first time. Don't worry you will get used to it." 😁
As it finally got over, I did the payment and walked out of the parlor. I realized all the pain and tiredness was gone and I was all set to enjoy The Walking Street. As I walked by and reached the end of that street, I saw a bridge on the Pattaya Beach where not much folks were there. I started walking on the bridge and found someone standing alone and so seriously trying to focus on something.
As I looked closely, he seemed to be a photographer trying to capture the night view of the whole lighted up Pattaya City along with its shadow in the water and he captured it beautifully. We became friends and there I got to know Mr. Ape House, the owner of his own magazine in New York, Mr. Photographer and a person who loves to live his life on his own terms, truly an inspiration.
As we walked up the bridge, he had a yellow scooty and he gave me a ride till his friend's shop and dropped the scooty there. We started walking back to the Walking Street, it was so much of fun and no matter how many times you walk through it, you can never get bored.
We kept walking till we reached the Pattaya Beach, we went to a DMart, got something to drink, sat a while on the beach, talked about our lives and soon it was time to bid goodbye to my new friend and move on to my next destination.
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