On Sunday (?) I decided to mix things up a little bit and try a different run route.  Unfortunately I picked a busy beachfront road on a holiday weekend because I lack common sense and critical thinking skills.  The traffic – both vehicular and pedestrian – and the fact that I was stopping to snap pictures really kept me from getting into a good rhythm and the run felt way harder than it should have.  In fact I only did ~45 minutes of what was going to be a 60-minute run.

The search for a decent run route anywhere near my home continues.  As a reminder here is the map shot fromGarmin Connect of the route:

This run (red route) was along a beach that is south of the beach road where I start 99.9% of my run routes (green arrow and circle).

Here are a few pics I snapped along the way (click on any picture for a larger version . . . I think.  I’m still learning how this blog platform works . . .).

The beaches in Pattaya are completely overrun with powerboats and jet skis.  Some of the power boats take passengers to the offshore islands but a lot of them tow these inflatable tubes behind them and make sharp turns to dump their riders.  They are wildly popular.

Usually there are 6-8 people per banana thingy.

Mobile food vendors are everywhere in Pattaya but especially along the beach front roads.  This set up – a charcoal grill sidecar bolted onto a two-stroke scooter is the most common.  It’s the New-York-City-hot-dog-cart of Thailand.  This guy was selling balls of meat and dried cuttlefish.  Both are very common and popular street food in Pattaya.

Now these guys are the high end food trucks of Thailand.  I don’t know how they’d fare on The Great Food Truck Race but they prep and cook while they’re moving and sell just about the freshest seafood you can get, among other things.

This is how they get all the power boats and jet skis in and out of the water.  That tractor pulls them up and then starts double and triple parking the trailered watercraft along the main beach access road until their owners are good and ready to take them away.  Traffic in Thailand is a little frustrating.

These are small fishing boats.  Usually one or two man operations they troll around offshore and sell most of their catch to the restaurants and mobile food carts and trucks right along the beach.

This Mad Max looking thing is how they haul the fishing boats up onto the beach.  The picture doesn’t show it well but that’s a Kubota diesel engine rigged to a winching wheel that has a one inch hawser on it.  The run the rope down to the water, hook it to the bow of the boat and let ‘er rip until the boat is up against the sea wall.  Oh, and the whole diesel engine-winch thingamajig is built onto a Honda scooter sidecar.  I should have grabbed a picture from the other side too but I was on the move.

Finally, here’s a lovely self portrait, taken at arms length and in full stride.  I clearly need to focus on keeping my mouth shut during self portrait time.