I haven't lived here for ages but I have been here long enough to know that there are a few famous cities here in Thailand that attracts the most tourists to beaches. They are Phuket, Koh Samui, and Pattaya and I have been to all three. I would rank them in this order
- Samui
- Phuket
- Pattaya
But this isonly because they are the only 3 that I am allowing myself to pick from. In reality I think that Phuket and Pattaya are pretty terrible and Samui is headed that way as well if they continue to grow.
But Pattaya is just awful in every way and I don't understand why anyone goes there. It has almost no redeeming qualities and the main one we can start with is that there is virtually nothing special about the main beach that is the supposed reason why people go there in the first place.
I don't know what is going on with those red and white barricades, perhaps a method of preventing boats from coming to the shore. If that is the case I find it amusing that this is the only way. What ever happened to police and fining people? Well nevermind, I already know the answer to that. The police would just start taking bribes.
If you look closely at the above picture you can see several parachutes and that is people that are para-sailing I think it is called where you get towed around by a parachute for views from the sky. This is a noise pollution thing and a blemish on the landscape. It also goes on all day, every day. Then there are the jetskis constantly shooting in and out of the beach all day.
Combine this with the fact that if you do find a place in the shade you will be harassed by a never-ending line of people selling stuff and it is impossible to relax. The water has to be heavily photoshopped in order to make it look that light blue that everyone loves and of course there is garbage everywhere.
I have been to Pattaya only a couple of times. Once it was because a friend had a meeting with a dodgy agent there for his retirement visa, and another time, which was my first time, it was because I wanted to see for myself how good or bad it was.
The only thing I can come up with for why people would go here is because prostitution is just everywhere and if someone is a sex-tourist then this is the place to go. This sort of industry exists everywhere else in Thailand as well and even though it is on a very low level and apparently carefully controlled by the rather militaristic police in Chiang Mai, we do have a red-light district in my city as well.
But in Pattaya, it is basically the theme of the entire city. No matter where you go you will be harassed by "herrro hannnsomme man!" girls leaning out of bars and you will constantly see middle aged to older, normally overweight men walking hand in hand with some svelte Thai woman 20-30 years younger than they are.
I am not judging anyone here: if that is what you want to do and it is allowed (and I think it should be allowed) then go for it! This does seem to be the only real reason to go to Pattaya though.
I was perusing the English-language Thailand news this morning and several stories were based out of Pattaya. They are as follows
- Cambodian man was beaten up for secretly filming sexual activity
- Police escort mother and child begging duo home after violent incident
- Tourists stranded after flash floods swamp Pattaya streets
- Residents complain of Pattaya security guard's violent behavior
- Pattaya tourist scammed over costly beauty products
- British man dies after fall from Pattaya hotel
- Indian tourist bloodied by trangender's high heel
There's more of course but these are the stories just in the past week. There was only a few positive stories and they were about starting to force people to wear helmets on motorbikes and something about getting more money for local hospitals. The motorbike thing I find sad and amusing because that has been a law for long since I moved here but they don't enforce it because if people all of a sudden started wearing helmets all the time the police would lose out on a great deal of their bribe money. Therefore it is only enforced every now and then and no paperwork is filed other than very small pieces of paper going into police pockets.
There are so many beautiful and amazing beaches in Thailand so I really don't understand why anyone would go to Pattaya when there are so many better, and cheaper, alternatives. Perhaps it is because it is so close to Bangkok but honestly, if the 90 minutes taxi ride is the only reason why you are going there, maybe take a 1 hour flight down to Krabi or Ranong and go to the much better and more scenic beaches that they have there. If it is prostitutes you are after ok, Pattaya is your mecca, but they exist in these other places as well.
I just don't get it. If you are traveling to Thailand and are NOT looking for hookers, do yourself a huge favor and go ahead and scratch Pattaya off your list of possible destinations.