MrWorldwide

Coming down so hard this afternoon I cant even hear the DVD I'm trying to watch ...

Was at my Embassy earlier this year, and they told me, we don't know how this gonna end but all the figures about export,tourism and whatever that happy dude announces they are all made up.

I assume those people know a little more than us.

When they can give me a reliable estimate of the size of the cash economy in this country, and show me the methodology used in arriving at that figure, I'll take the stats more seriously. That said, I believe exported goods and passenger arrivals can both be reliably counted : whether we're presented with the actual data is a question for the people at the top in Bangkok. Markets respond to those numbers, regardless of their authenticity, so I guess there is a case for continuing to present a sunny-side-up picture of the economy.

I was just in Big C South Pattaya. All the tables that use to sell souvenirs near the food court are gone. So is the booth selling wine. Not enough tourists???

Can't post a link, but take a look at the article in the Bangkok Post today: Teflon Thailand starts to flake

Interesting comment from the lady working in the car dealership.

Thanks Craig - I'll chase up a copy when I go to get my morning (!) coffee. I suspect that alarm bells are ringing in various quarters - the General sounded as defensive as any elected politician I've ever heard in his last televised address - but its the people at the bottom of the pyramid who are going to really feel the pain when the myth of full employment really starts to unravel. Interesting times ahead.

OP: An issue you have not mentioned.

I personally know a number of Pattaya born Thais who suffer from poverty. In fact, via my wife, I have helped out some who were desperate for cash to pay off black market loans they had incured to pay for things such as school uniforms and better access to medical care from places such as Red Cross Hospital in Sri Racha (many do not trust Banglamung govt hospital for serious illness). Black money is a major curse in Thailand and contributes to the overall level of street crime, many stay deeply in debt for year upon year just to cater for family requirements.

As an aside you probably know the aged pension for those who worked in the cash society is about 700 baht a month, thus putting further pressure on the household budget.

I do know that endemic use of YaBa contributes to a great deal of street crime, you can guess who mainly controls the distribution in Pattaya to street level gangs.

Excellent point, and you may have filled in a massive gap in my understanding of the resident Thai population here. I know its a stereotype but I tend to assume that most Chinese Thais are relatively well off financially : logic says that there must be a percentage of that population which isnt doing so well, but I ignored them. Whatever the stats say, there also has to be a segment of the population born here to parents from outside Chonburi province and for whatever reason they've remained in Pattaya. Perhaps someone who can read Thai and has access to the data from the last census might be able to do a better job than this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattaya#Demographics

I also admit I dont have any figures on drug abuse in Pattaya - only anecdotal evidence that its a growing problem, but that's the line the tabloid media pushes so I'll leave it there. If I had to give an estimate of the number of sex workers I've encountered with a physical and mental dependence on alcohol to get through an average day, it would be in the region of 50% : that's a staggering number of people in a city like Pattaya. I dont need to breath-test every motorbike rider in Pattaya to know that this town consumes more than its fair share of alcohol - the wholesaler near me is constantly loading and unloading vehicles from their cramped Klang warehouse and the karaoke bars downstairs are still going strong well after the Farang bar contingent have left for the night.

On your other point, I didnt even know there *was* an aged pension in Thailand - I just assumed the rest of the family was responsible for mama and papa in their old age. All extra pressure to send money home, and I'm left wondering how much of that money is still finding its way back to Isaan in 2015.

Pattaya has changed in the last 50 years from a village to a town to a city and a pretty big city at that. It's a city designed; in the main; to attract tourists and it does seem to do a decent job of it. There are drawbacks, sure, but many positives too. It's a personal choice that people make about whether the positives outweigh the negatives and they can only gain a true perspective by visiting or living in the place, not by reading newspaper reports or even posts on an internet forum.

I take your point champers - I've lived here for the past 12 months and was a regular visitor for 18 years before that, so this isnt exactly my first rodeo. I spend a lot of time on the alleged 'mean streets' in central Pattaya at night but I dont go looking for trouble and thankfully it hasnt come looking for me, at least not yet. When it comes to trying to point out why Pattaya may be facing issues in 2015 and why I fear things could get worse, I readily admit that I dont have the perspective of someone who has been here for 20+ years, but I imagiine that many of those folks currently live their lives well away from the nightlife strip - always happy to hear otherwise. I readily admit that my post is based on way too much speculation, but at the other end of that we have the steady stream of negative publicity from the likes of PattayaOne and other news agencies happy to plaster photos of blood-soaked foreigners all over their site for the world to see. I also wanted to be able to refer some of the serial 'Pattaya is a dreadful place' posters to some of the reasons why I believe we have problems with violent crime without having to repeat my somewhat contrived arithmetic.

Absolutely nothing in those POne photos tells me it was anything other than a normal Saturday afternoon during the worst high season in living memory. I dont know where the thousands of new arrivals are, but I'm heading out tonight in the hope that there might be some life in the bars.

Is violent crime actually up in percentage or is it the tabloids are just reporting it more ?

I've tried to make that point in several posts - if you spend your days at the PattayaOne site, nothing good ever happens in Pattaya and nothing good ever will. It's a Pattaya bashers dream come true.

AFAIK, there is no equivalent for BKK and the logistics of chasing every incident requiring police presence in Bangkok would be untenable even for the Bangkok Post. Pattaya - particularly central Pattaya - is a ridiculously small area compared to Bangkok and Chiang Mai - they can have someone there on a motorbike in minutes in all but the worst gridlock. Get a police scanner or simply pay someone on Soi 9 to alert you every time there is a callout and you're away : instant on-the-spot news service.

OK - provocative title, but bear with me and hopefully we can have a sane discussion around this. Many are asking why Pattaya seems to be in the grip of a wave of violent crime - I suspect Howard at PattayaOne might be the man to answer that, but bear with me. I'm not being provocative for the sake of it - if you want to challenge any of this I have no problem - all I ask is that you attempt to do your own estimates before commenting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Thailand#Population

http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/thailand/overview

http://www.indexmundi.com/thailand/population_below_poverty_line.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Thailand#Age_structure

From our stats, 13.2% of the Thai population lives below the poverty line - close to 9 million people. Obviously, many of those are too young or too old / infirm to work, so I've approached it from a slightly different angle.

- lets assume that the population of Thailand between 15 and 55 is ~30 million people - a little under half the 67 million total - just a guesstimate

- take the bottom 10% of that 30 million and you've got 3 million people who are struggling on a daily basis, be it Bangkok or Nakhon Nowhere

- I'm guessing the 'easy money' on offer in Pattaya looks awfully good to a large percentage of that 3 million, but statistically there are between 3-400,000 people in Pattaya at any given time and I estimate roughly 100,000 of those are rural Thais forced to work here out of economic necessity. Statistically, the vast majority of the 100,000 Thais who registered as residents of Pattaya in the last census are Chinese Thais : I'm going to focus on those camping out here not the year-round residents. I've also made no attempt to estimate the number of Thais who live in Pattaya and work in factories in Chonburi - given the commute, I would have thought there was cheaper accommodation on offer closer to said factories. Push on.

So you've got ~100,000 people of working age trying to make enough money to send home or simply keep their heads above water here. Some are clearly doing well - I think some of the food vendors make a good living if the number of people I see lined up at their carts each evening is any indication and others have found 'proper' jobs in retail / tourism etc. Fantastic - lets call that our 'top 30%'.

At this point some will argue with my numbers - fine - but even if my remaining 70% was only 35,000 Thai people living from one day to the next, is that a figure you'd be happy with in a comparably sized city in your home country ? For the purpose of this exercise, let's work from 70,000 Thais of working age in Pattaya who have no guarantee that they will be able to pay their rent at the end of the month, and at this stage I would definitely include many of Pattaya's sex workers in that group. Many of the jobs occupied by rural Thais from outside Chonburi are extremely sensitive to drops in tourism - baht bus/motosai drivers, vendors (particularly people selling something other than food), restaurant workers, laborers, mechanics and, of course, sex workers. I wont attempt to fit Police or those who work for City Hall into that number but obviously they do get some kind of monthly paycheck - many of the girls currently work for ladydrinks, tips and barfines, although a few are still being paid a meagre salary. No idea how the massage harpies are paid but I'm lumping them in with sex workers - bar and street - for the sake of this exercise.

OK - let's take it a step further and apply the 10% rule to that 70k figure - we now have 7000 Thai people who definitely know what it is to go hungry even in a city with so much waste. You can see some of them sleeping rough on Pattaya's streets and many of the night-time beach crowd are inevitably part of that contingent. 7000 people of working age without a great deal to lose in a city which is normally filled with big spending, heavy drinking party people from other countries. People who - if they still have family - cant offer them any sort of regular financial support. If you wanted to write a novel around themes like drug addiction, violence and alcoholism, this is the end of town I'd start at.

We now have our bottom 10%, but surely they cant all be thieves / rapists / murderers ? Contrary to what some here might believe, I sincerely doubt that there are 7000 people in Pattaya currently engaged in serious criminal activity on a regular basis - in the absence of any hard data from the RTP that's purely my assumption. Let's give the 10% rule one more shot : 700 Thai people with nothing to lose and a propensity for crimes that directly impact another human being - assault, theft, drugging or any combination of the above.

Note that I've made no attempt to include the Cambodians, Burmese and Laos citizens who also live here - that's a topic for another thread. Nope, just rural Thais who may or may not consider violent crime a means to an end courtesy of the desperate position many of them are in. I'm also making no attempt to include domestic violence or neighbourhood disputes, although both could obviously be traced back to people on the margins.

To recap:

- ~100k rural Thais of working age in Pattaya from a pool of roughly 3 million at the bottom end of the Thai wealth pyramid dominated by a tiny but incredibly wealthy elite in Bangkok

- only ~30k of that number - in my estimation - are able to point to the calendar and know they will receive 'x' thousand baht for their efforts a month from now

- of the remaining 70k, 7000 are seriously at risk of ending up alongside the beggars already working Pattaya's streets or worse

- finally, IME, there are some 700 Thai people between 15 and 55 in Pattaya prepared to commit violent crime to get what they need, be it food, drugs, alcohol or whatever

- whether their victims are foreigners or other Thais, its often violent crime and it still traumatises the victim

If you disagree with my methodology, OK - I'm not a criminologist or a sociologist, but how many of us couldn't readily identify that bottom group in the towns we grew up in ? Whether it's 70, 700 or 70,000 (Manila ?), there is definitely a hardcore element here who have absolutely no problem with theft, and if violence has to be part of that process it would seem they have no problem with that either. Once you cross that line, taking your frustrations out on others purely to relieve the boredom of an existence spent standing on Beach Road or hanging around outside a karaoke bar has to be an option. Throw in the likelihood that the Thai GF is no longer bringing home several hundred baht in tips/ladydrinks and you've got an angry young man waiting to unleash on someone.

Logically, I could do a spreadsheet for every town in Thailand, change my percentages depending on our collective perception of crime rates in that town, but in the absence of anything from the RTP it would all be speculation. All I'm concerned with atm is Pattaya and the endless round of 'wow - there seem to be a lot of gang attacks in Pattaya !' posts in various threads - my argument is simple:

- Pattaya has attracted many of Thailand's most vulnerable - the good, the bad and the seriously criminal

- in the good years, there was enough money working its way through the town that the majority got what they came here for

- a woeful 'high' season on the back of two low seasons in previous years is making it increasingly hard for Thais on the margins to get their share

- there will always be a small percentage prepared to do whatever it takes to get what they want/need : what the downturn has done is make the pool larger and remove the likelihood that they can rely on other Thais for food and shelter. If desperation breeds crime, the rest is a formality.

How many of that hardcore group would be here if Pattaya was just another Thai city on the coast like Rayong ? I have no idea, but we arent talking Rayong. We're talking about a city where the Police are as corrupt as anywhere else in the country, where the application of the law is often baffling (to say the least) and where anyone with enough money can reportedly buy their way out of almost anything. Whether you accept the figure I've plucked from thin air is irrelevant - clearly, there is a section of the Thai population in Pattaya who have no issue taking what isnt theirs and I believe that was always going to happen when you loaded the town with the very bottom of the aforementioned pyramid. I'm happy to see any verifiable figures anyone else wants to post - also happy to hear that my methodology wont make the New England Journal of Sociology.

I'm still happy to walk Pattaya's streets - Songkran notwithstanding - but I think the BiB need to wake up and realise that giving people 500 baht fines and putting them back on the streets isnt going to solve anything. For the sake of everyone in this town - Thai and foreigner alike - the Police have to start looking at this as a problem which wont magically disappear in low season - if anything, it will probably intensify. Should one of the conditions of a parolee's return to Thai society be that he/she doesnt live in Pattaya/Phuket for the first 6 months post release ? Just putting it out there, Pol Col Superimposinguniform.

Sane replies most welcome.

It is time there was a Pattaya forum , then the rapes ,murders ,beatings, drug busts and suicides could all be read in one hit.

http://pattayaone.net

Bookmark it - all the rapes and murders you could ever hope for. As for a 'Pattaya forum', you're in it. Look at the navigation links at the top of the page below the ThaiVisa banner.

1. Thailand Forum
3. → Thailand Local Forums
5. → Pattaya Forum
7. → Pattaya News Clippings
9. → Necklace Snatch caught on CCTV in Central Pattaya

@dirtycash if 99% of the bargirls in and around Buakhow have been anywhere near your willy, chances are that you were the instigator. The only working 'girls' I know who resort to that with someone they dont know - particularly sober - are katoeys. The desperation in the area you mention is palpable and I doubt the current shower is improving their business prospects atm.

Buy Bose. Work well in every application and country!

Oh please - they made exactly one speaker considered worthy of the term 'audiophile' and now that the founder is dead I doubt they'll even bother continuing with those monsters. The instructions for setting the 901s up properly to get them firing to their full potential point to the need for a large room that is longer than it is wide - hardly a 'work well in every application and country' speaker. The rest of their lineup is just overpriced lifestyle stuff.

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/speakers/stereo_speakers/901_speakers/index.jsp

OP, unless you're buying powered speakers you will need to buy the speakers that your amp can drive without being pushed into clipping at the volumes you need, and that usually means genuine 8-ohm rated speakers. Just be aware that the impedance curve is more important than the specs most manufacturers are happy to publish - independent measurements like this are worth their weight in gold:

http://www.stereophile.com/content/kef-ls50-anniversary-model-loudspeaker-measurements

Somewhat optimistically specified at 8 ohms, the LS50's impedance (fig.1, solid trace) drops to 4 ohms at 200Hz and to 5.4 ohms at the top of the audioband. The electrical phase angle is generally mild, but the combination of 5.3 ohms and –41° at 135Hz, a frequency where music often has high energy, will make the speaker work at its best with a good, 4 ohm–rated amplifier.

Wait - good food, decent vibe, friendly locals, low cost of living and Old Glory hung proudly from the front of people's homes, and you STILL prefer Thailand ? neversure will be foaming at the mouth ..... even I could use some of that overnight shipping, usually free if you buy enough goodies from Amazon. What the hell am I doing here ?

It won't matter much when the thunderstorm that's currently over the dark side hits downtown.

Yep, although this one seems a little wimpier in terms of precipitation than those earlier in the week.

7 men in a studio ? I would suggest those guys don't need company - paid or otherwise - they've got everything they need literally at arm's reach. Those guys came here purely because same-sex love is the love that dares not speak it's name in India.

I'd post a link to the Full Metal Jacket Drill Sargeant's immortal line to Recruit Joker, but that wouldnt last long.

Brits + alchohol + Pattaya = another shameful story every week.

Why specifically Brits, I think you could substitute quite a few other nationalities, particularly Thai?

Along with my compatriots from Oz and our good friends from Russia the Brits do feature heavily in PattayaOne's relentless expose of assaults and violent crime in Pattaya.

Not sure how that lines up with the rest of officialdom in the Kingdom, or the Consulates elsewhere, but according to the note stuck to the door down at Soi Post Office this morning, thats how its going to be here. Also not sure what sort of backlog will be in the sorting rooms next Thursday April 16 but I guess that goes with the territory - this is their biggest holiday of the year after all.

The combination of location and a benign climate are hard to beat, but visitors simply take all that for granted. I know I did for 18 years.

i beg to differ as far as "benign" climate is concerned. i consider the local climate as nothing but although i lived more than half of my life in tropical countries.

it must be old age. i used to wear long-sleeved shirts and a tie at higher ambient temperatures when living and working in Saudi Arabia. what i am missing are the seasons. of course Pattaya has seasons too. in winter it is hot and in summer it is very hot.

'Benign' isnt the same as 'cool' : when was the last time you had to have your roof replaced after it was torn off by a tropical storm ? Any hail damage to your car ? My mother was staying in a caravan park on the NSW coast in Oz years ago when a 'mini tornado' left he wondering if she would see daylight - IME, not something we have to worry about in Pattaya. Even in sleepy old Brisbane, we had storms and floods and hailstones the size of golf balls in Summer, and it was as humid as anything I've endured here.

Compared to other parts of Thailand, I dont consider Pattaya excessively hot and it beats Penang hands down for an afternoon breeze off the ocean. Mornings - granted - can be unbearable but you have to take that as part of the price of being able to live here in shorts and a t-shirt all year round.

The combination of location and a benign climate are hard to beat, but visitors simply take all that for granted. I know I did for 18 years.

We love our ox cart track, and you know no human being will ever actually live in those condos. It's all just pretend here in Bizarro Disneyland.

10 days into April and 10 gang attacks reported.

These are just the attacks that make the press. I'll bet a majority of these assaults don't make the press.

Are we even seeing 10% of the assaults, robberies or druggings in the paper? I don't think so.

Here we have 6 Thais beat on this Brit and the day before.. 5 Thais beat an Indian unconscious.

http://pattayaone.net/pattaya-news/183119/british-bar-owner-fights-off-gang-of-youths-in-east-pattaya/

And 25 Thais died on the first day of Songkran madness, the majority courtesy of alcohol and speeding - I dont think they get too worked up over gang attacks. If previous Songkran periods are any indication, ~600 Thais will die on the roads this Songkran - I guess it helps if you firmly believe that your time is preordained. As for the point you are trying to make, this is the thread for it:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/816521-are-we-not-valued-as-people-here/

Have at it.

SF sounds a lot like Sydney - esp the 'great place to visit' part - and their other big drawcard isn't their iconic suspension bridges. The only people I know who are looking at Sydney as an alternative to Thailand are women who've landed their catch and are in the process of dragging him to the altar.

Given that Bill Bryson wandered all over the US way back in 1989 and pronounced Savannah, GA his ideal rendition of small town America, I wondered how it stacks up on 2015 ? Probably not good from a cost-of-living POV but the images look great. I can almost see Rhett Butler standing at the front door, beckoning me in for a cool lemonade and a pistol whipping, not necessarily in that order.

I dont know that things are necessarily better with other carriers although I admit DHLs online tracking is first class - they're just so freakin expensive for anything larger than a couple of sheets of A4 or the smallest items.

Or all 3.

Maybe we're already past this, but as reference. Any package shipped by EMS to a country which is a part of the Universal Postal Union (so those of you mailing stuff to to Upper Outer Mongoistan are outta luck) can be tracked.

Once it's left the country of origin you can follow this link to track. You use the same tracking number that ThaiPost give you for EMS:

http://globaltracktrace.ptc.post/gtt.web/

Thanks but that didnt really help in this case - up there with the useless message USPS is giving me.

No tracking information is available from UNITED STATES