MrWorldwide

@JohnnyHK, its one thing to bag the place based on personal experience, but from your post it would seem that your only 'experience' of Pattaya is via other people's 'net bleatings. You're completely free to stay away from the city, but dont live your life based on the opinion of others - how many would set foot in Hong Kong, Jakarta or Phnomh Penh if we all lived that way ?

A pathetic start, but a start nonetheless - if you arent planning to leave by 6am tomorrow morning, it might be time to think about stocking up on bottled water and ammunition. Pattaya's streets were as quiet as I've ever seen them for late Friday afternoon - the lull before the storm.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/807030-the-2015-pattaya-songkran-faq-long/?p=9292293

Scousers? Liverpudlians are responsible for your having miserable Pattaya Songkrans?

Apparently the whole ten of them.

The original comment was obviously in tongue n cheek.

I kinda got that - can we move on from the Fab Four and back to the weather in Pattaya ? I thought tonight's little stroll down to Beach Road, around through Central and back to my joint via Buakhow was about as agreeable as any late afternoon I've ever spent in central Pattaya - light breeze and minimal traffic. No-one in the restaurants, very few in Central Festival and a sprinkling of punters in the bars - if it wasnt so depressing to see a 'high season' like this I might have actually enjoyed this as a weekend warrior.

As for throwing water already, I'll post a photo of the only person I saw doing so in the relevant thread : suffice to say that the Chinese tourists didnt seem overly impressed but the 5 or 6 busloads of them belting down Third Road on the way back left me wondering if the tour guides have given them any advance warning at all.

so far, and its not like Im looking out for it, they do it in areas where there are a lot of people about, I have seen this gang seriously assault 5 thais(2 of them women) and one farang, seemingly randomly, using sticks and bottles as weapons, then they usually get in the faces of the working ladies that witnessed their extreme violence and demand they give them money. all done in front of dozens of tourists and locals. they have been doing this for about a month now

And you still havent reported it to anyone - not the tourist police or even PattayaOne ? I dont have any faith in BiB either, but surely the TP can get something done via their own channels ? I've been at Mike's in the afternoon and seen nothing of the kind, so it must be happening later at night.

OP. perhaps a better question might have been 'Why should you have to defend where you've chosen to live ?' Im reminded of the distinction many on another board were happy to draw between 'upper' and 'lower' Sukhumvit, despite the fact that they all went to the latter on a regular basis for their night-time activities. The closer your condo was to Thonglor, the bigger your expat package (allegedly) and the bigger your ego : it was a massive ongoing pissing contest that went nowhere. Live where you want to live - who would want to live in Klong Toey, even if some of the most expensive real estate in Thailand sits cheek-by-jowl with Bangkok's worst slum ? As others have pointed out, you can live in greater Pattaya without ever crossing Third Road.

The story and thread are about 3 Thai men arrested for a gang attack.

Some guy is drunk or he grabbed somebody is no excuse for a mob viloence.

Yep, just yesterday, another gang attack. 6 Thais on a Brit.

Where does it say there were 6 Thais ? The report I read had 3 Thai youths, a Finn and his Thai GF. If you want to Thai-bash, surely this is the thread for it:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/815964-indian-tourist-assaulted-and-robbed-on-pattaya-beach/

The victim wasnt British, so I guess that doesnt count in your universe. Reportedly 5 Thai gang members involved in that attack - should restore your sense that Thais wont fight unless it's at least 5 to 1 in their favor. Yeah, I can see you threw in your two cents worth in that thread, and I can assure you it doesnt 'happen every day now' : at least it doesnt happen to me. Your mileage, God willing, will vary.

If only the hookers here had aged as well as the alcohol.

Edit: why live here ? Because Penang bored me witless in less than a week. Why not live here ? Because I promised myself at least 6 months living in Cambodia.

Sounds like Pattaya is burning, time to get some popcorn and a cold drink . Pattaya is a mess, outdated roads, flooding, crime, A big city on the water and they have no idea how to take advantage of this. Walking street on the ocean side should be all open air bars and restaurants with huge patios to enjoy the ocean breeze and moonlit sky.

How about changing the traffic flow on beach road and second road, knock some buildings down so Jomtein second road and beach road Pattaya come together at some point and second road Pattaya joins smoothly into Jomtein second road. If you had some Engineering vision you could see this easily. No more sharp curve at walking street and of course getting rid of all the crap parked on beach road.

Seeing this will never happen Pattaya will slowly get worse. Instead of building something like a bypass or over pass the are going to build a short little tunnel which will not to anything to relieve traffic congestion.

Bangkok is no different,

Was there over the long weekend, In Nana go go's, i visited 6 at around 10 pm, there were 2-3 customers in each.

Patpong was totally dead.

Pratunam Markets, you could actually easily walk

I believe there were similar murmurings of discontent emanating from Phuket a while back, but then one of the guesthouse owners reported that he was booked out till the end of May - not sure what's going on down there but overall its not looking good for what remains of this 'high' season.

Absolutely agree that he doesnt need anyones permission, but a little common sense goes a long way. How many Western cities would you wander around at night with that kind of cash in your pocket ?

AFAIK, it has almost always been multiple attackers vs a lone victim in Thailand, and that applies whether it's Thai-on-Thai or Thai-on-foreigner. Doesnt make it right - its just the way it is. I could link to YT vids of Thais giving one of their own a kicking, but those videos only reinforce the notion that its an everyday occurrence.

As for whether this is becoming more common, do you see things getting better or worse for Thais living on the fringe of a society where many employers dont even want to pay the 300 baht minimum wage ? Doesnt make it right, but the illusion that many of us cling to - myself included - re personal safety in Thailand is only as strong as their belief in karma : throw that out the window and youth gangs could definitely be an issue in several parts of Thailand, not just BKK and Pattaya. This guy bought it on himself - the Indian victim didnt, but both cases point to something nastier than the usual 'security beat up foreigner' IMO.

Thanks for the feedback guys - clearly, more patience is in order because I refuse to pay DHL's exorbitant rates.

My take on this is pretty simple, but let me give you an example of how I see the laws of physics in Thailand:

I cross Third Road here in central Pattaya each day, and its always an adventure - tour buses, kamikaze motorbike riders etc - but never moreso than in the early hours of the morning. By the law of the land and most people's notion of what is fair and reasonable, I should be able to cross Third Road at 3am on the expectation that any traffic still using the road is moving at the legal limit, but anyone who lives here knows that's precisely when young Thais will be out trying to break the land-speed record for a 125cc motorcycle. There is a line here, and it's the line between what I know to be 'right' and what I know to be the way things work in this part of planet Earth. If I blithely wander out onto the road on the expectation that said motorbike riders will show me some respect, what are the odds that I will come off second best ? I've removed myself from a situation that is under my control to one where I expect a guy doing well over 100km/h to be able to react in time to avoid a collision - not terrifically bright.

Getting back to our Brit mate, if the third-party accounts are correct he crossed at least two lines, possibly three. He groped the girl and instigated a confrontation with her partner - that alone could see him severely beaten in many parts of the world. If the Thai youth's account is accurate, he could still have walked away, but he told them to eff off or something similar, basically crossing a third line : never confront a Thai male unless you're prepared to risk the consequences.

Before I'm branded an apologist and asked to look at the video again, I dont believe what the Thais did was proportional to this man's reported transgressions, but then I would say the same if I'm ever hit by one of the psycho motorbike riders on Third Road.

- look at the video and tell me if the man running to the door of the convenience store looks like he lacks the motor skills to control himself.

- he had the 'courage' to grope a complete stranger and the 'courage' to fight her partner but when he was himself attacked he ran for the nearest store to beg the occupants for help

- he seemed to have sufficient control of himself to give Police and others a fictional account of what actually happened in the aftermath of the attack, and the motor skills needed to light a cigarette

The argument that 'drunks do stupid things' seems to ignore the fact that said drunks often pay with their lives - in my case, I've been drunk enough to fall of the back of a motosai taxi twice and know that others have been stupid enough to try to ride home themselves in a similar state. Stupidity has a price. If he had been set upon like the Indian currently gracing the pages of PattayaOne - a man allegedly stupid enough to go to the beach with a fistful of cash on him - i might have some sympathy - as it stands, I believe he got off lightly.

Not for one minute do I believe those sums of cash are true!! Insurance fraud coming right up!

these sums seem completely out of the range of your imagination... isn't it?

by the way, no insurance on this planet insures cash carried in your pockets.

I take your point, even if I question myself taking as little as 10K to Walking St - this gentleman must have zero confidence in his hotel safe, but that is the last place I would have been with that much money in my pocket, particularly if he was hammered.

There appears to be a need for a "sub-forum" setup to handle all the assaults, robberies, rapes, and "suicides" coming from the Pattaya area...

Maybe those ex-pats in Hua Hin actually know something Pattaya folks have not figured out yet...

This IS that 'sub-forum' - what other news stories do you see here ? actually look at where a given thread has been started before posting. Thread after bloody thread we have to put up with lamebrain 'observations' like this and I'm over it.

PattayaOne - and TV for that matter - arent even remotely interested in stories about people living normal lives in Pattaya : who in God's name would read those stories ? It's called Sin City for a reason - if you cant handle that, you might be happier perusing Young Adult Fiction in your nearest emporium in Hua Hin, a boring, soulless town if ever there was one.

Another shot looking down Soi 7 toward Beach Road - note how few motorbikes are anywhere in evidence and the absence of delivery vehicles etc - normally a major annoyance for pedestrians on Sois 7 and 8 during the day. The sign advertising 'Happiness Corner Bar' in the centre of the photo refers to a venue which was a go-go right up until about 3 weeks ago - they tore down the walls and removed the front door to turn it back into a bar. How they survived the low season is a complete mystery to me - in the course of far too many hours spent in a nearby bar I didnt see a single customer go into the go-go or come out from May 2014 till it became a bar sometime in late March 2015, but admittedly I didnt spend my nights with my eyes trained on the front door of the place.

Sounds like Pattaya is burning, time to get some popcorn and a cold drink . Pattaya is a mess, outdated roads, flooding, crime, A big city on the water and they have no idea how to take advantage of this. Walking street on the ocean side should be all open air bars and restaurants with huge patios to enjoy the ocean breeze and moonlit sky.

How about changing the traffic flow on beach road and second road, knock some buildings down so Jomtein second road and beach road Pattaya come together at some point and second road Pattaya joins smoothly into Jomtein second road. If you had some Engineering vision you could see this easily. No more sharp curve at walking street and of course getting rid of all the crap parked on beach road.

Seeing this will never happen Pattaya will slowly get worse. Instead of building something like a bypass or over pass the are going to build a short little tunnel which will not to anything to relieve traffic congestion.

You're asking for a LKY to emerge from the ranks of Thai politicians - a man with vision and the power to make that vision a reality : if you can find anyone like that, please let us know. I get the distinct impression here that it's every man for himself. As for Pattaya 'burning', thats a little dramatic - its more like a whimper than a bang. I have some photos that I took around 2:30pm yesterday afternoon and you could be forgiven for thinking Second Road near Central Festival was just another sleepy Thai thoroughfare out in the boonies. Also took some photos to show how utterly dead the front of Central Festival was. I showed these to some Thais and the response was 'too early !' : that wasnt my experience on previous trips and it hasnt been my experience May-Nov 2014, arguably one of the lowest of low seasons. Still, in the interests of fairness, I'll get some more photos later this afternoon and post them. Unfortunately, my iPad has no flash and my 'real' camera takes such woeful night shots that I cant even be bothered - also not sure how many people want someone taking photos of them at night in certain parts of this city.

(in a moment I couldnt have scripted during yesterday's stroll back from Soi 13/2 down Second Road, an Aussie in front of me turned to his partner and said 'Next time we'll just go straight to the Phillipines'. Interesting times ahead)

Photo from Soi 7 near Pig&Whistle looking back toward Aussie Bar at roughly 3pm, Thursday April 9 2015:

There were a few more in those bars when I wound my way back to Soi Made in Thailand at around 6pm but it still didnt look anything like high season to me - hopefully the weekend will see an explosion in the lead-up to Songkran, if only for the future prospects of the employers in this town.

I know - plenty of warnings re lack of decent tracking for EMS shipments - but seeing 'Origin Post is Preparing Shipment' day after day on the USPS site (they seem to take over when it reaches the US), a week after I shipped the package to the US is getting old. I read somewhere else that they often dont bother updating that until *after* the recipient has taken delivery - to date I've had neither confirmation nor complaint from the recipient so I'll leave it till tomorrow afternoon. This is one area where DHL give you constant confirmation that your package is indeed bouncing around the globe, albeit at an eye-watering price.

philipina girls, they always looked a bit sick to me

white-ish and then those big gray bags under the eyes

The only place I've seen Filis like that is in the atrocity known as Orchard Towers in Singapore. No idea how a place like that has survived this long - we moan and bitch about the prices in Bangkok but Singapore really takes some beating and everyone from bar staff to the 'girls' treat customers like walking ATMs : right up there with the nastiest examples of Thai greed in places like Nana and Cowboy. On my first trip years ago, two gargoyles who would have been well into their 50s stuck their heads out of a 'lounge bar' that looked like Hugh Hefner did the decorating circa 1975 and told me in a low voice that they could give me 'special' because there was no-one else in the bar. Difficult to imagine anyone getting that drunk or stoned, but life is full of surprises.

God bless the Pinays, each and every one of them.

IMO, the perfect situation is to find a nice Pinay and bring her to beautiful Thailand....and, furthermore, I believe them to be the most beautiful of all Asians, especially when they live outside PI.

I've always had a preference for any combination of Chinese father and a SE Asian mother - seems to work out really well - but push comes to shove the Japanese get my vote. For a country with an obsession with surgically-enhanced beauty, I cant say I saw too many women in Korea who left me with my jaw on the floor - walk around Ginza in Tokyo for an hour or so and that all changes. Each to their own - the JGALS are way above my pay grade, but dreams are free

(FWIW the two most naturally beautiful girls I've ever laid eyes on both popped up in completely unexpected locations, one being Vientiane of all places. Both had jet-black hair and a smile that lit up their very ordinary surroundings - the Thai penchant for hair dye does nothing for me I'm afraid)

This is one of those 'studies' where I'm left asking how the hell researchers get paid to put something like this together. I worked at a university in Oz for 4 1/2 years and the competition for research funding was cutthroat - usually based on the likelihood of being published in one of the prestigious academic journals that very few of us would ever actually read.

I still dont get why you didnt just ditch the wife...

you don't ditch a wife who proved to be a valuable asset for 35 years, 4 months and 28 days

OK, but I still preferred thinking about Ginger's coconuts than your wife's aging assets, Mr Howell.

Of course, none of that helps the OP, but I'm sticking with my 60K a month estimate as the bare minimum for someone wanting to live here comfortably without a drinking problem or a demanding female companion. Exactly what he'll do without either of those in his life, though, is a tougher question. If I didnt have katoey dodging, I'm not sure where I'd be some days .....

I think most of us accept that Songkran will mean gridlock in Pattaya and the roadworks wont help - in the event of a zombie apocalypse, we're basically trapped here.

Well I am out of it for a month or so, just arrived back in New Zealand 9/4/15 oh and am a Scouse, live in Khon Kaen, we are 10-15 mins out of the city and our village has had no rains, winds and so hot, 39-42c most every day, but lovely here in NZ cool an green.

Aha - the advance party for Stickman's reintegration into NZ society after 20+ years in Thailand, eh ? What are we talking - a hangi washed down with a case of Steinlager ? I'm afraid your 'cool and green' is my 'bloody cold, wet and green' but whatever floats yer boat. Enjoy.

I just dont see the violence as a major deterrent to the traditional weekend warrior aka 'sex tourist' or whatever perjorative people want to use. Pattaya - like every nightlife precinct I'm aware of - has had that reputation for many years - the difference is the VFM equation and right now, IMO, it sucks. Paying 150 baht for a Leo to sit in Stones House with 10 paying customers (tops..) and a gaggle of staff just doesnt light my fire no matter how hard the band tried to gee the 'crowd' up. You know you're in trouble when the singer points to you and asks if you have a request for the band - that has never happened to me in Pattaya before and I felt even more conspicuous. Like it or not, this town desperately needs Songkran.