Pattaya Trip, First for Ten Years

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 3:26 PM, simoh1490 said:

Our experience almost exactly. 

 

Sanctuary of Truth was a bit odd, it was impressive but struck me as a vanity project. It's located right next to our hotel and it would have been two minutes if allowed to walk down the beach, but no. Instead, had to take a 200 baht taxi and drive for fifteen minutes to get to the entrance, odd!

?????

It's a business, and there would be no benefit to THEM to put an entrance on the beach for the few that would use it.

It could very well be a "vanity project" but I'd expect the person that started it is long retired, or dead. It was something like 25 years old when I visited it and that was in the early years of this century. It'll be operated as a business now, whatever the initial motivation.

 

BTW, I walked all the way from Naklua Rd, so walking from your hotel right next door should have been an option.

[simoh1490]

Just now, thaibeachlovers said:

?????

It's a business, and there would be no benefit to THEM to put an entrance on the beach for the few that would use it.

It could very well be a "vanity project" but I'd expect the person that started it is long retired, or dead. It was something like 25 years old when I visited it and that was in the early years of this century. It'll be operated as a business now, whatever the initial motivation.

 

BTW, I walked all the way from Naklua Rd, so walking from your hotel right next door should have been an option.

I was trying to describe the physical relationship between the two places and the ensuing 15 minute cab ride, that's all.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 4:24 PM, simoh1490 said:

The point about Pattaya is that over ten years ago it was a very seedy party town and everyone knew it, but the government left the place alone because it had a viable plan to turn the city around and it has achieved that in my book.

Actually, 30 years ago it was a happy party town and has slowly become an unhappy town riven by crime and corruption, and is mainly about greed and sucking up to the rich.

BTW, the "seedy" element has just moved inland a bit, but is still there. Of course up on the hill and only 4 days you're not going to see much of it.

 

because it had a viable plan to turn the city around and it has achieved that in my book.

Joking, right?

Did you see the marina, the unworkable car park, the lack of public parks, the traffic chaos, the vanishing beach, the vile beaches of Koh Larn? Takes more than a few expensive hotels and restaurants to turn fun city into the Riviera of SEA.

 

BTW, you do realise that Beach and Second Rds are just tiny parts of Pattaya, don't you. To concentrate on them is like going to London and judging it by that cesspool of Soho.

 

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

13 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

I was trying to describe the physical relationship between the two places and the ensuing 15 minute cab ride, that's all.

Fair enough.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 4:53 PM, Thaidream said:

Thailand doesn't care if the mongers leave and never come back-  Their replacements are already coming and craving more upscale entertainment.

Thou jest!

Why do you think all those farangs building mansions in Issan are there? The monetary value of bar girls marrying farangs has never been counted, far as I know, but undoubtedly brings vastly more billions of baht into the country than a few posh hotels in Pattaya.

They well may be diminishing in new recruits, and that will result less farang/ Thai marriages with a corresponding decrease in overseas income.

 

more upscale entertainment.

Such as?

Thailand has nothing to equal Singapore in the 70s, and I can't see it happening anytime soon.

I don't count expensive restaurants as "entertainment", and I don't recall any hotels offering decent live music in their bars. The best "entertainment" in Pattaya used to be the Malibu cabaret show, and that ended years ago. Now all there is are a few Thai bands in the bars trying to copy western bands.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 5:02 PM, Thaidream said:

First visited Pattaya 48  years ago when it was a sleepy village with 1 Western style Hotel. Beach and sea pristine- lush gardens and shrubbery everywhere.  No pollution and little night time activity- no GoGo Bars or ladyboys plying their trade, No traffic and no stress.

I preferred the old Pattaya but  not everyone likes quiet. Terminal 21 in North Pattaya will attract Bangkok Thais for weekend out and as that becomes successful- expect more malls and traffic.

Terminal 21 in North Pattaya will attract Bangkok Thais for weekend out and as that becomes successful- expect more malls and traffic.

Pattaya better hope that doesn't happen. The traffic is already impossible- traffic backed up on Second from Central Rd to Avenues in low season. It's going to be impossible if even more come than now. It's just not possible to make the roads better without knocking down half of Pattaya.

[SooKee]

20 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Actually, 30 years ago it was a happy party town and has slowly become an unhappy town riven by crime and corruption, and is mainly about greed and sucking up to the rich.

BTW, the "seedy" element has just moved inland a bit, but is still there. Of course up on the hill and only 4 days you're not going to see much of it.

 

because it had a viable plan to turn the city around and it has achieved that in my book.

Joking, right?

Did you see the marina, the unworkable car park, the lack of public parks, the traffic chaos, the vanishing beach, the vile beaches of Koh Larn? Takes more than a few expensive hotels and restaurants to turn fun city into the Riviera of SEA.

 

BTW, you do realise that Beach and Second Rds are just tiny parts of Pattaya, don't you. To concentrate on them is like going to London and judging it by that cesspool of Soho.

 

 

 

That's about my recollection TBH.  First time I went to Pattaya was around 25 years ago.  Much of it goes into a blur over time but I seem to remember it being better then than now, for me anyways.  Going out up to the end of the beach and walking back along it seemed a much better experience to what it is now with numerous open air beach type bars.  There was a central busier road with a Muay Thai stadium in it and a massive seafood restaurant IIRC which also had some great bars.  I'm sure there were parts of it that were bad (maybe the memory blocks those bits out over time) but from what I can recall of that Pattaya, I'd take that over the current version and I'm sure it's not all rose tinted spectacles.  It also certainly seemed a lot less thuggy /yobbish then than it does now with fewer groups of oiks going round smashed out of their tree and either starting or looking to start trouble.

 

Even with it's downsides though, which are avoidable (even though I'd say it's hard to not see that it's there), I'd still take Pattaya over CM any day of the week.  I don't want to go out and party it up much these days but when I do I'd rather be in a place that has a party to go to rather than a place that seems like it's clearing up after the party.

 

Horses for courses but I can see why folks who live in Pattaya would get well irked with the constant assumptions that they are all bar crawling hooker hunters.

Edited April 8, 2018 by SooKee

[thaibeachlovers]

2 minutes ago, SooKee said:

That's about my recollection TBH.  First time I went to Pattaya was around 25 years ago.  Much of it goes into a blur over time but I seem to remember it being better then than now, for me anyways.

Indeed it was. It all started going wrong when Purachai started trying to destroy the farang bar scene in Thailand, and Pattaya has never recovered. Crime was pretty low key before, and was much worse after when lots of locals lost their jobs. Traffic was always bad, but not AS bad as now.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 5:02 PM, possum1931 said:

Nice to read about these reports here but, they need to do something about their road system, I went down round the Dolphin Roundabout and up North Pattaya Road to a filling station for petrol for my motorbike, I wanted to go back and then down Beach Road. Because of all the U turns being blocked off, I ended having to go up Sukhumvit Road, and down Pattaya Klang.

That is quite a few Ks from about halfway down North Pattaya Road. All the idiots who made it impossible to go back the way I came are only moving the traffic to clog up another part of Pattaya.

If you think Pattaya's bad, try Phayao. That's bad enough to make a person barking.

[simoh1490]

32 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Actually, 30 years ago it was a happy party town and has slowly become an unhappy town riven by crime and corruption, and is mainly about greed and sucking up to the rich.

BTW, the "seedy" element has just moved inland a bit, but is still there. Of course up on the hill and only 4 days you're not going to see much of it.

 

because it had a viable plan to turn the city around and it has achieved that in my book.

Joking, right?

Did you see the marina, the unworkable car park, the lack of public parks, the traffic chaos, the vanishing beach, the vile beaches of Koh Larn? Takes more than a few expensive hotels and restaurants to turn fun city into the Riviera of SEA.

 

BTW, you do realise that Beach and Second Rds are just tiny parts of Pattaya, don't you. To concentrate on them is like going to London and judging it by that cesspool of Soho.

 

 

 

Soho is a a cesspool! You perhaps need to come up to speed with what Soho is today and what it's not, a cesspool is the very last thing it is.

[SooKee]

19 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Indeed it was. It all started going wrong when Purachai started trying to destroy the farang bar scene in Thailand, and Pattaya has never recovered. Crime was pretty low key before, and was much worse after when lots of locals lost their jobs. Traffic was always bad, but not AS bad as now.

Agreed.

 

I'm also at a loss at to what the aforementioned (not by you I might add) 'upscale entertainment' in Pattaya might be.  One thing that would keep me away (and it's all a matter of preferences) is the lack of just that or places with much by way of sophistication.  Loads of restaurants for sure but I don't want to sit in a restaurant all night.  Yes there's the rooftop bars at the Hilton and Siam Siam but they seem to die past 7pm once the happy hour is over and are just exorbitant for what they offer out of happy hour (IMO) and of course they get tired really fast if you're going there often.  I'm sure there are places around which, invariably being a tourist in Pattaya, I've not been able to come across yet, but in central Pattaya I'm not sure where they are, and it's not for the want of looking.  I also don't class a Central or any other mall as upscale entertainment (places I go to either to buy something or go to the cinema - albeit Em Quartier in BKK is great for eye candy) any more than I do the numerous 'live music bars' where one can listen to "It's my life" as many times in a night as you're prepared to change bars.  That's in stark contrast to BKK which for me has a massive variety of nightlife (and not all outrageously priced) but no beach.  It all comes down to what you want out of a place.

 

PS: The absence of CM in the entertainment discussion is not an error or oversight, just nothing worth mentioning IMO.

Edited April 8, 2018 by SooKee

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 10:31 AM, starky said:

Only in the Pattaya forum do posters become some so personal and abusive so quickly. Having a small red light district in a major city is no comparison to what is Pattaya. If you wish to speak of Thailand than yes Pattaya and the other red light areas are relatively small. Yours is the straw man argument.  A fairer comparison would be Pattaya with AC in the PIs and I am sure there are many residents there who also have no day to day dealings with the bars. Point being comparing Pattaya with Paris, Hamburg,  Sydney or whatever other major city you could throw up is apples and oranges compared to the size, history and general perception  worldwide of what Pattaya is mostly, granted slowly changing, renowned for.  Surely it can't be that hard to understand. 

Strange comparison yourself. The Pattaya strip is tiny compared to the city as a whole. If you haven't realised that, you should try looking around the city outside the strip. Of course it's got nothing that would attract a tourist.

It's like staying in Soho in London for 4 days and then saying it IS London.

[thaibeachlovers]

9 minutes ago, SooKee said:

PS: The absence of CM in the entertainment discussion is not an error or oversight, just nothing worth mentioning IMO.

To try and claim that C M even has a "bar scene" is to insult real "bar scenes" . The sad collection of bars along Loi Khroh amount to about a 1 on a scale of 100. Their tiny amount of customers attest to that.

When I first arrived in C M I did go there a few times, but it was too depressing so I stopped.

I might just go back sometime to remind myself why I don't go there any more.

 

Pattaya doesn't know how lucky it is to still have a bar scene.

[SooKee]

To try and claim that C M even has a "bar scene" is to insult real "bar scenes" . The sad collection of bars along Loi Khroh amount to about a 1 on a scale of 100. Their tiny amount of customers attest to that.
When I first arrived in C M I did go there a few times, but it was too depressing so I stopped.
I might just go back sometime to remind myself why I don't go there any more.
 
Pattaya doesn't know how lucky it is to still have a bar scene.

Yup. Depressing. I had a few good nights in a bar called B52 (IIRC), the female owner there was quite pleasant, along with a few of her staff and her two sisters. Looks wise they were streets ahead of the rest of LK. Other than that I used to have a better time in the Thai style Maldives, the place opposite and the numerous Thai style bars dotted around the burbs. You definitely need to be able to speak Thai in those. The over abundance of boutique style coffee shops and the few overpriced craft beer place don't do it for me at all.

The places that I used to go to made it more bearable than it otherwise would have been but after 9 months I was desperate to get out. Again, depends what you want. Some folks would love it for the exact reasons I ended up hating it. Trouble is, the nature of forums is that rather then accepting that, some folks seem to take extreme exception to folks airing views that differ from theirs, in some cases almost as if they take it as a personal insult.

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[newnative]

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Terminal 21 in North Pattaya will attract Bangkok Thais for weekend out and as that becomes successful- expect more malls and traffic.

Pattaya better hope that doesn't happen. The traffic is already impossible- traffic backed up on Second from Central Rd to Avenues in low season. It's going to be impossible if even more come than now. It's just not possible to make the roads better without knocking down half of Pattaya.

     Nonsense about needing to knock down half of Pattaya to make the roads better.  The traffic could easily be improved by eliminating all parking on the major roads.  Instant extra lanes with no construction needed--although it would be a good idea to add medians and designated turning lanes to roads like Thepprasit to manage the traffic better.  But, likely will not happen until the traffic gets a lot worse--if ever.

[poanoi]

On 4/6/2018 at 4:53 PM, Thaidream said:

 

I do believe Walking Street will be gone within the next 10 years as eventually the illegal business on the seaside will get torn down and the powers that be force all the gogos and sex sites to either go out of business or relocate. Thailand doesn't care if the mongers leave and never come back-  Their replacements are already coming and craving more upscale entertainment.

...and what is more upscale than naked woman, in your opinion ?

[Rimmer]

A couple of posts about Soho have been removed as they were trying hard to hijack the topic which is about Pattaya

[elgenon]

Hotel jobs and the like do not compare in pay to what a bar girl can potentially make. I have met many girls with Uni degrees (Hospitality is a favorite) who work in bars. If they have a kid or two, or support their parents, the pressure is on. Bars are going out of business because farangs are in short supply. The only bats that seem to be doing well cater to the Japanese and Koreans.

[theguyfromanotherforum]

18 hours ago, elgenon said:

I have met many girls with Uni degrees (Hospitality is a favorite) who work in bars.

 

I always lolz at this. Considering it's basically in their job description to lie through their teeth, you of course believe them. Did they also manage to pull the degree out of their behind while negotiating the price?

 

Yes, it makes perfect sense spend money and commit yourself through years of education only to realize at the end... hey, I'm off to Patterz.

[bkk6060]

29 minutes ago, theguyfromanotherforum said:

 

I always lolz at this. Considering it's basically in their job description to lie through their teeth, you of course believe them. Did they also manage to pull the degree out of their behind while negotiating the price?

 

Yes, it makes perfect sense spend money and commit yourself through years of education only to realize at the end... hey, I'm off to Patterz.

I do not think they are stupid but I have never met one who has a degree.

And you are right they are possibly the biggest professional liars in the country.

Just realize it and have a fun time.

[lamyai3]

On 4/7/2018 at 9:19 AM, Peterw42 said:

Towards the end of a 10 day stay, my daughter asked "so where are all the sexbars that everyone talks about" ?? 

This speaks volumes - her perception of the town reflects the wider world view of it. If anything this reputation is even more entrenched than a decade ago due to unfavourable press coverage, such as the UK newspaper reports from a year or two ago that had the upper echelons of government's knickers in a twist.  

[lamyai3]

On 4/7/2018 at 11:04 AM, simoh1490 said:

Once again, the argument is not about whether it's a 1 or a 10 because that's not a winnable argument, perhaps better to try and agree where on the scale it does sit. I like the Las Vegas analogy and as said, I rate Pattaya around a 6/7 where 1 is Soddom and Gomorrah and 10 is the Vatican.

Las Vegas is no less likely to shake off it's reputation as a gambling town than Pattaya is to shake off it's reputation as a sex town. Sodom and Gomorrah can be found on every street corner, but try finding a Catholic... 

[HLover]

14 minutes ago, lamyai3 said:

Sodom and Gomorrah can be found on every street corner

More accurately, Chung and Wang or Boris and Sczlevania.

 

[lamyai3]

1 minute ago, HLover said:

Boris and Sczlevania.

Last seen getting to know each other on the water pipe... 

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎4‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 11:14 PM, newnative said:

The traffic could easily be improved by eliminating all parking on the major roads. 

That's been true for 30 years but hasn't happened yet. Chances of it happening in the future- about the same as a traditional Songkran in Pattaya. Possible but highly unlikely.