The week that was in Thailand news: It's time to "Stop Panning Pattaya"

[overt2016]

Stop panning Pattaya. WHY?

[overherebc]

On 2/16/2021 at 8:47 PM, Black Angus said:

Well spotted. But I didn't want to leave the Irish out, A lot of them took the time to swim across too Skye to get here.

Not all whiskey is Scotch.

[RobU]

I have said this before

Tourists Walk and Gawk

Pattaya is a very dangerous city for pedestrians

Taking your life in your hands when you cross the road on beach road and 2nd road

Very badly maintained. One light controlled crossing on each road the one on 2nd road out of action for at least a month when I was there and probably still is. Bloody great telegraph poles planted in the middle of very narrow sidewalks.

Major work with no safe pedestrian way of getting past (right next to Walking Street. Forcing pedestrians to cross the road twice at a very dangerous corner in order to get from the beach side into walking street. 

Bloody great holes in the sidewalk.

The city father's prioritize cars over bikes over pedestrians. No reasonable father would take his children to such a dangerous place where you have to step onto the road just to get past pedestrians coming in the other direction

It is not about shops encroaching on the sidewalk it's about <deleted> poor city maintenance and poor pedestrian facilities

There are plenty of other warm countries which are safe for tourists and foreign tourists now go there. The idea of focussing on domestic tourism is actually to cover up the fact that foreign tourists don't want to go there any more because it isn't safe. Foreign tourism was already declining drastically before Covid (40% down in 2019) Covid has merely accelerated the process and will never recover until the city father's get their act together.

 

 

[Thaiophil]

On 2/19/2021 at 4:40 PM, overt2016 said:

Stop panning Pattaya. WHY?

Because it’s actually quite pleasant compared to polluted Bangkok and the bars are open

 

Just arrived for a few days to get out of the smoke. Reports of it being a ghost town are greatly exaggerated. Terminal 21 is actually quite busy and about half the bars in Soi 6 are open

 

My pleasant clean hotel 5 mins from the beach is costing me less than 600 bt a night and the new motorway gets you here in 90 mins flat.

 

With much less traffic and fewer sex tourists it’s really quite nice.

[newnative]

2 hours ago, RobU said:

I have said this before

Tourists Walk and Gawk

Pattaya is a very dangerous city for pedestrians

Taking your life in your hands when you cross the road on beach road and 2nd road

Very badly maintained. One light controlled crossing on each road the one on 2nd road out of action for at least a month when I was there and probably still is. Bloody great telegraph poles planted in the middle of very narrow sidewalks.

Major work with no safe pedestrian way of getting past (right next to Walking Street. Forcing pedestrians to cross the road twice at a very dangerous corner in order to get from the beach side into walking street. 

Bloody great holes in the sidewalk.

The city father's prioritize cars over bikes over pedestrians. No reasonable father would take his children to such a dangerous place where you have to step onto the road just to get past pedestrians coming in the other direction

It is not about shops encroaching on the sidewalk it's about <deleted> poor city maintenance and poor pedestrian facilities

There are plenty of other warm countries which are safe for tourists and foreign tourists now go there. The idea of focussing on domestic tourism is actually to cover up the fact that foreign tourists don't want to go there any more because it isn't safe. Foreign tourism was already declining drastically before Covid (40% down in 2019) Covid has merely accelerated the process and will never recover until the city father's get their act together.

 

 

     Source for that 40% drop in foreign tourists to Pattaya in 2019?  I find stats somewhat hard to find for just Pattaya--more seem to be available for Thailand. Mastercard was one I found and it pegged Pattaya with 9.4 million international visitors in 2018 and 9.44 million in 2019.  Doesn't seem to be a 40% drop.

[Mike k]

3 hours ago, Thaiophil said:

Because it’s actually quite pleasant compared to polluted Bangkok and the bars are open

 

Just arrived for a few days to get out of the smoke. Reports of it being a ghost town are greatly exaggerated. Terminal 21 is actually quite busy and about half the bars in Soi 6 are open

 

My pleasant clean hotel 5 mins from the beach is costing me less than 600 bt a night and the new motorway gets you here in 90 mins flat.

 

With much less traffic and fewer sex tourists it’s really quite nice.

Where are you staying I plan on going there Mar 1st you can message me 

[RobU]

3 hours ago, newnative said:

     Source for that 40% drop in foreign tourists to Pattaya in 2019?  I find stats somewhat hard to find for just Pattaya--more seem to be available for Thailand. Mastercard was one I found and it pegged Pattaya with 9.4 million international visitors in 2018 and 9.44 million in 2019.  Doesn't seem to be a 40% drop.

I admit my source was Thailand as a whole however I was there over Christmas and it was noticeable sitting in BJ3's that there was nowhere near the amount of people wandering round Walking Street the touts really had to try hard. Perhaps I was just there at the wrong time

 

[GinBoy2]

Why stop panning Pattaya?

 

It's the sex capital (sorry of course there is no prostitution in Thailand) of the world, filthy beaches, disgusting traffic.

 

It's the gift that keeps giving.

 

It'll keep this forum going long after most of us have turned to dust

[meechai]

On 2/13/2021 at 4:50 PM, rooster59 said:

You just can't win. Have these people no wives? That's where I retreat to if I fancy a decent moan....

 

555 are you kidding? 99% of these are the guys who couldn't keep a wife in their own country & no others would have them.

So now they are like chihuahuas now running down the street humping any ankle they can grab onto ...thinking their popular ????

 

They should do like the cowboys & play a country western record in reverse.....Then they would get their wives back...

get their house back... get their dog back... get their truck back 5555

[newnative]

7 hours ago, RobU said:

I admit my source was Thailand as a whole however I was there over Christmas and it was noticeable sitting in BJ3's that there was nowhere near the amount of people wandering round Walking Street the touts really had to try hard. Perhaps I was just there at the wrong time

 

     Tourism for all of Thailand was also up in 2019 vs. earlier years--it went up every year from the previous year except for 2014, the year of the coup.  2019 was 39 million.  It may have seemed less busy because 25 million of those tourists were from Asian countries and  only 8 million were from Europe and the Americas.  Perhaps fewer of those 25 million were coming to Thailand to go to Walking Street and BJ3's and visited other attractions, instead.

    It's interesting that with all the talk regarding drops in tourism, only two countries actually had a small drop in the number of tourists between 2015 and 2019--Singapore and Australia.  All the other countries tracked were up--some by small percentages: UK 4.9%, and others by large percentages: India 91.99%.