My first five trips here with wife and twice with kids. Phuket, Ayuthaya, Kanchanaburi. Came here alone in 2015 (Phuket) for two months seeing if I could live there. Answer: no. Came back January 2016 (Chaiyaphum and Phetchabunm, Bangkok) ten days. Move here (alone) April 2016. First trip to Pattaya was in October 2017, eighteen months later, after I had bought my car to catch up with a friend in Naklua - car still had the red plates. We didn't even go as far as the beach. I was staying at Garden Lodge I think it was called in Naklua-Nth Pattaya road, a few hundred yards up from the Dolphin Circle at the end of second road. It was bulldozed a few years later and some spaceship-looking building convention centre is on the site now. I didn't get down 2nd Road further than Toy Bar which was my friend's live band pub of choice. Two nights on the lash, and drove home. Didn't go back for another year, just after new year 2019. The smog was so thick, my car's gps lost signal, and the sky was a sick yellow. I go back about twice a year for an unhealthy amount of Heineken and carbohydrate-laden foreign restaurant food, for two or three nights, and then back here. I could possibly live in the hinterlands up in that area behind Pattaya itself - I went for a couple of foreign-sourced grocery markets along some massive road named after a golf course or a social club I can't remember which. But it was far enough out to be relatively quiet. But, like CM, that smog was a real turn off. As is being grabbed at by masseuses when walking along the pavement. I didn't retire with PTSD to be on high alert walking around during the day. Where I am 75km south of Mueang Phetchabun works fine for me but it really isn't suited for a lot of people, just as being a condo surrounded by a million people doesn't suit me. Of course, this is just my personal opinion.
