Pattaya What to Expect

Pattaya Beach is a place which has managed over the years to earn itself the unfortunate title "Patpong by the sea", due to the huge amount of Go-Go bars and girly shows that have sprung up at the southern end of the strip. This reputation is probably a bit unfair, and has its roots in the Second World War, when randy young sailors would pull into port looking for a good time. Now, however, Pattaya attracts families by the thousand, and if you ignore the most southern end of the strip and stay by the beach, you probably wouldn't even know there was anything seedy about the place. Of course, I've never seen a holiday show on television which remembers that anything exists south of the shopping center, but that's hardly to be expected.
Again, my travel agent back in England seems to have checked me into three days of unashamed luxury. My hotel invoice describes what I have in front of me at the moment as an ocean view, and they aren't kidding; if it weren't for the horizon, I'm certain I'd be able to see all the way home! My room on the fifth floor has a set of French doors onto a balcony overlooking a wide view of the bay and the hotels private beach, with palm trees, guys on surf boards, the lot. Later on my journey, I will be going to Hawaii - and I can't imagine it could look much different from this. The pool, which is directly below my balcony, has a huge flower engraved into the bottom of it, the symbol of the Dusit hotel chain, and the hotel itself seems to be slightly smaller than the average airport. Each floor is circular, and all the walls are comprised of huge picture windows looking out on to a panoramic paradise. It really is such a shame that so much expense is spent on making sure tourists can spend several days visiting a place as culturally diverse as Thailand and pretend that they are on a beach in California! I wouldn't have been surprised if somebody had told me the whole building actually revolved. I went out. It was mid-afternoon so I figured I would take a leisurely stroll around the bay and see what Pattaya had to offer. I acquired a local map from reception and set off along the beach road. The trouble is, there is no scale on the map - Pattaya beach is a two mile bay, at either end of which are the two main places of interest in the area, one wholesome and family oriented and the other, well, not so much so! I strolled along, the Sun setting over the clear waters, and marvelled at the range of shops and street stalls I was passing, selling both Thai souvenirs and western delicacies such as donuts and pizza. The Northern end of the strip is certainly very much aimed at the tourist in us all. Restaurants displaying large signs advertising delicious food (have you ever seen one advertising revolting food?), Gem shops, tourist TAT (which, interestingly, is the name of the Thai Tourist Authority), and one place that wanted to offer me a physical massage. I can only imagine this to be the opposite of a surreal massage, where you stay at home all day and imagine that somebody is stroking your back with a wet fish! After about an hour of walking, I decided that it was just too hot to be attempting such a trek during daylight hours. I arrived back at the hotel in a quivering, steaming heap, and enquired at reception about any other way of getting further along the beach road in one piece.
"Have you tried our fitness centre, Sir?" the receptionist asked, that ever present Thai smile refusing to give away whether she was genuinely worried about me or had simply had so much experience of western tourists that she had mastered the fine art of British sarcasm. Undercover of darkness (Insert James Bond theme here), I returned to the Beach Road and carried on walking-eventually reaching the point that I had reached earlier. Shortly beyond this point, things like Burger King and McDonalds started to spring up. I knew I was getting towards the night life. Sure enough, four hundred yards further on the road ended, and was replaced by a mile long pedestrian walkway over the entrance of which was a huge marble archway on which was written "Only sexual deviants beyond this point". Actually that's a lie-what it said was "Welcome to Walking Street, South Pattaya". Nonetheless, I'm sure they were still one letter out, because I've never seen so many Go-Go bars in my life: and just in case you forget for a moment what the excuse for all this is, the archway is topped off with a big picture of a winking sailor! Clearly, the word subtle hasn't yet reached these shores! The entire length of the mile was crowded with Thai families out for an evening's stroll, indicating that the locals don't see anything wrong with any of it. I am led to believe that it is not unusual here for girls, when asked at school what they want to be when they grow up, to reply "A prostitute like mummy" - and since it is clearly one of the few easy jobs with a steady wage out here, I can well believe it. I may not understand it, but I can believe it. Every store front is a bar, in which the most striking nymphets in long red dresses crowd around all the bars waiting to pounce on any red blooded male who sits at their bar stool. At least a proportion of these will be the ladyboys you've heard about on TV (pun intended) - men either dressed up as women or having gone the whole hog and had the operation... and believe me, anybody would be hard pressed to tell the difference. It's not like in the West where a man dressed as a woman normally stands out a mile; here, the only way you're likely to know is by asking. I'm told by a young male group in the hotel, who are clearly here for all the wrong reasons, that it is difficult if not impossible to tell the difference until it's too late, which really makes the mind boggle. The Thai's have turned transvestism into an art form! But here's the thing: I didn't see a single girl (or whatever) who looked remotely tacky. No standing around on street corners wearing skin tight leather and f-me boots here, they were all perfectly dressed, they were all beautiful, and they all had smiles from ear to ear and seemed to be out for a night on the town. Up and down the street, families with young children were stopping to look, or to eat at street side stalls, if you didn't know what was going on behind the scenes courtesy of the bars and the mama-sans taking care of the girls, you could almost think this was a top nightclub district and nothing more. It's all illegal, of course, but widely tolerated. Guys stand outside each bar, looking out for the local constabulary - by the time the police get into any of the establishments, everybody is innocently sipping their drink and saying "Can I help you, officer?". Inside the bars, according to John (name changed to protect the guilty), one of the sexual athletes staying in my hotel, the girls are looked after not by dodgy east-end pimps but by the mama-san, who is essentially mother to all the girls. The girls will drink with you, dance with you, and you can buy the girls "lady drinks". If you want to take the girl away with you, you pay the mama-san an exit fee which relieves the girl of her obligation to work and she can leave with you. You can then either take the girl to a dodgy hotel, of which there appear to be many, or you can pay a bit more for "long time" which means she will stay with you all night and, if you like, be your companion for several days. In fact, I'm led to believe that many of the girls become so attached to their clients that they spend weeks with them. According to a local guide, girls have even been known to commit suicide upon realising that their client doesn't really love them and isn't coming back for them the next week as promised. I think I'll leave it there. A full debate on the rights and wrongs of what happens here is beyond the scope of this journal. Depressing, yes. Wrong? You decide.My complete travel journals can be found at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer

How does the idea of riding a three man miniature submarine under the gulf of Thailand grab you? Yeah, me too. Now, I have to confess at this point that I've never posed any real threat to the British Olympic swimming team, neither am I likely to do so in the foreseeable future. Come to think of it, I could go the whole hog and admit that if you put me in a 100 meter swimming race against a large house brick I'd probably come in second. One of my most treasured memories, and I mean that most sarcastically, is being called to the front of assembly in front of some 500 primary school children in my final year to be congratulated on achieving my bronze swimming certificate - something which everybody else had managed to do several years before. However, having previously had the pleasure of SCUBA (1) diving the barrier reef the last time I was down under and BOB diving in the Canary Islands (2), I am certainly no stranger to the ocean, and imagined that a miniature submarine would be the perfect way to have a look around the perfect blue oceans of the Gulf of Thailand before moving on to Phuket. My breakfast was finished off in a state of some excitement. I had really high hopes for the day and wasn't going to let anything spoil it - I was only slightly fazed, in fact, upon discovering that this morning's crispy bacon did, in fact, double as a projectile weapon upon contact with a fork and that I was able to single-handedly put several people in hospital without moving from my table. Koh Larn is a small island that can clearly be seen across the bay from the hotel. It is so small, in fact, that it's difficult to find it on any map and the mapping facility I'm using to track my journey refuses to believe it exists at all and insists that I point out where it is myself. Although only a few miles away, the quality of the sand is much cleaner than Pattaya and it has become a popular destination for day trippers and locals alike, who go back and forth at the not unreasonable rate of 20 Baht one way (I can't remember what the exchange rate was at the time, but this is something akin to taking a train from North London to South London for a couple of pennies). Of course, having booked a considerably more expensive excursion (IE: The tourist option), I was privileged to be driven to the beach at Jontien, a little south of Pattaya, and taken by speed boat out to the pontoon from which the submarine launches. The motor launch jumped and tossed about all the way: the sea was quite rough today, but even the threat of seeing my breakfast again wasn't going to put me off what I was about to do. At the Pontoon, the submarine was being prepared - so the speedboat continued on to one of Koh Larn's beautiful white sandy beaches where I was able to spend an hour or so relaxing in the sun. The beach here was a totally different experience from Koh Samet the other day - There was the same long sandy beach, but this time no sign of restaurants or any other tourist activity other than a couple of Jet skis out in the bay. Instead, there was a native hut, with a campfire and hoards of locals scurrying about, and a row of deckchairs. My guide was a local guy, although he had a very strong American accent and explained that this was because of the many years he had spent there before waking up one morning wondering why he had left in the first place and coming straight back to set up the submarine business. He told me that the locals would happily look after me while I waited for the launch, so I sat on the beach under the shade of a palm tree being terribly British and drinking tea! Nobody looked as though they had left the island in years - and it was refreshing to have a guide who spoke perfect English - despite the amount of western visitors, most people here really have a hard time understanding my accent! When the sub was ready, and the local women had given up asking me about my life back in England and trying to fix me up with their daughters (who, for the record, were something more than stunning), I hopped back into the speed boat and raced out to the Pontoon - The guide took my camera and said that he would take a couple of pictures for me, although when I got it back later he had taken 15 and one of the female tourists with us had borrowed it to take a close up photo of her breasts, which came as something of a surprise when I got the film developed later, I can tell you. There were two other guys waiting on the Pontoon, stereotypically gay to the point that they could almost have been winding us up. They seemed to be under the impression that the top was going to come off the submarine so that they could climb in from above. When they saw that they actually had to get in the water and duck down underneath to get in they suddenly had a remarkable change of heart. The rest of us stood there, genuinely bemused by the conversation:
"Oh, But Davey - You know I don't like the water"
"I thought you'd be like this. You're always like this when it's something fun…"
"You go. I'll stay here and watch you"
"No, If you're not going then I'm not going…"
I had to cringe, thinking about the trouble these guys would've been in if the pontoon had been filled with unsympathetic British lager louts. As it was, the small group of us tried to do anything we could to persuade these two really nice guys to have a go, but they really weren't having it and ended up leaving on the next launch... There was a great long list of questions and disclaimers to be filled in before I could get in the sub, mainly saying that if I was to have an argument with a great white shark while I was down there then it wasn't anybodies fault but the shark - that sort of thing.
On my trip, the pilot turned out to be a "Driver under instruction". My English speaking guide sat there the whole time telling him which buttons to press and saying useful things like "Watch out for that rock" and "Remember that things look closer than they are through this glass". All the same, we developed the disturbing habit of sinking to the bottom and hitting the rocks just a little bit too much for my liking. Mind you, it was a superb experience and I would do it again in an instant: The coral and the little coloured fish are just something else to watch swimming around in their world down there, but on reflection it's probably just as well that we didn't have two neurotic guys having a panic attack along with us as well... It was a great experience in the sub, although nothing to equal SCUBA diving the Barrier Reef in Cairns. In fact, the brochure for the submarine trip even goes so far as to point out that you shouldn't expect it to live up to the Barrier Reef - so they must have quite a few visitors from that part of the world. On the way back to the mainland, I saw my first sign of rain on the trip so far - And boy, did it rain! I mean, never again will I step out of my house at home in England and say "I can't go out today, It's raining". Until you have experienced a tropical rainstorm like the one here this afternoon, you simply cannot imagine what it is like. There were trees opposite the hotel, but I couldn't see them from the lobby as there was basically a sheet of water in the way.
Nevertheless, I had to find an ATM that would accept my card so that I could take out some money for the next few days. Struggling against the wind and the rain, I got down to the beach road before one of Thailand's ever present Tuk-Tuk's (a sort of electric rickshaw with the bicycle replaced by a driver hunched over in an open cab while you sit on a narrow seat behind) pulled over to the side of the road, honking furiously for my attention.
Unfortunately, it was the one time that I really could have used a ride, but I didn't know where the ATM was and so wouldn't have been able to direct the driver. It's hard enough to get a Taxi driver to go where you want at the best of times, especially when they don't speak the language and just want to take you to a Go-Go bar where they are on commission! Yeah, I toyed with the idea of trying to explain that I wanted to go to the nearest ATM cash point that would accept my CIRRUS card, but I think his head probably would've exploded. He leaned out of the Tuk-Tuk, showed me a not very subtle photo of a beautiful girl inserting a banana into an orifice not originally designed for that purpose, and offered to take me for a massage. But since the beautiful lady in question was obviously Cindy Crawford courtesy of Photoshop, I had reason to doubt the authenticity of the photo - so I politely declined, and hurried on into the rain! I did eventually find an ATM machine, and took out some cash for the days to come. To be honest, with the weather turning the way it has today, I think it's about the perfect time to be moving on to Phuket... (1)SCUBA stands for Self Contained, Underwater Breathing Apparatus for any you who have been dying to know for years! (2)A BOB is a sort of underwater jet-pack which you guide about while safely concealed inside a plastic bubble - you may have seen them in underwater movies such as The Deep and Titanic You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer

How does the idea of riding a three man miniature submarine under the gulf of Thailand grab you? Yeah, me too. Now, I have to confess at this point that I've never posed any real threat to the British Olympic swimming team, neither am I likely to do so in the foreseeable future. Come to think of it, I could go the whole hog and admit that if you put me in a 100 meter swimming race against a large house brick I'd probably come in second. One of my most treasured memories, and I mean that most sarcastically, is being called to the front of assembly in front of some 500 primary school children in my final year to be congratulated on achieving my bronze swimming certificate - something which everybody else had managed to do several years before. However, having previously had the pleasure of SCUBA (1) diving the barrier reef the last time I was down under and BOB diving in the Canary Islands (2), I am certainly no stranger to the ocean, and imagined that a miniature submarine would be the perfect way to have a look around the perfect blue oceans of the Gulf of Thailand before moving on to Phuket. My breakfast was finished off in a state of some excitement. I had really high hopes for the day and wasn't going to let anything spoil it - I was only slightly fazed, in fact, upon discovering that this morning's crispy bacon did, in fact, double as a projectile weapon upon contact with a fork and that I was able to single-handedly put several people in hospital without moving from my table. Koh Larn is a small island that can clearly be seen across the bay from the hotel. It is so small, in fact, that it's difficult to find it on any map and the mapping facility I'm using to track my journey refuses to believe it exists at all and insists that I point out where it is myself. Although only a few miles away, the quality of the sand is much cleaner than Pattaya and it has become a popular destination for day trippers and locals alike, who go back and forth at the not unreasonable rate of 20 Baht one way (I can't remember what the exchange rate was at the time, but this is something akin to taking a train from North London to South London for a couple of pennies). Of course, having booked a considerably more expensive excursion (IE: The tourist option), I was privileged to be driven to the beach at Jontien, a little south of Pattaya, and taken by speed boat out to the pontoon from which the submarine launches. The motor launch jumped and tossed about all the way: the sea was quite rough today, but even the threat of seeing my breakfast again wasn't going to put me off what I was about to do. At the Pontoon, the submarine was being prepared - so the speedboat continued on to one of Koh Larn's beautiful white sandy beaches where I was able to spend an hour or so relaxing in the sun. The beach here was a totally different experience from Koh Samet the other day - There was the same long sandy beach, but this time no sign of restaurants or any other tourist activity other than a couple of Jet skis out in the bay. Instead, there was a native hut, with a campfire and hoards of locals scurrying about, and a row of deckchairs. My guide was a local guy, although he had a very strong American accent and explained that this was because of the many years he had spent there before waking up one morning wondering why he had left in the first place and coming straight back to set up the submarine business. He told me that the locals would happily look after me while I waited for the launch, so I sat on the beach under the shade of a palm tree being terribly British and drinking tea! Nobody looked as though they had left the island in years - and it was refreshing to have a guide who spoke perfect English - despite the amount of western visitors, most people here really have a hard time understanding my accent! When the sub was ready, and the local women had given up asking me about my life back in England and trying to fix me up with their daughters (who, for the record, were something more than stunning), I hopped back into the speed boat and raced out to the Pontoon - The guide took my camera and said that he would take a couple of pictures for me, although when I got it back later he had taken 15 and one of the female tourists with us had borrowed it to take a close up photo of her breasts, which came as something of a surprise when I got the film developed later, I can tell you. There were two other guys waiting on the Pontoon, stereotypically gay to the point that they could almost have been winding us up. They seemed to be under the impression that the top was going to come off the submarine so that they could climb in from above. When they saw that they actually had to get in the water and duck down underneath to get in they suddenly had a remarkable change of heart. The rest of us stood there, genuinely bemused by the conversation:
"Oh, But Davey - You know I don't like the water"
"I thought you'd be like this. You're always like this when it's something fun…"
"You go. I'll stay here and watch you"
"No, If you're not going then I'm not going…"
I had to cringe, thinking about the trouble these guys would've been in if the pontoon had been filled with unsympathetic British lager louts. As it was, the small group of us tried to do anything we could to persuade these two really nice guys to have a go, but they really weren't having it and ended up leaving on the next launch... There was a great long list of questions and disclaimers to be filled in before I could get in the sub, mainly saying that if I was to have an argument with a great white shark while I was down there then it wasn't anybodies fault but the shark - that sort of thing.
On my trip, the pilot turned out to be a "Driver under instruction". My English speaking guide sat there the whole time telling him which buttons to press and saying useful things like "Watch out for that rock" and "Remember that things look closer than they are through this glass". All the same, we developed the disturbing habit of sinking to the bottom and hitting the rocks just a little bit too much for my liking. Mind you, it was a superb experience and I would do it again in an instant: The coral and the little coloured fish are just something else to watch swimming around in their world down there, but on reflection it's probably just as well that we didn't have two neurotic guys having a panic attack along with us as well... It was a great experience in the sub, although nothing to equal SCUBA diving the Barrier Reef in Cairns. In fact, the brochure for the submarine trip even goes so far as to point out that you shouldn't expect it to live up to the Barrier Reef - so they must have quite a few visitors from that part of the world. On the way back to the mainland, I saw my first sign of rain on the trip so far - And boy, did it rain! I mean, never again will I step out of my house at home in England and say "I can't go out today, It's raining". Until you have experienced a tropical rainstorm like the one here this afternoon, you simply cannot imagine what it is like. There were trees opposite the hotel, but I couldn't see them from the lobby as there was basically a sheet of water in the way.
Nevertheless, I had to find an ATM that would accept my card so that I could take out some money for the next few days. Struggling against the wind and the rain, I got down to the beach road before one of Thailand's ever present Tuk-Tuk's (a sort of electric rickshaw with the bicycle replaced by a driver hunched over in an open cab while you sit on a narrow seat behind) pulled over to the side of the road, honking furiously for my attention.
Unfortunately, it was the one time that I really could have used a ride, but I didn't know where the ATM was and so wouldn't have been able to direct the driver. It's hard enough to get a Taxi driver to go where you want at the best of times, especially when they don't speak the language and just want to take you to a Go-Go bar where they are on commission! Yeah, I toyed with the idea of trying to explain that I wanted to go to the nearest ATM cash point that would accept my CIRRUS card, but I think his head probably would've exploded. He leaned out of the Tuk-Tuk, showed me a not very subtle photo of a beautiful girl inserting a banana into an orifice not originally designed for that purpose, and offered to take me for a massage. But since the beautiful lady in question was obviously Cindy Crawford courtesy of Photoshop, I had reason to doubt the authenticity of the photo - so I politely declined, and hurried on into the rain! I did eventually find an ATM machine, and took out some cash for the days to come. To be honest, with the weather turning the way it has today, I think it's about the perfect time to be moving on to Phuket... (1)SCUBA stands for Self Contained, Underwater Breathing Apparatus for any you who have been dying to know for years! (2)A BOB is a sort of underwater jet-pack which you guide about while safely concealed inside a plastic bubble - you may have seen them in underwater movies such as The Deep and Titanic You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer

Pattaya was a disappointment for me. I'm an asian girl and i was traveling alone in Pattaya. Does this alone necessarily mean i'm looking for someone??? Pattaya's swarmed with dodgy old blokes and putas. I really disliked the atmosphere there and ended up staying in the hotel's swimming pool for 4 days! Pattaya is an oversized red light district. Unless your interest is in prostitution, go somewhere else!

While in Pattaya, you must attend the Alcazar Cabaret Show. It's performed by lady-boys. No way to guess that those gorgeous, talented people are men unless somebdy tells you. The show is brethtaking and extremely rich; the songs, the light, the decoration, the clothes are bewildering. The show is divided into several parts that take place in different countries. When you go out you can take photos with the lady-boys.

Whenever possible in pubs or bars, order your drink in uncorked bottle and never take your eyes off of it. Even after just one beer you may end up waking next morning with no money and no recollection of last night. I learned this lesson in hard way.

I thought Pattaya was lots of fun. It gets a wrap of being a sex tourism town but there is a lot of fun to be had that does not involve prostitution.

Simply don´t go to Pattaya! It´s horrible and backpackers have nothing lost there... Go to Ko Samet!!! My favorite island!

Pattaya was a disappointment for me. I'm an asian girl and i was traveling alone in Pattaya. Does this alone necessarily mean i'm looking for someone??? Pattaya's swarmed with dodgy old blokes and putas. I really disliked the atmosphere there and ended up staying in the hotel's swimming pool for 4 days! Pattaya is an oversized red light district. Unless your interest is in prostitution, go somewhere else!

While in Pattaya, you must attend the Alcazar Cabaret Show. It's performed by lady-boys. No way to guess that those gorgeous, talented people are men unless somebdy tells you. The show is brethtaking and extremely rich; the songs, the light, the decoration, the clothes are bewildering. The show is divided into several parts that take place in different countries. When you go out you can take photos with the lady-boys.

Whenever possible in pubs or bars, order your drink in uncorked bottle and never take your eyes off of it. Even after just one beer you may end up waking next morning with no money and no recollection of last night. I learned this lesson in hard way.

I thought Pattaya was lots of fun. It gets a wrap of being a sex tourism town but there is a lot of fun to be had that does not involve prostitution.

Simply don´t go to Pattaya! It´s horrible and backpackers have nothing lost there... Go to Ko Samet!!! My favorite island!

Phattha is very seedy. Girl bars and prostitutes everywhere. Everyone wants to rip you off. Don't go unless this is why you came to Thailand.

Travel light, you won't be wearing many clothes because of the heat, casual, swimwear, shorts and t-shirts, flip flops, There are many cheap shops and tailors if you require formal wear.