sun and fun make Pattaya Beach one of the most popular destinations for visitors to Thailand. Pattaya Beach, on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand, was a small fishing village until the early 1960's when it was 'invaded' by American soldiers and sailors seeking rest and recreation while on leave from serving in Vietnam. It has since blossomed into a cosmopolitan city dedicated to the pursuit of excitement, pleasure and adventure.
Easy to get to from Bangkok by air conditioned bus, Pattaya Beach offers every imaginable form of water sports, plentiful and affordable golf courses, including some designed by the most famous names in the game, and stimulating nightlife
Naklua beach, immediately north of Pattaya Beach, is quiet and unpolluted. It doesn't have as many restaurants or expensive resort hotels as it's neighbor to the south, nor the rowdy nightlife, but all these are available for the 10 Baht cost of a 20 minute songthaew ride to Pattaya beach. Similarly, Jomtien beach, around the headland to the south of Pattaya Beach, is quieter and less congested but has good quality accommodations and restaurants.
With Pattaya streets full of high-rise hotels and hustlers on every corner, PATTAYA is the epitome of exploitative tourism gone mad, but most of Pattaya's two million annual visitors don't mind that the place looks like the Costa del Sol because what they are here for is sex. The city swarms with male, female and transsexual prostitutes, and Western men flock here to enjoy their services in the rash of hostess bar-beers, go-go clubs and massage parlours. The signs trumpeting "Viagra for Sale" say it all. Pattaya Beach also has the largest gay scene in Thailand, with several exclusively gay hotels and an entire zone devoted to gay sex bars.
Pattaya's evolution into sin city began with the Vietnam War, when it got fat on selling sex to American servicemen. Ex-servicemen later returned to run the sort of joints they had once blown their dollars in and these days at least half the bars and restaurants in Pattaya Beach are foreign-run. More recently, there has been an influx of criminal gangs from Germany, Russia and Japan, who reportedly find Pattaya Beach a convenient centre for running their rackets in passport and credit-card fraud.
Meanwhile, local tourism authorities are trying hard to improve Pattaya's image, and with surprising success have begun enticing families and older couples with a catalogue of more wholesome entertainments such as theme parks, golf courses, shopping plazas and year-round diving. Russian holidaymakers seem particularly keen and Cyrillic script is now much in evidence around the resort. A recent flush of more sophisticated boutique hotels and restaurants is also starting to bring in a younger Thai crowd, which has brightened the picture a little. But in truth the beach here is far from pristine so after-hours "entertainment" is still the primary inducement.
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