Swasdee Pattaya

As our car arriving Pattaya after a 1.5 hours drive from Bangkok Airport, my first impressive was....holy cow!!! My vague memory of the trip that I took with Darren 25 or so years ago told me that Pattaya was nothing but a small red-light district, a small scatterings of 3 to 4 stars hotels fringed along the beach, and some local cottages of the fishing village that made up Pattaya. Either my memories played tricks on me or Pattaya grew leaps and bounds in the last 25 years.

I guess things do change a lot in 25 years, but Pattaya is now resembling more like a metropolis than a red-light district that invaded a fishing village. There was not a trace of that left (I meant the fishing, not the sex industry. That exploded in size). The fishing villages are replaced by mega malls. I think the fishermen who were here still here, but instead of catching fishes, they now catch tourist dollars. Upwardly mobile. Pattaya has become so big that the ASEAN Summit will be held there next week with leaders from countries like China and Japan will be there.

Not bad for a red-light district that was created by the US navy during the Vietnam War when the sailors popped down there for R & R. As a side note, I bet large percentages of Asian red-light districts are single handledly created by US Naval force. Make that Australasia, not just Asia. Why else is there a red-light district in King's Cross, smack bang in the middle of some dandy neighbours of Potts Points and Elizabeth Bay? The whole area around King's Cross are upmarket, middle to upper income urban area and they don't want a red-light district in their midst. It makes more sense if the red-light district was in somewhere like Surryhills. But then Kingscross is only a walking distance from Woollomoloo Wharf where the US navy docked its aircraft carrier while its crew cruise down to King's Cross for some red hot R&R. Like The Village People would sing, you can't stop the sailors...oops music...(Yeah I suspect Village People is popular in Pattaya).

As it turned out that the fast pace of growth of Pattaya wasn't due entirely of tourism (now much more than just sex industry), but Thai government conscious effort to expand it. That have also added a growing population of Western expats, whom could easily be mistakened by/as tourists. But their 'natural tan', as supposed to three-days lobster tan, should provide a telltale sign.