Pattaya - Thailand’s Mos Eisley

Posted by Greg

November 8, 2007

Urban Male Magazine, January 2005

If you’re ever in Bangkok and you point your nose roughly Southeast, you’ll be facing one of the strangest places in Asia. It’s a hugely popular place that has steady streams of vehicles coming and going, a mere two hours and a $3 CDN bus ride away from Bangkok. Depending on your particular inclinations, you’ll either find yourself wading along a beach under swaying palm trees eating fresh pineapple and watching parasailers float by overhead, or sitting in a dark bar being entertained and/or horrified by several beautiful women in a show that would make Larry Flynt blush. Welcome to Pattaya.

It’s a strange town, a dichotomous Jekyll and Hyde playground that has oodles of activities for everyone from your Grandma to your college fraternity. Some friends and I recently found ourselves down there for a quick vacation weekend and I felt I needed to put something on paper; a place this strange needs to be documented and shared with others.

During the day, most of the action in Pattaya (PAT-uh-ya) is packed into the town’s two main beaches, Pattaya and Jomtien, which both look pretty similar to the postcards you’ve received from those insufferable bastard friends of yours in January while you’re scraping the ice from your windshield. Jammed with sunburned tourists in rented jeeps and motorcycles, it’s a sensory overload in every way. Food stalls dot the sidewalks every ten feet and you’re rarely more than 50 feet away from an internet café, photo shop, beer-bar or tailor that can whip you up a suit with an Armani tag for $100 in less than a day.

After stuffing my face with a huge bowl of spicy beef noodles for about $1, my friend and I paid 650 Baht each ($20) to spend the next 30 minutes trying to kill ourselves by inventing tricks on our rented jet-skis. A more energetic group could have then gone bungee-jumping, paintballing, 4×4-ing or kayaking but we opted for a less stressful itinerary. Once we were safely back on land, we treated ourselves to massages on the beach for a few shekels more and topped it off by e-taunting some friends back home, just like the insufferable bastards we are.

Froggering our way across the road between gigantic rented motorcycles driven by huge men with tiny arms wrapped around their torsos and hordes of sawng-thaews (converted pickup trucks that constantly circle the main town area; flag one down, jump in the back and tell him where you’re going), we took a siesta, cranking up the air-con and recharging our batteries before we went out later that night. During the day, Pattaya is a fantastic place to hang out; relaxing and full of interesting things to see, cheap things to buy and delicious food to eat. But, much like the vampire Lestat, the place really comes alive at night.

Emerging from the bat-cave at around 8, we decided to take the slow, scenic route along the beach to Walking Street, the reddest red-light district in town. Weaving my way through the crowd and stopping every 100 meters or so to check out the wares at one of the hundreds of street stalls clogging the sidewalks, I bought a 3m x 3m piece of thick, peacock-blue silk for my dear old ma - $10. I doubt it would hold together in a washing machine, but it sure looked and felt nice. A pair of genuine fake Oakleys were mine for about $3 (asking price: $20; bargaining is essential) and I picked up some DVD’s for about $5 each, although I was too reticent to delve into the stack of DVD porn, even with such modest names as “Reverse Gang Bang”

We were pulled into a tiny little shop where we were shown a flashlight by a woman who looked like she could have been a teenager during the crusades. Seeing as how we were clearly uninterested in buying a flashlight, she then showed us the “special piece,” and proceeded to remove the head of the flashlight to reveal two metal prongs – a stun gun. Electricity crackled across the connection as she told us it’s perfect for sneaking onto airplanes. Not knowing whether she was going to bake us cookies or electrocute and rob us, we politely declined and decided to seek electron-free entertainment elsewhere.

Walking Street begins rather innocuously, with a few quiet beer bars, trinket shops and jewelry stores but soon progresses into chaos. One of my more, shall we say, ‘well-traveled’ friends motioned down a dark and dingy looking soi (alley) to point out an infamous establishment where you saddle up to the bar, plonk your cash onto the counter and… well, let’s just say that underneath the tabletop, the bar is ringed in curtains, and it ain’t for the midget wait staff. A few more meters down we stepped underneath the roof of a large, open area with a Muay Thai (kickboxing) ring in the middle, surrounded by five or six bars. As usual, the female/male ratio was running at about 8:1, as were the odds for the (often fixed) fight that all the men were busy watching and all the women were busy ignoring. It struck me as funny that in Pattaya, intense acts of violence inside a bar were actually used to draw the customers in. You want bouncers? They’re in the ring kicking each other in the head. We watched the two lean and sweaty opponents try to beat each other into a coma for a few minutes, followed by a mid-fight show by a guy who, for 20 Baht ($0.85), would drape a huge snake around your neck in order for your friends to laugh and take pictures. After a while, the cries of “Hello handsome, you want drink?” got annoying enough for us to leave.

Ten minutes later, we were to be found inside a bar called… well, I can’t remember what it was called; doesn’t really matter, they’re all the same. If you’ve never been into one of these places, you’re in for either the shock or the treat of a lifetime to which no Western strip club can hold a candle to. The place was packed with men who fit the narrow but well-defined demographic of ‘old, bald, fat and hairy.’ A few young bucks like myself were scattered around and everyone had their eyes on the action in the center of the bar. Three girls were on stage, completely nude. The first one was wearing a strap-on, the second was holding a candle and dripping wax onto the third, who was on her knees getting whipped by a tube of insulating foam by the first one. All three were gyrating to the loud, generic crap booming from the speakers and – judging by their smiles – having a great time. Despite this seeming like paradise, it soon gets tiring. Before we left, I made my way to the bathroom which was blocked by 6 or 8 completely naked girls getting painted up by a body painter. I felt pretty lame walking through a crowd of hot, naked girls going “Sorry, excuse me, have to pee, excuse me…”

One of the most enjoyable things to do in Pattaya is people watch. Now, I’m a fierce proponent of free expression, but the word ‘freak’ must have been invented to describe the kind of people that populate Walking Street anytime after 9pm. A random sample: a 60 year old woman wearing a Catholic schoolgirls’ outfit (complete with pigtails); an elderly, overweight bleached-blonde couple both wearing the same leopard print leotard; acid-washed jeans and RATT t-shirts; burned-out women who have seen way too many late nights and an uncountable number of guys who couldn’t get laid if they were a chocolate covered millionaire clutching a fistful of new shoes. Mind you, most of them were going back to the shagnasium with two and three giggling young chickadees so clearly it’s not a worldwide standard. It’s quite clear that no matter who you are – or who you want to be – Pattaya has something for you.

But despite what I’ve just written, the overwhelming sleaze that the town has to offer can be found only if you seek it out. Sure, you can catch glimpses of it nearly everywhere you look, but it’s not so prevalent as to invade your life beyond reason.

My friend Beer (seriously), who happens to be a severely attractive young woman, lives in Pattaya and has nothing whatsoever to do with the sex industry that the town is known for. “I’ve lived here most of my life, and there are countless things to do. Island hopping, trekking, elephant riding, shopping… anything that you’d ever need for fun and recreation.” I ask her if she ever feels uncomfortable being surrounded by so much sordidness. “It can get a bit much sometimes. One time when I was in M4 (Junior High), a tourist came up to me and asked me how much I cost. But you just have to brush it aside and ignore it. I look at people like that with pity; it’s such a sad way to live your life.”

Echoing what Beer said, Pattaya indeed has lots to offer during the day; there are countless beautiful islands close by, fantastic water sports on both beaches and world-class scuba-diving. The seafood is cheap and delicious and the shopping is dynamite. And as long as you stay away from the nightlife hotspots, it’s quite easy to avoid the sex industry and have a pleasant, relaxing evening. Considering, of course, that you want to.

Magazines