The only thing the average white guy of modest means is liable to catch in Pattaya is a sexually transmitted disease.Cornfed wrote:This is wanton cultural vandalism, not unlike the draining of Boeng Kak and the demolition of the accompanying backpacker ghetto in Phnom Penh. I guess everyone realizes that impoverished Western tourists are now impoverished by anyone's standards so there is no point in bothering with them, and instead these countries are trying to attract rich tossers only. The average white guy of modest means just can't catch a break any more.
To Jester's point, if they're going to try to go upscale around here, it's going to take a reconstruction/fumigation effort of hundreds of millions of dollars. Let me be precise about what I mean when I say shithole/hell on earth. You walk outside and go along the street where the place I'm staying is, one of the main drags. Immediately you smell shit from the sewage, and you smell it until you go back inside. As you walk along the sidewalk that is completely cratered every 50 yards or so, there is garbage strewn along every square foot of the roadside. Mangy, unfed stray dogs on every block. If you want to cross a major street, you will have to dodge traffic, as there are no pedestrian protected walkways and traffic lights in only one direction; the drivers, half of them on motorbikes, are insane.
You can't go 30 feet or so without someone trying to shake you down for money. If you sit down to have a drink somewhere you will be descended upon by a prostitute speaking about five words of English who will try to separate you from your money, as will the people selling flowers and other trinkets who show up right after the girl (presumably the drill is you're supposed to start buying her stuff). To get her to go away you will have to be rudely explicit about your lack of interest, or leave yourself.
If you think all this is compensated for by female pulchritude, well, I guess different strokes for different folks and all that, but apparently I have the opposite of yellow fever, because in almost three weeks I have seen exactly one Thai woman I thought was the slightest bit attractive. This place is the ultimate anti-aphrodisiac.
And I haven't even been out at night or on Walking Street to see the real freak show. I've encountered only a small handful of aggressive ladyboys, like the one who recently put a gash requiring 13 stitches in the forehead of an American who had impolitely declined the offer of a drink together -- with his/her spiked heel (that's some kick, unless the shoe was taken off and wielded as a hand weapon). I've seen only one obvious pederast -- the Thai boy he was with being about eight -- though many old fags with their adolescent boy toys who are probably of age, at least in Thailand.
All of this in a year-round oppressive climate, unless you like extreme heat and humidity. There's a lot of cloud cover, and sometimes a breeze makes things tolerable, but when the sun is out it is unbearable.
Yes, going upscale with Pattaya will be quite the mountain to climb.
Edit: I see the word that begins with a p, ends with an e, and has seven letters in between, which are r, o, s, t ,i, t, u, t, has been replaced by the software with "hoe." WTF? It would not be my preference to use "hoe."