So I shelled out 124 baht on the bus trip and spent a few days last week living it up in the party capital of the world .
What goes on in Pattaya stays in Pattaya. But it's a good place to go to find an Asian girlfriend, or even check out if you want an Asian wife in the first place. Not sure it would be a good place to actually find a wife though.
But if you like beer, bars, women, clubbing, playing pool, sitting by the sea, ladyboys or people watching then you need to add a weekend in Pattaya to your bucket list.
It's also a pretty cheap place to live or visit, and has a huge expat population. I told my family I'm not going back to the UK. I'll just wait until all of the Brits move to Pattaya!
Highlights for me included:
- Sexy beautiful gogo dancers
Seeing a young Russian guy make fun of a ladyboy, not knowing that the ladyboy was a fluent Russian speaker. Needless to say he got a bit of a kicking.
Two bar girls tottering around on 6" heels while squaring up outside a gogo bar.
My first English fried breakfast for 6 months.
The music volume in the Arab bars, which was simply incredible. I never knew sound systems could go that loud.
The general freedom to party hard - that was really missing in China.
People watching - seeing old dudes with young ladies, dudes with dudes, dudes with ladyboys, girls with girls and (shock) dudes with their wives.
- Horrible car crash on the freeway back to Bangkok involving a crushed car and a lorry that ended up in a ditch.
Stupid farangs.
Chinese tourists just driving around in massive buses and spending one day in each place!
Walking around in the early hours and the stray dogs eyeing me up as if I was a walking pork chop.
Realising I have a very poor ability to spot ladyboys .
The beach wasn't great - definitely not as good as The Beach in the film also called The Beach.
Severe lack of bikini babes on the beach.