Jomtien and Pattaya Thailand

Main Street Jomtien

Jomtien Beach and Pattaya (Thailand)

Today we docked at Laem Chabang which is on the eastern side of the Bay of Thailand to Koh Samui but still 2.5 hours south of Bangkok by car.

Jomtien Beach

Having visitied Bangkok many times in the past I decided to go half way to Jomtien and Pattaya. Both are beachside tourist based towns up the west coast of the Bay of Thailand. They share similar traits with Koh Samui, Phuket, Penang and other Asian tourist meccas. Jomtien is a quieter beach side town that has a high number of resident farang (non Thai people who do visa renewal runs every 90 days). 

The reason for this is that it is about an hour from Bangkok, just south of the larger, louder Pattaya, and has a few high rise apartment blocks on the beach that are well constructed and cheap to buy, freehold. Cheap means $US100K for a one bedroom that you can easily rent or leave vacant for your own use.   I spent some time with real estate agents as the investment and returns appear sound.

The high number of farang has given the town a strong western influence in food, shopping and drinking partners.

Pattaya Beach

Pattaya is a much larger louder style tourist town with very large Westfield style shopping centres, beaches, clubs, pubs and associated rowdy tourist behaviours as the sun sets. It is very much a Kings Cross style night life place. There are beach bars (alcohol) set up everywhere that only open after 10pm. 

You can buy whatever you wish for, really ....... 

As a sideline, the apparent prostitution in many Asian tourist destinations has two sides to the story. Poverty is the norm, women and men have families to support and need to make money. There are no government benefits. Tourism has diminished normal income from farming so tourists are a source of income. Women and men work by day and don't want to necessarily spend every night in bars but do so to support their families with secondary income. The farang don't understand or care about this.

To take one scenario, a farang initially pays for a women who may become his girlfriend and then he expects to not continue paying for her time. The women becomes stuck as she needs the money and cannot simply be friends with the farang "for free". The farang wants her friendship and company but doesn't want to feel he is a customer. 

Herein lies the cultural disconnect . I won't even begin to try to explain Lady-Boys but the concept is similar.

end of sideline.......................................................

My foot :

That said, and back in the Pattaya shopping centre, I opted to pay 500 Thai baht to stick my feet into a tank full of toe-jam eating fish for twenty minutes, which is apparently good for your feet, the fish and your overall wellbeing. To me, it tickled a lot. With my sense of well being topped and cleaner feet than anytime recent, I shopped in the eight level Pattaya shopping mall for a few hours and then headed back to the ship. 

Not a lot of wit or dry commentary in this update, perhaps it is the calm before the storm :