HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Where now for Pattaya?

Upgrade of Pattaya website

Tramway a folly

Why tourist numbers are fading

Jomtien jellyfish warning

Visitors to Pattaya in sharp decline

Oh to be in Pattaya

Where now for Pattaya?

Editor;
I read your letters page every week and, like everyone who loved Pattaya for what it was, now cannot understand what’s happening. A tram service will not bring the tourists back. The problems of traffic and late night entertainment need to be addressed.
The easy way to sort out your problems is: Put the baht buses on 12 hour shifts, days / evenings, on a two week system. (This would) halve the traffic in one go. Then split the resort into zones, colour code them and mark the areas clearly with the code colour. You could have family restaurants, midnight closing and the Beach Road / Walking St from Soi 12 up could be for late night people.
Remember, Pattaya does not have the best beach in Thailand so maybe the Jomtien area with a few improvements is best suited for the family zone.
(These are) just some ideas to get people taking about the problems. Resorts all over the world are the same. Pattaya needs to stick to what it’s known for. You can do both things - family and fun tourist, so please look at the others who are also after the much smaller market. If Pattaya and Thailand cannot provide this, plenty of other places will.
Bob, a former Pattaya fan

Upgrade of Pattaya website

Dear Sirs;
I read with interest of TAT upgrading their website to lure visitors back to Pattaya. I have been coming to Thailand for over 25 years and I have been married to a Thai lady for 20 years. We have just returned to the UK after spending 6 weeks in Pattaya. The place is getting dirtier every year. The pavements are as bad as they were 25 years ago. It’s the only place in the world where you have to walk in the road to avoid colliding with a telephone box, so this is the last time we will visit Pattaya. Two more to add to the statistics. So I suggest that the mayor and the council get their act together and upgrade the facilities of Pattaya and not the website. There are better and cleaner places in the world to visit.
Kind Regards,
Alan Smith

Tramway a folly

Editor;
The suggestion to install a tramway in Pattaya (Pattaya Mail, Friday August 29) is a foolhardy waste of time and money. Don’t even think of it. Towns all over the world ripped up their tramlines in the nineteen-fifties and sixties to allow better use of narrow roads.
Some wealthy European cities have reintroduced trams at great cost with enormous disturbance to cars and commercial vehicles, following long term traffic studies and sophisticated re-engineering of traffic flows. Many cities do not allow private cars in city centres at any time and allow deliveries of goods to shops and collection of refuse by specially approved vans at most inconvenient hours.
Pattaya could increase its appeal by making Beach Road for pedestrians only except for slow moving, discretely bell ringing trams. A road of pavé would add to the appeal and make the area one of the most attractive promenades in South East Asia.
Of course Sukhumvit Road is blocked because the extension of the motorway route 7 is not completed. This extension should continue south towards Sattahip, completely avoiding the Pattaya/Jomtien conglomeration. Has a traffic survey been conducted? It is probable that a large proportion of the traffic around Pattaya Klang and Pattaya Tai is from south of Pattaya. A great improvement could be achieved by installing linked lights permitting traffic to flow at say 50 or 60 kph. It is even possible to vary the speed according to the time of day and traffic density.
George Layton

Why tourist numbers are fading

Editor;
Richy’s letter in the Pattaya Mail of 5th September 2008, “Embrace the Nightlife” shows he has an almost full grasp of the subject as to why tourist numbers are fading - unfortunately it is because of these very reasons that he cites, that the authorities do what they do. It is a sad fact that foreigners are only tolerated, for short times at best, when they holiday and then go home! A case perhaps of xenophobia? Biting the hand that feeds them.
Their continued presence is not appreciated and the idea of such foreigners marrying, buying houses and having children certainly goes against the grain. And as many of these tourists meet their future loved ones in the bars and the nightclubs, then that is the reason why they are targeted. Also, the disproportionate amounts of money that the bar staff can earn for themselves tends to upset the natural order of things, after all they do not have a Master’s Degree. Jealousy is a very destructive element. In the eyes of many elite Thais from the Metropolis, Pattaya is considered quite beyond the pale, not to be compared with Phuket, but surprisingly enough, when time and funds permit, is often their destination of choice for a fun time. Of course, in public, this will be denied and Pattaya further denigrated.
Another reason for Pattaya’s down turn could, do you think be attributed to the fact that the official Pattaya Tourism Website is in Thai?
Distressed and Disturbed,
Rob

Jomtien jellyfish warning

Dear Sir;
I have been visiting Thailand for nearly 30 years, I even call it my second home. Having just returned from my latest vacation staying on Jomtien Beach I really feel I had to write to make a comment about the amount of jellyfish on the beach and very near to the shore. I know every year about this time there are large quantities of jellyfish, the ones that were around this time are not the ones which leave lasting scars but they still can give annoying stings. Why are warnings not posted? As I sat on the front of the beach I often spotted young Thais swimming with clothes on scratching and rubbing areas of their body where they had been stung. There were also many western tourists who had also been stung. I took it upon myself to warn people about the jellyfish especially after 3 in the afternoons when the tide was coming in.
I feel it would be a very good idea for all the operators of deck chairs and services on the beach to put up a sign when these horrible creatures are near to the shoreline.
I trust you will either pass my comments onto the relevant departments of the local council or perhaps publish this letter in the newspaper where somebody might take notice of these remarks.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Rosen
London UK

Visitors to Pattaya in sharp decline

Editor;
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the number of visitors to Pattaya is in sharp decline. As a long time resident, I and many of my friends think that Thai politics have little to do with this situation and that the main responsibilities lay on the shoulders of the city council and the night businesses’ owners.
Because of a total lack of action from its city council, Pattaya is plagued with a number of problems which certainly don’t help giving a good image of the city. Nothing is being done to regulate the ever increasing traffic, making life very difficult for pedestrians already deprived of sidewalks on many roads (Soi Buakhao or Soi Diana, for example). Nothing is being done to increase the parking facilities and buildings keep on being erected here and there without any parking spaces for their future residents or visitors (Soi Buakhao or Third Road, for example).
In the meantime, the number of taxis constantly increases, although most of them are travelling empty, moving at slow speed one behind the other, forming a kind of train along Beach Road and Second Road, probably responsible of 80% of the city’s evening traffic jams. Moreover, while taxis are crawling upon each others in that area, it is impossible to get one, say, on Third Road. To make things worse, road works are constantly in progress, in a process which generally goes like this: 1 day to dig a hole, 1 or 2 days of work inside the hole, then a 1 to 3 months wait to fill in again the hole! (For a good example of interminable roadwork, see Thappraya Road).
Pedestrians, who have risked their lives crossing Second Road, won’t find any relief on the beach walk, where hordes of hookers, drug dealers and... rats are waiting for them!
All the above problems could be rather easily solved with more planning and less corruption.
As far as nightlife is concerned, things have taken a turn for the worse many years ago. For instance, while the number of customers in go-go bars is in constant decline, salaries keep on increasing. Many dancers today get a monthly salary between 10,000 and 15,000 baht. If this was not enough, their employers also offer them, every night, a couple of bottles of tequila or whisky to drink between themselves, while customers sit alone in their corner, enduring music played at a deafening level to please the employees. In such conditions, one shouldn’t be surprised to see these ladies behave like ‘divas’, coming to ‘work’ only to enjoy a couple of drinks, talk with their friends and collect their fat paycheck, while not paying any attention to the customers they are supposed to entertain. Why would they go to the trouble of making contact with a stranger to get a drink and collect 50 baht, when their employer is providing them with free drinks and a big salary, without asking for any results in return?
No wonder that more and more frequent visitors choose to go and have fun in neighbouring countries, where employees have not been totally spoiled by their own employers.
And since it is generally not the people who have created the mess who are able to clean it, there is unfortunately little hope that things will improve in the near future in Pattaya.
Bruno

Oh to be in Pattaya

Editor;
Oh to be in Pattaya, now that autumn’s nearly here in the UK. The weather here in England is as bleak as the economic climate. In the next couple of months we’ll all be bracing ourselves against another long cold winter with a lot of people afraid to turn their heating on because of massive heating fuel costs. It will be ‘Christmas Day in the workhouse’ for a good many this year with ‘negative equity’ making its insidious return to the property market. A lot of people bought when the housing boom was at its height and now they’re left with over priced turkeys round their necks and facing repossession. The smart money moved on some time ago, though where it’s gone no one seems to know. I know I wasn’t invited to go with it.
Albert Pointpierre

Letters published in the Mailbag of Pattaya Mail
are also published here.