PATTAYA, Thailand – It’s high season in Pattaya, and the streets are crowded with foreign tourists — Europeans, Russians, Indians, and Chinese making their annual pilgrimage to the city’s beaches, bars, and nightlife. Amid the bustling energy, another trend is emerging: more Thai women arriving at exchange booths with foreign currency in hand, ready to trade dollars, euros, and pounds for baht, all with practiced smiles.
Walk along Beach Road or Second Road, and it’s impossible to miss. Groups of Thai women queue at the counters carrying foreign bills, chatting with staff and exchanging currency for personal or family use. Their smiles are warm, welcoming, and patient, reflecting a growing micro-economy built around high-season tourism. But even as the scene appears cheerful, there’s an underlying frustration: the strong baht, artificially maintained by policymakers, limits how far foreign money goes once it’s converted.
The result? The city is busier than ever, but purchasing power is shrinking. Thai women with foreign currency can still make exchanges, but tourists are calculating every baht, carefully weighing what they buy. For these women, each visit to an exchange booth is part of their livelihood — a delicate balance of opportunity and constraint in a city still dependent on tourism.
“They come with dollars or euros, and they smile,” said one exchange booth operator. “They are happy to be able to trade, but everyone knows the baht is high. Everyone feels it — the tourists and the locals.”
Vietnam, meanwhile, is reaping the benefits of more flexible currency policies, attracting tourists whose money stretches further. Thailand, however, continues to cling to a strong baht, discouraging the very spending that fuels tourism.
For Pattaya’s exchange booths, high season is a busy and lively time, with more foreigners arriving and more Thai women carrying foreign currency. The smiles and energy are real, but behind every transaction is a subtle reminder: the strong baht is a problem, and the city’s economic potential could be even greater if policymakers stopped mistaking currency strength for economic success.
