Rethinking retirement in Thailand’s capital of sleaze
Thursday 02 Jan 2014
Rethinking retirement in Thailand’s capital of sleaze UK Channel 4 News
As cities go, it’s about as trashy-looking as it gets. In fact, it’s probably the seediest place that you have never heard of.
Pattaya is a seaside community on Thailand’s eastern shore – an urban extravert that works hard to impress.
Blazing neon signs offer cheap booze and oil massage and “rooms-by-the-hour”. Down below, bar-girls and parlour workers make their road-side pitch to thousands of prospective customers.
It is a raucous, unapologetic sort of place and not surprisingly, there are many people who try hard to avoid it.
At the country’s tourism ministry, bureaucrats see it as something of an embarrassment and there are plenty of Thais – and foreigner visitors – who give it a wide-berth.
It simply does not measure up to the palm-fringed ideal that many associate with this southeast Asian nation.
However, that does not mean we should look the other way because something really important is happening there. When you take a look at all those “prospective customers” plying the streets of neon, you soon realise that the majority of them are retired.
Over the last two years there has been a huge increase in the numbers of elderly European men turning up in Pattaya – and they are not passing through – they have come here to live.
According to the Thai authorities, people from the UK make up by far the largest group of over 65′s in the city and their number has increased by a massive 43 per cent during that period.
In terms of total numbers, there are 7,000 Britons in the city on retirement visas but they are joined by tens of thousands of other UK seniors who come on regular tourist visas and renew them periodically (the British Embassy estimates 870,000 people from the UK came to Thailand last year on tourist visas).
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