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  1. #51
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    ^^ Not on the Darkside syb, at least not around the lake. Of course we have the retired crew (not all over 60 btw), and I would say that's the single largest foreign demographic. But there are teachers at the many private schools around there, working expats for companies like Shell and BMW, FiFo workers, quite a few small businessmen too- bar & restaurant owners, blessed piemakers (), and so on. People I have hung around with included the GM of Chevrolet, a guy with a factory that made expensive titanium golf clubs, a Russia/ Lithuaninan couple with a quite successful joyride type business in the Festival centre, a smallgoods manufacturer, a property developer (went bust), a certain famous bucket maker, and the 2IC of some fairly large Thai manufacturing concern. And quite a few retired bums like myself.

    Then again, life on the DS carries on reasonably as normal- the golf courses are still going, local bars & restaurant still open, Soi Siam still a bluddy construction zone. Central Pattaya is described as a ghost town, although it probably sparks up on weekends with the Bkk contingent.

  2. #52
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    Your memory is clearly foozled, Cyril.

    In much the same way Samui was beleaguered by the English lower end lout 20-25 years ago so was Pattaya thronged by them, and who stayed a month+ during the Xmas season, many of course were construction/ditch digging oiks holidaying in the industry's downtime wet season. It was this demographic that generated successive waves of Thai brides to the UK reaching at its peak over 4,000 settlement applications a year. Now, there are none at all to speak of. And I think reference to recent data shows the total number of Thai settlement case applications to the UK has fallen to around 400-600 a year.

    Pattaya at its peak in 2000 was the epicentre of sex tourism in SE Asia and its demographic comprised any swinging dick aged between 20 and 80.

    But that died and it wasn't COVID that ended it. For the Brits it was the 2008 crash that crashed the £, a devaluation that was then increased by the Brexit stupidity in Oct 2016 when it hit 42 baht.

    Pattaya since then has been an ever dwindling vestige of its former self and the empty beer bars, go-go bars and any air-conned bar in the 2018/19 seasons bore testament.

    And when the retirees and retired spouses of this generation pop their clogs then that'll be it.

    This sea change has not just afflicted the Brits but the Germans too who similarly are staying away in their droves. I am pally with a German hotel/restaurant owner in Naklua whose business is now focused on retired krauts and their friends or family members who visit them. He too laments the fact that the good old days have long gone and the many German restaurants that once boomed in what was a Teutonic-centric part of Pattaya are dwindling away. Their beer bars have for the past three years had more staff than customers, even in peak seasons.

    Pattaya has had its day with the Westerner, its now ASEAN, Chink, Indian, domestic from here on in. The only market from Britain will be the package groups on cheap two-weekers and EU tour groups or Scandawegians getting their sun fix in January and none of them do Pattaya.

    It's the end.

  3. #53
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Not on the Darkside
    Agreed, sabina, that's where we lived for three years ... during the time frame asylum referred to, as it happens, so I know he's talking nonsense.

    I'm talking about the zoo that abuts his concrete box, that he's managed to convince himself is a whole other world.

  4. #54
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    Are you a total fucking idiot now or what?

    Pattaya's entire raison d'être is a resort city which also happens to be the choice residential spot by those who work in Laem Chabang and the industrial zones within th hinterland.

    The dark side is a dreary collection of suburban ghettos that are as dull as they are increasingly unsaleable in the current market unless they are given away.

    God, those estates are just sooooo awful - prison compounds of concrete sois separating ranks of poured concrete shells , row after row, with scrubby gardens no one sits in because it's too fucking hot, bounded by a nine foot perimeter wall adjacent to acres of scrubland waiting to be developed, connected by dangerous single carriageway roads to the city, subjected to annual floods, overflowing sewers, festooned with dogshit and feral chickenheead youths on the rob. And for social gatherings away from these ghastly, stinking hot blockhouses there are ilittle islands of transport caff style restaurants selling shite food and bottles of warm beer amid flying bugs and mosquitos. But in the end, what kills the soul is the flat landscape and dull deadliness of a long night in a tropical suburban dystopia which falls silent and lifeless except for the soundtrack of the howls of distant dogs and the occasional cries of domestic squabbling born out of rampant alcoholism.

    Travelling all that way to exotic Thailand to end up in some fucking suburb built in the middle of nowhere in a tropical scrubby wasteland. Yeah, sure Cyril, you certainly were fucking living the life.....a walk on the wild side.........the dark side.

    I expect you were on a small budget but all the foreign senior management of the ranking corporations from Japan, Korea, the US, and Europe live in our neighbourhood here in Wongamat with direct sea views and private access to a nice beach of silvered sands, bounded by swaying files of palm trees and lapped by the languid waves of a cerulean sea under a Titian sky painted by the setting sun in a crimson chirascuro before giving way to an inky darkness pinpointed by spots of distant green and white as the fishing boats turn on their bait lights luring that night's catch of squid.

    That's my view Cyril.

  5. #55
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    Wongamat with direct sea views and private access to a nice beach of silvered sands
    What beach? Did it grow back? Does the raw sewerage outlet still operate?

  6. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Having said that, as a westerner I no longer wish to remain here for the simple reason that as time passes it becomes painfully apparent there are no westerners here at all under the age of 60 and social interaction is a dreary parade of senescence.
    No one to socialise with...whinge


    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    I expect you were on a small budget but all the foreign senior management of the ranking corporations from Japan, Korea, the US, and Europe live in our neighbourhood here in Wongamat with direct sea views and private access to blah blah blah
    People i can socialise with but they are out of my league...shame

  7. #57
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    What beach? Did it grow back? Does the raw sewerage outlet still operate?
    It's absurd isn't it...the way he's made all these brilliant choices in life while so many others have fucked up left right and centre, yet he's here every day as grouchy as fuck.

    Just imagine how much he'd be moaning if every life choice he's made were not infinitely superior to those made by just about everyone else posting here.

  8. #58
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Are you a total fucking idiot now or what?

    Pattaya's entire raison d'être is a resort city which also happens to be the choice residential spot by those who work in Laem Chabang and the industrial zones within th hinterland.
    Oh fuck off you blundering buffoon. It was a sleepy fishing village that morphed into a gigantic whorehouse when the seppos decided to use it for R&R. Its reputation as a whorehouse grew as word spread. Sticking a few factories and shit around it was simply a by-product of there being a good location for a deep sea port, which didn't even open until the '90's.

    Resort city... in their (and obviously your) fucking dreams.

    That's my view Cyril.
    Look closer and you can see the bobbing turds and discarded condoms.



  9. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Well if it makes you feel any better spinner, Tahitian Queen- the one surviving place in Pattaya from RnR days- has not closed down as was reported. It is re-opening in April.
    See, Pattaya really cares about it's heritage. Sin City always rolls on.
    I was never a fan of TQ. Its basically a day bar on Beach Road charging Walking Street prices. They have bored looking wenches hanging onto to silver poles and the regulars are your typical ex pat bikers... retired bank managers on brand new Harleys living out their Easy Rider fantasies

  10. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Are you a total fucking idiot now or what?

    Pattaya's entire raison d'être is a resort city which also happens to be the choice residential spot by those who work in Laem Chabang and the industrial zones within th hinterland.

    The dark side is a dreary collection of suburban ghettos that are as dull as they are increasingly unsaleable in the current market unless they are given away.

    God, those estates are just sooooo awful - prison compounds of concrete sois separating ranks of poured concrete shells , row after row, with scrubby gardens no one sits in because it's too fucking hot, bounded by a nine foot perimeter wall adjacent to acres of scrubland waiting to be developed, connected by dangerous single carriageway roads to the city, subjected to annual floods, overflowing sewers, festooned with dogshit and feral chickenheead youths on the rob. And for social gatherings away from these ghastly, stinking hot blockhouses there are ilittle islands of transport caff style restaurants selling shite food and bottles of warm beer amid flying bugs and mosquitos. But in the end, what kills the soul is the flat landscape and dull deadliness of a long night in a tropical suburban dystopia which falls silent and lifeless except for the soundtrack of the howls of distant dogs and the occasional cries of domestic squabbling born out of rampant alcoholism.

    Travelling all that way to exotic Thailand to end up in some fucking suburb built in the middle of nowhere in a tropical scrubby wasteland. Yeah, sure Cyril, you certainly were fucking living the life.....a walk on the wild side.........the dark side.

    I expect you were on a small budget but all the foreign senior management of the ranking corporations from Japan, Korea, the US, and Europe live in our neighbourhood here in Wongamat with direct sea views and private access to a nice beach of silvered sands, bounded by swaying files of palm trees and lapped by the languid waves of a cerulean sea under a Titian sky painted by the setting sun in a crimson chirascuro before giving way to an inky darkness pinpointed by spots of distant green and white as the fishing boats turn on their bait lights luring that night's catch of squid.

    That's my view Cyril.
    That was eloquently put and a perfect description of arguably the most boring depressing area in the whole of Pattaya. Its like the boulivard of broken dreams. Full of retirees who are kidding themselves on that they are living the dream. I lived in Chokchai village for 12 months and hated every minute of it.

  11. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Oh fuck off you blundering buffoon. It was a sleepy fishing village that morphed into a gigantic whorehouse when the seppos decided to use it for R&R. Its reputation as a whorehouse grew as word spread. Sticking a few factories and shit around it was simply a by-product of there being a good location for a deep sea port, which didn't even open until the '90's.

    Resort city... in their (and obviously your) fucking dreams.



    Look closer and you can see the bobbing turds and discarded condoms.


    The Eastern Economic Corridor that began development in 1982>, of which the Naklua/Pattaya/Jomtien conurbation is a pivotal component, accounts for 17% of Thailand's GDP and Pattaya attracted 14 million tourists in 2017, 35% were domestic.

    'Arry, you are a fucking idiot and a cliche.

  12. #62
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    Well one thing is true- apart from it's obvious fame as an 'entertainment zone', Pattaya also sits astride some massive industry & a major port, to the north, east, and south. To the west, we flush the discarded condoms.

  13. #63
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    What beach? Did it grow back? Does the raw sewerage outlet still operate?
    Three years ago they repaired the ring main connecting Wongamat to the main system and repaired the pump ensuring the flows were directed away from the beach into the major drainage downstream. And then they excavated the entire beach and incorporated a concrete seawall running the whole length of it that turned the strand into two tiers. I was dubious at first but despite monsoon storms and high tides it's done the trick and the beach is pretty much stable.

    No signs of any outflows of runoff flood water or the 'black water' going into Wongamat Bay for over three years now.

    Just why the fuck are you blue collar jerks obsessed with fucking condoms going into the sea? Who the fuck flushes a condom down the toilet?

  14. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Who the fuck flushes a condom down the toilet?
    Every squalid sex tourist that has ever visited the place.

  15. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Every squalid sex tourist that has ever visited the place.
    The piping going to the ocean is street runoff. Now sewer.

  16. #66
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    Three years ago they repaired the ring main connecting Wongamat to the main system and repaired the pump ensuring the flows were directed away from the beach into the major drainage downstream.
    You knowingly bought a place where they were pumping raw sewage into "your" private beach...oh oh 555555555555.

  17. #67
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Well if it makes you feel any better spinner, Tahitian Queen- the one surviving place in Pattaya from RnR days- has not closed down as was reported. It is re-opening in April.
    See, Pattaya really cares about it's heritage. Sin City always rolls on.
    My first time in Pattaya 1989 - TQ was the first bar I was taken to.
    Great bar, great atmosphere, great memories over the years. It was also the bar that would be the end of night booze up after a “dirt run”

    Lost it’s magic a bit over time but I would always pop in for a nostalgia hit.

  18. #68
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    So peak Pattaya was 2000 ? Does everyone agree with that ? I thought maybe a bit later. In 2006-7 , the Western economies were booming. So there was a confluence of demographics there. The same old 90's mongers , the oil workers and the millennials were doing a lot of traveling.

  19. #69
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    I thought maybe a bit later. In 2006-7
    So you would be wrong, its that simple.

  20. #70
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    Out of interest, it'd be great if you could describe your piece of heaven where you are now . . . the weather, food, views etc... Do you own your flat or rent or live in a flat by the grace of social housing?

    If you believe SA lives in a dump I can hardly wait to see your palatial and beautiful home and surroundings.

    He's a lower class factory fitter in some industrial zone still dreaming of his retirement after years of digging in the dirt and living in some tatty suburban squalor where the houses are uniformly small, lack-lustre and crammed together in high density misery, overrun with displaced urban poor, fat-arsed cellulite ridden ugly women, and gangs of snivelling, scrawny, hoodie-wearing track suited youths corralled within an urban bypass next to a dull town of no merit distinguished by development blight, charity shops, fast-food takeaways and betting shops currently deserted and laid waste by the plague that has stripped everyone in his social class of money and hope leaving them all to guzzle cheap alcohol alone in their dystopia mesmerised by an endless stream of video tat before taking their prison yard exercise along dirty grey streets, under a dirty grey lowering sky. But he probably has a 64" television screen.

  21. #71
    Thailand Expat lom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    But he probably has a 64" television screen.

  22. #72
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    Quote Originally Posted by aging one View Post
    So you would be wrong, its that simple.
    I'm just asking. The monger oik scene probably peaked around 2000. But tourism in general probably peaked around 06-07 me thinks.

    Maybe even 2010-12 got close to the old peak. I remember in 2010-12, walking st was just packed with young bucks
    Last edited by Backspin; 14-02-2021 at 02:22 AM.

  23. #73
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    You misunderstand. Tourism peaked in 2017 when the Chinese hit the 8 million mark. Try to get your whoremongeringcentric head out of your arse. The Pattaya tourism demographic in 2017, comprising over 14 million visitors, was 63% foreign based ( Chinks, ASEAN, domestic, Indians, Russians essentially ) and mostly they don't do shortiming skanky whores and drinking in sleazy, flea-ridden beer bars like the western ditch digging oiks did but of course they will ogle the louche demimonde and brothels same as viewing animals in the zoo.
    Last edited by Seekingasylum; 14-02-2021 at 11:17 AM.

  24. #74
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    Quote Originally Posted by strigils View Post
    You knowingly bought a place where they were pumping raw sewage into "your" private beach...oh oh 555555555555.

    In times of heavy rain the runoff would overwhelm the system which was handicapped by poor maintenance, a disadvantage now rectified by City Hall.

    Now, you gormless, worthless piece of detritus, which bit of the history of effluent management by the British, before they joined the EU and raised their standards in the 1970s-80s, comprising the pumping of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the sea from just about every British coastal resort, every fucking year since year dot, do you not remember?

  25. #75
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Yeah, those blue flags certainly multiplied in the nineties.

    It's the skull and cross bones of Tory private (very private) enterprise flying now.

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