Pattaya, Thailand

Pattaya is a beach town, located by the Gulf of Thailand 130 km southeast of Bangkok.  The hotel rooms cost twice as much as in Bangkok.  A lot of other merchandise is overpriced also.  The Russians are moving in and driving the prices up.  The town is growing fast.  There are more condominiums there than hotels.  We stayed in the motel that was also rented by the hour.  Our room was big with a private bathroom, hot water, air conditioning and a mirror in the ceiling.  

Pattaya is well known for its sex industry.  The Walking Street was filled with bars full of girls.  We were shown some pictures of the girls and the drawings with poses, offering us the girls and to watch a sex show, respectively.  Even in the beach some girls were wearing high heels, applying more make up.  The old white guys were approaching the girls asking to sit next to them.  I guess it is more profitable for the men and the girls to find each other independently without the intermediaries.  The Pattaya beach itself was narrow, but the water was very warm like tea.  It was nice to swim in the evening.  During the day the beach is crowded.  There is not much space on the sand if you do not want to rent an umbrella.  It is too hot to be outside during the daytime anyways. 

The whole town seems to be designed to cater to Russians.  The billboards and menus were in Russian.  The locals communicated with us in Russian.  There were quite a few TV programs in Russian, they even had there own TV programs from Pattaya.  There were a lot of advertising offering to buy property.  We even saw a store selling leather and fur in this tropical town.  The whole town is about sex and posh.