Michael Batson

Jomtien is the quiet junior partner of its noisier more crowded neighbour, Pattaya. It caters to those not wanting the nightlife, the traffic, flashing lights, pumping music, and the crowds. It’s a second home for affluent Thais wanting to escape Bangkok 100kms away for holidays and at weekends. It’s home to expats who retire for the warmth, the sun, and where they can get many of the things they have at home, but at half the price and in an exotic setting. Lately, it’s become somewhat of a refuge for Russians escaping the draft, and Ukrainians fleeing the war feed by the draft. It’s popular with Scandinavians too, holidaymakers and those retirees escaping the long dark winters for tropical sunsets. Jomtien wouldn’t be everyone’s taste, it’s not mine, but it can be a relaxing stop en route to somewhere else or for many now, a destination in itself.

You can reach Jomtien easily from bus stations, airports, and hotels in Bangkok. I travelled by minibus from Trat, six hours away to the east. A journey along 250kms of Thai highways largely built-up the whole way. Housing, roadside stalls, strip malls, intersections, high-rise developments, warehouses and factories, some deserted and others derelict. Thai towns can look scruffy. Concreted shophouses left unmaintained in tropical heat will turn paint and building material grey then black. Of no particular architectural redeeming features, they are mainly anonymous, the product of rapid urbanization of a largely rural society following no particular pattern save for the combustion engine. Following the often haphazard (or if you want to be romantic, magical mystery tour) of Thai bus travel, I was deposited in the carpark of a Jomtien branch of the chain shopping centers, the Big C.

Jomtien Beach (sometimes Hat Chom Thian) is a resort on a 10km long stretch of sand on the Gulf of Thailand or the Bay of Bangkok take your pick. It’s a relatively straight stretch of sand without the natural curve found in other beaches carved by their tides. Much of the development is at the northern end nearest its neighbour Pattaya. There are a few fishing boats, some jet skis, beach hawkers, and in parts deck chairs for hire. Once paddy fields, Jomtien is not as low rise as it once was, the developers have identified opportunities here too. Large high-rise condominiums and hotels are dotted about but not clustered as they are in Pattaya, which is swamped with these. Though in Jomtien the proliferation of high-rise has seen some buildings that are 30-40 levels high, barely one apartment wide and pencil thin, while others resemble beached cruise ships or gigantic hospital blocks.

My image of these, I said to one tenant, was of footsteps echoing down empty ghost-like corridors. Some of these blocks, tenants told me, are only about 10 percent occupied, so mostly empty all year round their presence “sucking the life” out of the quiet beach community. Placement of tower blocks seems random. On soi 14 is the giant D Varee Hotel complex: forty stories high with a pool and restaurants. Blistering white, it looks like a massive cruise ship stuck bow first into the ground. Of no discerning character whatsoever, it could be anywhere. Though I did notice the Mekhong Whiskey sign outside the hotel gym which brought memories back of an altogether more down-to-earth Thailand from days gone by.

The main road, Beach Road, is low-key beach restaurants and bars, markets open at different times of day and night, the ubiquitous 7/11 stores that blight Thailand putting paid to the livelihoods of thousands of families across the country. Perpendicular to the beach run soi (roads) to the main second road that connects Jomtien with Pattaya; a transport link that increases traffic, noise, and congestion. The soi are unimaginatively numbered sequentially and squeezed between long large narrow rectangular land blocks calculated by numbers of rai (1600sqm or about 0.4 square acres), the largest land unit of measurement in Thailand.

Strangely, for a Thai beach resort the water at Jomtien is rather cold and it’s not that clean. The water at Pattaya and Jomtien is a notified public safety hazard though that doesn’t stop some tourists from swimming and locals from hiring out jet skis. The problem is sewage; there’s too much poo and the infrastructure cannot cope. Despite warnings of the scale of the problem and likely consequences of doing nothing, investment in new improved sewage systems has not been carried out. The area is literally sinking in its own shit. The beaches aren’t clean either, the tide washing up endless litter. Every morning cleaners arrive with various forms of machinery, and some without, to clean the sand; brush it down for the day’s visitors, and take the rubbish away from the previous night and day before more is dumped and the cycle begins again. Despite the dirty beaches washed by polluted water, tourists still sit all day under the tropical sun. Some with pasty white skin, seemingly unaware of the dangers of melanoma, turn lobster red, before heading off down Beach Road back to their hotel with children and beach gear in tow. The next day they’re back again.

About 3.5kms of Jomtien Beach is under reconstruction and hasn’t been fully open for months. The local authorities have been building sand fences at the northern Pattaya-end. The work is designed to prevent coastal erosion but has taken five years and cost an estimated 200-million baht (about USD6 million). Erosion at Jomtien has been going on slowly for years. Between 1976 and 2015, it’s estimated that the beach has shrunk by about 60 rai (about 24 acres). They’ve also been doing stormwater work which has meant Beach Road has been down to one-lane for months with traffic only permitted southbound and the northbound to Pattaya now is diverted onto Second Road which has led to more congestion. The work will allow more car parking spaces at Jomtien (1100 up from the previous 600 spaces) encouraging yet more vehicles into the beach area.

Pattaya has also suffered from the same coastal erosion. Pattaya Beach used to be 35m wide but over time this had shrunk in some places to being barely 2-3m wide. To address the problem, 360,000 cubic metres of sand was transported from an island to widen the beach to 50m at a cost of USD12.8 million. Though after one month much of the rehabilitation work was undone by a storm. Flooding is an issue every rainy season so flood prevention projects and improved drainage work has taken place there also. City authorities say the work at Pattaya has now resulted in attracting more visitors to the area so Jomtien sees benefits in investment too.

The Pattaya-Chonburi Metropolitan Area is now the third largest metropolitan area in Thailand after Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Pattaya City itself has a population of about 120,000 but the combined Pattaya-Bang Lamung-Jomtien area known as Greater Pattaya now has a population of about 330,000 though accurate figures are hard to come by. Large numbers of casual Thai workers are not recognized as they’re counted in the local census statistics from their various regions (Isaan mainly, the great rice growing area of northeastern Thailand where their language is more Lao than Thai). It’s thought that a more accurate population figure for Greater Pattaya might be half-a-million. There are also the growing numbers of expat retirees living in the area and a large Indian mainly Tamil-speaking community. Numbers of tourists staying in the more than 2,000 hotels aren’t counted in statistics either nor are the numbers of expat retirees calling the area home.

Jomtien’s demographics are changing. Increasing numbers of expat retirees are moving in. To date these are from the more “traditional” origins: Australia, North America, Scandinavia, northern Europe, and the United Kingdom. But now there’s more eastern Europeans, especially Russians, choosing to live here and it’s upsetting some of the more established expats as the influx is affecting the cost of living and in their view, the look and feel of the place – though presumably one may argue that’s what they did when they moved in. “Pattaya and Jomtien is now 70 percent Russians and not one has learned to smile” one British expat told me. They tend to rent places by the month. I had six of them in a one-bedroom next to my condo. Charming.”

A new visa scheme (Thailand’s visa rules are ever-changing) has allowed those escaping the impacts of war to stay in Thailand. A new 60-day visa can be extended in country for another month. Once that’s due to expire the holders do a “visa-run” to the nearest border, leave for less than a day and return with a new 60-day visa and do it again. “The real problem” another expat told me, “Is with certain nationalities prone to overstaying due to war, working illegally, acting tough around town, riding very large and loud motorcycles at all hours of the day and night. Some others like to sleep on the beach, relieving themselves on the sand, sexually harassing women, and leaving copious amounts of trash everywhere.”

While the established expats feel that the demographics have definitely shifted, they think that this “overtourism” is what the Thais want. Some might claim that Pattaya is already the victim of overtourism and maybe Jomtien is soon to follow. After all, more tourism means more money income (for some), and if that allows landlords and businesses to charge more then, yes, they’re happy for that to happen but it’s also the way it’s happening that irks some of the established expat residents.

“Many [Russians] are staying long term, opening illegal business and employing illegal staff and using the 60+30 x2 [visas] to get 180 days in Thailand. Many are renting out properties long term and then subletting short-term using Airbnb which is highly illegal as well”, another expat told me at a beachside café in Jomtien. As he looked ruefully out over the water, he said they see Russians have opened many car and motorbike rental places, often making deals with local Thai shop owners to provide the vehicles and sharing profits, opening marijuana shops and travel agencies helping with visas. Ther’s even preschools aimed at Russian tourists with kids staying longer than 60 days. Many of these long stayers he said, are working online to keep their income flowing.

While the numbers of Russian staying long-term (or indefinitely) has increased, the numbers of Russian tourists has declined markedly. Before Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, Russian tourist arrivals in Thailand, mainly in the beach resorts, numbered up to 20,000 per month. But now with travel restrictions, the suspension of financial services like credit card payments plus the decline in the value of the country’s currency, has meant far fewer Russians going overseas for holidays. Thailand, still trying to recover from Covid, is keen to boost its tourist sector to pre-pandemic levels. Before the pandemic, Thailand was visited by almost 40 million people a year. In 2023 there were just over half that number, and in 2025, 12 million had visited in just the first four months. Tourism is seen by the Thai authorities are a key component to revive the economy, even though revenue the government says is stymied by “negative factors” but don’t’ say what these are. Overall, foreign as well as domestic tourists are worth billions to the economy, which is estimated to be about 20 percent of GDP.

Jomtien is easily accessible from Bangkok by public bus direct from either the Northern bus terminal (Mo Chit) or the Eastern bus terminal (Ekimai) or by private bus from Suvarnabhumi Airport. Bus fares in Thailand especially on the public buses are cheap (rail travel is even cheaper). There are ride services like Bolt which lots of expat and locals now use as many of the traditional taxis in Jomtien (and elsewhere) turned into a form of an extortion racket, so people avoid them. Bolt is bookable by an App, but unlike Uber you pay by cash, and are much cheaper than taxis, many of which refuse to use a meter charging all kinds of astonishing amounts to the unsuspecting. You can use Bolt in cities and between cities, though not all over Thailand. There are other bookable taxi services and shuttles too.

Pattaya and Jomtien share an airport at U-Tapao. Bangkok Airways (Thailand’s first private airline) among some other airlines uses it. U-Tapao is a small international airport. It’s not that convenient being about a 50-minute drive away about 40kms south of Jomtien. U-Tapao airport (also Utapao and U-Taphao) or U-Tapao–Rayong–Pattaya International Airport, is a joint civil military facility, the main function of which is as the home of Thai Airways maintenance facility. Built by the US for fleets of B-52s to carpet-bomb Thailand’s neighbours round-the-clock on an industrial scale, the airport history is interwoven with the genesis of Pattaya’s seedy reputation as Sin City hereabouts. A fishing village until the 1960s Pattaya morphed, largely at first by word-of-mouth, into one of the main regional centers of rest and recreation (R’n’R or sex and alcohol) for US servicemen following the growing US involvement (a rather nebulous term for what they were doing) in Southeast Asia.

These days Pattaya has tried to reinvent itself with an altogether more family-friendly image with more mainstream package holidays aimed at families mainly from Europe. Chinese package tourists, which pre-Covid plied Pattaya by the busload the passengers strung out military like behind the leader with the flag, have not been encouraged back. The authorities may like their numbers to inflate their statistics but local businesses learned that Chinese holiday-makers pay for everything back home, and don’t frequent local restaurants and businesses hardly at all. Chinese travel companies try to drive down room prices to levels where it’s barely profitable for Thai hotels to open at all, so they used to close instead!

The seedy image of Pattaya remains however, and is now found over the hill in Jomtien especially around the foot of Khao Phra Tamnak (“Palace Hill”) or known less ceremoniously as Big Buddha Hill, which at nearly 100m is the highest point in Pattaya and separates the noisy neighbour from Jomtien Beach. Prostitution in Thailand is technically illegal but tolerated in most cities, including Pattaya where most customers are foreign but largely the demand for sexual services in Thailand is locally driven (this is true for much of the rest of Southeast Asia as well). Despite the vast numbers of hostess bars, go-go bars, massage parlours, saunas, and hourly hotels Pattaya police deny that Pattaya is a sex trade paradise. An article in one British newspaper described Pattaya as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah estimating that there are about 27,000 prostitutes in the city, a figure that local police deny. There is no such thing as prostitution in Pattaya," according to the local police superintendent speaking ot the UK reporter, “Where did they get that figure from?” However, local social work groups like the Service Workers IN Group Foundation, said that the figure of prostitutes published in the UK newspaper is inaccurate: "27,000 sex workers in Pattaya is way too low …” there are “a lot more sex workers than that”.

To get around Jomtien there are the so called “baht buses” or songthaews, the most popular mode of public transportation, and run from Jomtien Beach throughout Pattaya. Coloured blue, these converted pick-ups ply set routes about town for a fixed fee, usually 10 baht but if you’re going a bit further than a couple of kilometres it’s 20 baht. Cheap transport. There are step-through motorbikes for hire. Helmets are supposed to be worn. Given many hirers don’t usually ride motorbikes, are sometimes careless when using them, often wearing little in the way of protective clothing given the climate, accidents are common and the victims conspicuous given the bandages for scrapped skin worn by those less seriously injured.

Greater Pattaya is part of Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (officially the Eastern Special Development Zone or ESDZ). Started in the 1980s, the ESDZ covers three provinces and was aimed at developing the region of the eastern seaboard in order to promote industrial growth and to decentralise economic and population growth away form Bangkok. Funded by Japan there are now an estimated 5,500 Japanese companies in Thailand with facilities in the area. Investments totalling over US$45 billion are now flowing into EEC infrastructure projects, mainly transport: airports, deep-sea ports, high-speed railways, and motorways. The idea of these projects is to make Pattaya and Jomtien more accessible.

Jomtien is the quiet junior partner of its noisier more crowded neighbour, Pattaya. It caters to those not wanting the nightlife, the traffic, flashing lights, pumping music, and the crowds. It’s a second home for affluent Thais wanting to escape Bangkok 100kms away for holidays and at weekends. It’s home to expats who retire for the warmth, the sun, and where they can get many of the things they have at home, but at half the price and in an exotic setting. Lately, it’s become somewhat of a refuge for Russians escaping the draft, and Ukrainians fleeing the war feed by the draft. It’s popular with Scandinavians too, holidaymakers and those retirees escaping the long dark winters for tropical sunsets. Jomtien wouldn’t be everyone’s taste, it’s not mine, but it can be a relaxing stop en route to somewhere else or for many now, a destination in itself.

You can reach Jomtien easily from bus stations, airports, and hotels in Bangkok. I travelled by minibus from Trat, six hours away to the east. A journey along 250kms of Thai highways largely built-up the whole way. Housing, roadside stalls, strip malls, intersections, high-rise developments, warehouses and factories, some deserted and others derelict. Thai towns can look scruffy. Concreted shophouses left unmaintained in tropical heat will turn paint and building material grey then black. Of no particular architectural redeeming features, they are mainly anonymous, the product of rapid urbanization of a largely rural society following no particular pattern save for the combustion engine. Following the often haphazard (or if you want to be romantic, magical mystery tour) of Thai bus travel, I was deposited in the carpark of a Jomtien branch of the chain shopping centers, the Big C.

Jomtien Beach (sometimes Hat Chom Thian) is a resort on a 10km long stretch of sand on the Gulf of Thailand or the Bay of Bangkok take your pick. It’s a relatively straight stretch of sand without the natural curve found in other beaches carved by their tides. Much of the development is at the northern end nearest its neighbour Pattaya. There are a few fishing boats, some jet skis, beach hawkers, and in parts deck chairs for hire. Once paddy fields, Jomtien is not as low rise as it once was, the developers have identified opportunities here too. Large high-rise condominiums and hotels are dotted about but not clustered as they are in Pattaya, which is swamped with these. Though in Jomtien the proliferation of high-rise has seen some buildings that are 30-40 levels high, barely one apartment wide and pencil thin, while others resemble beached cruise ships or gigantic hospital blocks.

My image of these, I said to one tenant, was of footsteps echoing down empty ghost-like corridors. Some of these blocks, tenants told me, are only about 10 percent occupied, so mostly empty all year round their presence “sucking the life” out of the quiet beach community. Placement of tower blocks seems random. On soi 14 is the giant D Varee Hotel complex: forty stories high with a pool and restaurants. Blistering white, it looks like a massive cruise ship stuck bow first into the ground. Of no discerning character whatsoever, it could be anywhere. Though I did notice the Mekhong Whiskey sign outside the hotel gym which brought memories back of an altogether more down-to-earth Thailand from days gone by.

The main road, Beach Road, is low-key beach restaurants and bars, markets open at different times of day and night, the ubiquitous 7/11 stores that blight Thailand putting paid to the livelihoods of thousands of families across the country. Perpendicular to the beach run soi (roads) to the main second road that connects Jomtien with Pattaya; a transport link that increases traffic, noise, and congestion. The soi are unimaginatively numbered sequentially and squeezed between long large narrow rectangular land blocks calculated by numbers of rai (1600sqm or about 0.4 square acres), the largest land unit of measurement in Thailand.

Strangely, for a Thai beach resort the water at Jomtien is rather cold and it’s not that clean. The water at Pattaya and Jomtien is a notified public safety hazard though that doesn’t stop some tourists from swimming and locals from hiring out jet skis. The problem is sewage; there’s too much poo and the infrastructure cannot cope. Despite warnings of the scale of the problem and likely consequences of doing nothing, investment in new improved sewage systems has not been carried out. The area is literally sinking in its own shit. The beaches aren’t clean either, the tide washing up endless litter. Every morning cleaners arrive with various forms of machinery, and some without, to clean the sand; brush it down for the day’s visitors, and take the rubbish away from the previous night and day before more is dumped and the cycle begins again. Despite the dirty beaches washed by polluted water, tourists still sit all day under the tropical sun. Some with pasty white skin, seemingly unaware of the dangers of melanoma, turn lobster red, before heading off down Beach Road back to their hotel with children and beach gear in tow. The next day they’re back again.

About 3.5kms of Jomtien Beach is under reconstruction and hasn’t been fully open for months. The local authorities have been building sand fences at the northern Pattaya-end. The work is designed to prevent coastal erosion but has taken five years and cost an estimated 200-million baht (about USD6 million). Erosion at Jomtien has been going on slowly for years. Between 1976 and 2015, it’s estimated that the beach has shrunk by about 60 rai (about 24 acres). They’ve also been doing stormwater work which has meant Beach Road has been down to one-lane for months with traffic only permitted southbound and the northbound to Pattaya now is diverted onto Second Road which has led to more congestion. The work will allow more car parking spaces at Jomtien (1100 up from the previous 600 spaces) encouraging yet more vehicles into the beach area.

Pattaya has also suffered from the same coastal erosion. Pattaya Beach used to be 35m wide but over time this had shrunk in some places to being barely 2-3m wide. To address the problem, 360,000 cubic metres of sand was transported from an island to widen the beach to 50m at a cost of USD12.8 million. Though after one month much of the rehabilitation work was undone by a storm. Flooding is an issue every rainy season so flood prevention projects and improved drainage work has taken place there also. City authorities say the work at Pattaya has now resulted in attracting more visitors to the area so Jomtien sees benefits in investment too.

The Pattaya-Chonburi Metropolitan Area is now the third largest metropolitan area in Thailand after Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Pattaya City itself has a population of about 120,000 but the combined Pattaya-Bang Lamung-Jomtien area known as Greater Pattaya now has a population of about 330,000 though accurate figures are hard to come by. Large numbers of casual Thai workers are not recognized as they’re counted in the local census statistics from their various regions (Isaan mainly, the great rice growing area of northeastern Thailand where their language is more Lao than Thai). It’s thought that a more accurate population figure for Greater Pattaya might be half-a-million. There are also the growing numbers of expat retirees living in the area and a large Indian mainly Tamil-speaking community. Numbers of tourists staying in the more than 2,000 hotels aren’t counted in statistics either nor are the numbers of expat retirees calling the area home.

Jomtien’s demographics are changing. Increasing numbers of expat retirees are moving in. To date these are from the more “traditional” origins: Australia, North America, Scandinavia, northern Europe, and the United Kingdom. But now there’s more eastern Europeans, especially Russians, choosing to live here and it’s upsetting some of the more established expats as the influx is affecting the cost of living and in their view, the look and feel of the place – though presumably one may argue that’s what they did when they moved in. “Pattaya and Jomtien is now 70 percent Russians and not one has learned to smile” one British expat told me. They tend to rent places by the month. I had six of them in a one-bedroom next to my condo. Charming.”

A new visa scheme (Thailand’s visa rules are ever-changing) has allowed those escaping the impacts of war to stay in Thailand. A new 60-day visa can be extended in country for another month. Once that’s due to expire the holders do a “visa-run” to the nearest border, leave for less than a day and return with a new 60-day visa and do it again. “The real problem” another expat told me, “Is with certain nationalities prone to overstaying due to war, working illegally, acting tough around town, riding very large and loud motorcycles at all hours of the day and night. Some others like to sleep on the beach, relieving themselves on the sand, sexually harassing women, and leaving copious amounts of trash everywhere.”

While the established expats feel that the demographics have definitely shifted, they think that this “overtourism” is what the Thais want. Some might claim that Pattaya is already the victim of overtourism and maybe Jomtien is soon to follow. After all, more tourism means more money income (for some), and if that allows landlords and businesses to charge more then, yes, they’re happy for that to happen but it’s also the way it’s happening that irks some of the established expat residents.

“Many [Russians] are staying long term, opening illegal business and employing illegal staff and using the 60+30 x2 [visas] to get 180 days in Thailand. Many are renting out properties long term and then subletting short-term using Airbnb which is highly illegal as well”, another expat told me at a beachside café in Jomtien. As he looked ruefully out over the water, he said they see Russians have opened many car and motorbike rental places, often making deals with local Thai shop owners to provide the vehicles and sharing profits, opening marijuana shops and travel agencies helping with visas. Ther’s even preschools aimed at Russian tourists with kids staying longer than 60 days. Many of these long stayers he said, are working online to keep their income flowing.

While the numbers of Russian staying long-term (or indefinitely) has increased, the numbers of Russian tourists has declined markedly. Before Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, Russian tourist arrivals in Thailand, mainly in the beach resorts, numbered up to 20,000 per month. But now with travel restrictions, the suspension of financial services like credit card payments plus the decline in the value of the country’s currency, has meant far fewer Russians going overseas for holidays. Thailand, still trying to recover from Covid, is keen to boost its tourist sector to pre-pandemic levels. Before the pandemic, Thailand was visited by almost 40 million people a year. In 2023 there were just over half that number, and in 2025, 12 million had visited in just the first four months. Tourism is seen by the Thai authorities are a key component to revive the economy, even though revenue the government says is stymied by “negative factors” but don’t’ say what these are. Overall, foreign as well as domestic tourists are worth billions to the economy, which is estimated to be about 20 percent of GDP.

Jomtien is easily accessible from Bangkok by public bus direct from either the Northern bus terminal (Mo Chit) or the Eastern bus terminal (Ekimai) or by private bus from Suvarnabhumi Airport. Bus fares in Thailand especially on the public buses are cheap (rail travel is even cheaper). There are ride services like Bolt which lots of expat and locals now use as many of the traditional taxis in Jomtien (and elsewhere) turned into a form of an extortion racket, so people avoid them. Bolt is bookable by an App, but unlike Uber you pay by cash, and are much cheaper than taxis, many of which refuse to use a meter charging all kinds of astonishing amounts to the unsuspecting. You can use Bolt in cities and between cities, though not all over Thailand. There are other bookable taxi services and shuttles too.

Pattaya and Jomtien share an airport at U-Tapao. Bangkok Airways (Thailand’s first private airline) among some other airlines uses it. U-Tapao is a small international airport. It’s not that convenient being about a 50-minute drive away about 40kms south of Jomtien. U-Tapao airport (also Utapao and U-Taphao) or U-Tapao–Rayong–Pattaya International Airport, is a joint civil military facility, the main function of which is as the home of Thai Airways maintenance facility. Built by the US for fleets of B-52s to carpet-bomb Thailand’s neighbours round-the-clock on an industrial scale, the airport history is interwoven with the genesis of Pattaya’s seedy reputation as Sin City hereabouts. A fishing village until the 1960s Pattaya morphed, largely at first by word-of-mouth, into one of the main regional centers of rest and recreation (R’n’R or sex and alcohol) for US servicemen following the growing US involvement (a rather nebulous term for what they were doing) in Southeast Asia.

These days Pattaya has tried to reinvent itself with an altogether more family-friendly image with more mainstream package holidays aimed at families mainly from Europe. Chinese package tourists, which pre-Covid plied Pattaya by the busload the passengers strung out military like behind the leader with the flag, have not been encouraged back. The authorities may like their numbers to inflate their statistics but local businesses learned that Chinese holiday-makers pay for everything back home, and don’t frequent local restaurants and businesses hardly at all. Chinese travel companies try to drive down room prices to levels where it’s barely profitable for Thai hotels to open at all, so they used to close instead!

The seedy image of Pattaya remains however, and is now found over the hill in Jomtien especially around the foot of Khao Phra Tamnak (“Palace Hill”) or known less ceremoniously as Big Buddha Hill, which at nearly 100m is the highest point in Pattaya and separates the noisy neighbour from Jomtien Beach. Prostitution in Thailand is technically illegal but tolerated in most cities, including Pattaya where most customers are foreign but largely the demand for sexual services in Thailand is locally driven (this is true for much of the rest of Southeast Asia as well). Despite the vast numbers of hostess bars, go-go bars, massage parlours, saunas, and hourly hotels Pattaya police deny that Pattaya is a sex trade paradise. An article in one British newspaper described Pattaya as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah estimating that there are about 27,000 prostitutes in the city, a figure that local police deny. There is no such thing as prostitution in Pattaya," according to the local police superintendent speaking ot the UK reporter, “Where did they get that figure from?” However, local social work groups like the Service Workers IN Group Foundation, said that the figure of prostitutes published in the UK newspaper is inaccurate: "27,000 sex workers in Pattaya is way too low …” there are “a lot more sex workers than that”.

To get around Jomtien there are the so called “baht buses” or songthaews, the most popular mode of public transportation, and run from Jomtien Beach throughout Pattaya. Coloured blue, these converted pick-ups ply set routes about town for a fixed fee, usually 10 baht but if you’re going a bit further than a couple of kilometres it’s 20 baht. Cheap transport. There are step-through motorbikes for hire. Helmets are supposed to be worn. Given many hirers don’t usually ride motorbikes, are sometimes careless when using them, often wearing little in the way of protective clothing given the climate, accidents are common and the victims conspicuous given the bandages for scrapped skin worn by those less seriously injured.

Greater Pattaya is part of Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (officially the Eastern Special Development Zone or ESDZ). Started in the 1980s, the ESDZ covers three provinces and was aimed at developing the region of the eastern seaboard in order to promote industrial growth and to decentralise economic and population growth away form Bangkok. Funded by Japan there are now an estimated 5,500 Japanese companies in Thailand with facilities in the area. Investments totalling over US$45 billion are now flowing into EEC infrastructure projects, mainly transport: airports, deep-sea ports, high-speed railways, and motorways. The idea of these projects is to make Pattaya and Jomtien more accessible.

A new monorail line is planned to link Jomtien. Called the Red Line, the new monorail system will stretch 17.37kms with about 10 stations and run to Jomtien. It’s planned to link three major airports to Pattaya by high-speed train. There’s a tram system planned for Pattaya plus a new cruise ship terminal and numerous new tourist attractions. Local authorities are aiming to make the area more competitive compared with other popular Thai beach destinations like Phuket and Ko Samui (located far and away in the country’s southwest) with cheaper transport costs. The aim is to attract one-and-a-half times more visitors than the area currently receives which likely means the low-key character of Jomtien being changed forever. They’ll be more condominiums built, more traffic, and more people.

There are offshore islands located a few miles from Jomtien. There are three so-called "near islands" connected by ferries: Ko Lan, the largest with eight beaches restaurants and accommodation; and Ko Sak, and Ko Krok. The "far islands" are: Ko Phai (main island) about 20kms away at the southernmost end of the Bay of Bangkok, and the much smaller Ko Man Wichai, Ko Hu Chang, and Ko Klung Badan. The far islands have good coral reefs for snorkeling and sunken wrecks for scuba diving.

I found Jomtien underwhelming while my brief visit to Pattaya was overpowering. It was awful and after one morning for shopping, I couldn’t wait to leave. I wouldn’t want to visit for any extended period and I wouldn’t live there. I’m not sure I could live in Jomtien either. Its benefits are it’s close to an international airport in Bangkok. The tropical climate is preferable for many to winters back home. But it’s soulless and overall lacks charm. It’s like it hasn’t made its mind up what’s happening yet. I was reminded somewhat of the Sunshine Coast in Australia; there’s even a few Aussies wandering about. Most Thais aren’t even from there but come for work. If you want beaches, you wouldn’t stay here. It’s not a beautiful natural setting. The beach itself isn’t that nice and the water not swimmable. There are sunsets and palm trees and some good food but if it’s a tropical paradise you’re after, you’d want to spend your time and money elsewhere.

A new monorail line is planned to link Jomtien. Called the Red Line, the new monorail system will stretch 17.37kms with about 10 stations and run to Jomtien. It’s planned to link three major airports to Pattaya by high-speed train. There’s a tram system planned for Pattaya plus a new cruise ship terminal and numerous new tourist attractions. Local authorities are aiming to make the area more competitive compared with other popular Thai beach destinations like Phuket and Ko Samui (located far and away in the country’s southwest) with cheaper transport costs. The aim is to attract one-and-a-half times more visitors than the area currently receives which likely means the low-key character of Jomtien being changed forever. They’ll be more condominiums built, more traffic, and more people.

There are offshore islands located a few miles from Jomtien. There are three so-called "near islands" connected by ferries: Ko Lan, the largest with eight beaches restaurants and accommodation; and Ko Sak, and Ko Krok. The "far islands" are: Ko Phai (main island) about 20kms away at the southernmost end of the Bay of Bangkok, and the much smaller Ko Man Wichai, Ko Hu Chang, and Ko Klung Badan. The far islands have good coral reefs for snorkeling and sunken wrecks for scuba diving.

I found Jomtien underwhelming while my brief visit to Pattaya was overpowering. It was awful and after one morning for shopping, I couldn’t wait to leave. I wouldn’t want to visit for any extended period and I wouldn’t live there. I’m not sure I could live in Jomtien either. Its benefits are it’s close to an international airport in Bangkok. The tropical climate is preferable for many to winters back home. But it’s soulless and overall lacks charm. It’s like it hasn’t made its mind up what’s happening yet. I was reminded somewhat of the Sunshine Coast in Australia; there’s even a few Aussies wandering about. Most Thais aren’t even from there but come for work. If you want beaches, you wouldn’t stay here. It’s not a beautiful natural setting. The beach itself isn’t that nice and the water not swimmable. There are sunsets and palm trees and some good food but if it’s a tropical paradise you’re after, you’d want to spend your time and money elsewhere.