ust two hours south of Bangkok lay Pattaya, a hyper-touristed, sin-city that offers most of what Bangkok does but crammed into a much smaller area and with the neon turned way up. This is a nightlife city, not a seaside town to go to unwind.

A beach town without much of beach, a Thai town that isn’t really Thai – but somehow in all the decadence, flood of tourists, bargirls, beer bars, shopping malls, gaudy shows and kitsch vendors – it ends up encompassing the heart of what of urban Thailand has become – a lurid circus, a human zoo, or an adult Disneyland – depending on your perspective.

1. Things to see

Every April Songkran arrives, a water festival taking place in one of the hottest months where locals and expats take to the streets to dump water and colored powder on passerbys. What started as good-natured fun has now devolved (in Pattaya at least) into a license for causing motorbike accidents and mayhem, the thinly veiled anger that always sits beneath the veneer of the ‘Thai smile, unfortunately, comes to the forefront during this ‘festival’. Many expats leave Pattaya during this time or at least stay indoors.

The rest of the year its business as usual, endless streets (sois) of hotels, condos restaurants and bars. Some claim there are over 1,000 bars in Pattaya – that sounds like a lot – but it feels like a lot more. Somehow all the bars end up seeming like the same bar.

During the day there are hordes of Chinese tourists that stop traffic as they herd for the beach following a leader holding up a color-coded flag and headed for speedboats to take them to unimpressive nearby islands like Koh Larn. You can shop in some of the new upscale malls like Terminal 21 (north side of Pattaya), lay by your hotel pool, or brave the vendors and lay on the beach on a rented chair under an umbrella sipping a coconut.

The beach isn’t much to look at, but it’s better than it was in the past. They’ve brought in a lot of white sand and the beach is much wider than it used to be. It’s still not a Robinson Crusoe idyllic oasis though, with the baht busses, motorbikes, buses, car horns just meters behind your head

View from the Hilton

Pattaya’s sad brown beach

The pools at Siam @ Siam

Spirit houses

Sunshine Hip Hotel

Lots of photo opportunities

Hotel life

One of many Instagram points in Pattaya

2. Nightlife

Nights are all about drinking, red lights, neon, and blaring music, from the open-air beer-bars that line most of the main streets and are quickly encroaching into northern neighborhoods – you can sit and drink affordable beer and play various games – tic tac toe, Jenga, and while away the night. Street food is omnipresent, affordable and mostly edible.

Walking Street on the south end of the beach is a long string and mashup of go-go bars not seen anywhere else in Thailand, Asia, or the world. From live bands to bars with nude dancers, to a few bars where eastern European girls dance for a price. There’s spectacle for everyone. Elsewhere, side streets are streets filled with outdoor bars, a boys town, and soapie massage joints interspersed with transgender cabaret shows like Alcazar.

While prostitution is everywhere it isn’t seedy, you can see families cruising through walking street taking photos and pointing out the sights much like you’ll find in Amsterdam’s red-light district – it’s not threatening, it has become a tourist attraction.

Be prepared, Pattaya plays rough. A few of our favorite places were:

The Ice Bar (xxx) a kitsch freezer room where you can put on a borrowed winter coat to knock back shots of ice-cold vodka or Tequila from a bar made entirely of ice, and a more chill bar area with a good selection of crazy cocktails and a quieter atmosphere to sit and talk and watch people walk by the windows.

Sugar Baby Agogo: good shows and a laid back atmosphere, drinks were not that expensive and nobody was too pushy. Sometimes the waitresses will ask for drinks but you can just nod your head no and say no thanks, or maybe later.

Inside a typical small side soi bar

Ice bar, Jenga and creatures

3. Spend

Terminal 21 opened up in 2019 and has multiple floors each themed after a foreign location; London, Istanbul, San Francisco, etc. You can’t miss the giant plane parked out front and it’s always fun to spend the hottest part of the day shopping for gifts to bring back home or seeing a movie. There are also several other malls with big foreign brands and some incredible basement grocery stores where you can pick up some fantastic exotic fruits (for a price) and international snacks.

Most of the street vendors are selling the same things, resin statues, knockoff purses, little hand mirrors, soaps, lanterns, magnets, t-shirts, Thai boxing shorts, kimonos, sunglasses, incense sticks, knives, brass knuckles, clothes, flip flops, cheap suitcases you’ll need to haul all your loot – and the million other things you can find in any tourist ghetto that you don’t really need and probably won’t last. I’m not sure where these items come from, but I’d suspect that most are shipped on container ships from China.

Lots of good shopping from the malls, Boots and 7eleven

4. Food

Thai food is delicious but spicy (pet). If you want it less spicy just ask (mai pet).  Tom Yum Goong (spicy shrimp soup), Som Tum (spicy papaya salad), Tom Kha Kai (coconut soup with chicken), Gaeng Daeng (red curry), Pad Thai (a perennial fave of cheap street eats), Khao Pad Kai (chicken fried rice) Pad krapow moo Sapp (fried pork and basil) and a number of other curries are delicious – Masaman curry, Penang curry etc. There’s also loads of English style pubs, and Fast food joints – Taco Bell, Burger King, Mcdonalds, Carls Junior, Pizza Hut. The street food is usually safe and equally tasty – from beef and chicken liver skewers grilled over charcoal while you wait to fresh-cut pineapple and mango.

Crabs and fried rice – yummy

5. Getting Around

Pattaya Central is surrounded by a ring-road, Beach Road 1 runs along the ocean and Beach Road 2 on the northern side. You could rent a motorbike if you’re staying a while. This affords you the freedom to avoid long walks down side-streets to the two Beach Roads, but then you have to cope with traffic, haggle for parking and maybe worst: remember where you parked your bike after barhopping. It’s far easier to just jump a baht bus (10 baht per passenger). They mostly circle the main part of Pattaya 24hr a day. Just stand in the street and look stupid and they’ll stop for you – hop on for the ride, then push the little white doorbell (on the roof) to signal a stop. You have to walk up to the window and pay the driver. If you give them a 20 baht note you might have to ask for change as they notoriously ‘forget.’ Its always better to have change and small bills.

Riding on the back of a Baht bus – hang on!

6. Costs

Hotels and condos in Pattaya are often ridiculously cheap. At least compared to Bangkok. However, the quality of hotels varies widely. You need to go and check a place out, see if it has decent internet and be willing to change to another hotel if needed. The top-end hotels always deliver. I stayed at Siam & Siam which had two rooftop pools and an artsy but faded ambiance.

7. Tips

The simplest tip, and the one probably the most ignored is just to not get too drunk, or if you do – then head back to your hotel and not get into trouble on the street. Most of the problems you see can be avoided easily with a cool head and reasonable blood alcohol level.

Pattaya is a sensation overload. The music, lights, bars, girls, vendors, traffic, and sea of humanity is shocking. It’s still a lot of fun, at least for a few nights before heading on to someplace else. It’s no more authentic Thailand than Disneyworld would be authentic America – but it can be fun.