Pattaya. Pattaya. Pattaya. The resort town without a real beach. What? Yup. Here’s the Pattaya they show you at the travel agency to get you there.

And then here is the truth about the beach. Its MAYBE 12 feet of actual beach. Room as you can see for only ONE or TWO beach chairs.

What a great place to kill time and your hangover before you go back out to the girly bars.

Just added a gallery containing photos of Bangkok and Pattaya after dark. Tried my best to capture the seedy side during the day and at night from a distance. Photography near the hookers is looked down on for some reason….. Anyway take a peak here.

M: So, since we’re at a lovely beach and there happens to be a smidge of cloud cover, I wanted to take the time to write a little more about Pattaya Beach.

When we were in Bangkok, the street we stayed on was a popular destination for the sex trade. It was definitely obvious and sometimes overwhelming depending on which soi (or tiny side street off the main street) we went down, but it was nothing compared to Pattaya.

We knew Pattaya was a “party beach” but didn’t realize till we were there just how ridiculous it really was. I can count on my two hands the number of western women I saw there besides myself. The rest of the town (its huge though, really a city) is filled with bars and restaurants, mostly bars. And these bars are FILLED with thai prostitutes. Some bars had 20 or 30 girls hanging out. The other guests? Mostly men, mostly older - like 60 or so, all white, all chunky. There were some younger men too, but not many.

Pattaya itself is just ugly. Every single street, every single soi, every single block is chock full of bars with a pink neon light - the calling sign of a sex bar.

The beach is about 6 feet wide but a million feet long, nothing like where we are now. It is not a pretty beach. The thai there were unfriendly, I don’t blame them, there must be something to watching your women get eaten by white men. It’s loud loud LOUD with old 80’s pop tunes (really nothing wrong with that, a little Ice Ice Baby can go a long way).

When John and I went out together it was fun to watch him walk first (there aren’t sidewalks, you have to walk in the streets and dodge traffic) and watch the hookers see him first, proposition him, then see me. They were always really nice, smiling at me embarassingly when they saw me.

I got past the moral and ethical judginess of it all. It seems like a lot of these older men were honestly looking for companionship, iit appeared common to “Pretty Woman” a lot of these girls and keep them for a few weeks as a girlfriend. Also interestingly, the older men definitely picked the less hot of the ladies, while the young men picked the really sexy ones. But we saw the men taking the ladies to dinner, they take them on trips, shopping, the whole shebang (no pun intended).

But it definitely wasn’t for us, this lovely island of Koh Chang where we are now (chang meaning elephant in Thai) is so lovely, it really is paradise, and we’re in this sleepy little backpacker town called Lonely Beach, there are about 10 restaurants, a couple of shops, a few internet cafes, sandy roads and a big beautiful beach that makes me blink my eyes to make sure I’m seeing it correctly.

And the treehouse is ridiculous, two little rooms with a thatched roof. One with a big bed, mosquito netting, a fan, and another with a western toilet (yay!) and a shower. Showering under nothing but a thatched roof is really invigorating.

I’ll write more about Lonely Beach soon, but right now? The sun’s coming out.

M: Just left the hotel we were staying at the first night here in Pattaya. To quote an old movie bitch “What a dump.” We left Bangkok for Pattaya, hearing that Pattaya was a party beach and could be really fun if one was in the right mood. After wandering around in 1,000% humidity, we finally settled on the crappieset hotel in the city.

It was a huge “corporate” hotel. It seemed to really cater to chinese tourists and their families. The women behind the reception desk were just about the first rude Thai people we’ve come in contact with. There was a lovely pool we couldn’t go into after 5:00PM and we tried again the next day they wouldn’t let John in the pool unless he was wearing a Speedo. Which is kinda funny. The room was expensive and dirty, with cigarette burns in the carpet and plastic under the bedsheets. It was just 80 kinds of wrong.

We managed to find a lovely guesthouse this morning, run privately by the Thai themselves. It is CLEAN and we think they love us because we’re an actual married couple in this city of thai hookers and fat western men. I think I’ve seen one or two other western women here, it’s bizarre.

So lesson learned, go to the places run by the Thai themselves, they are kind, friendly, clean and care about what kind of place they’re running. There might not be a pool here, but there just so happens to be a huge beach a block away.

Patooey.

Oh, and one other thing…if you ever come to Pattaya (which you really shouldn’t unless you’re 60 and in search of some hookers) DO NOT STAY AT THE GOLDEN BEACH HOTEL. There are so many less expensive and cleaner and kinder hotels.

Double patooey.