The Latest at Dongtan beach

[Guest Hedda]

I was shocked to see in a walk last weekend along Dongtan Beach that the Pattaya politicians have discovered yet another way to destroy what's left of the natural state of Pattaya's beaches.

 

I'm not talking about all the sandbags that the folks have piled along the beach, presumably to counter the horrific engineering that went into the yellow brik road, and which make the beach look permanently like Katrina is on the way. Nor am I referring to the yellow brick road that is, in its third rainy season, slowly and inexorably sinking and falling apart at the edges. The "Piccadilly" lights they first installed are, of course, long since pilfered, destroyed and otherwise unaccounted for.

 

What I'm talking about is the latest project: a string of four-story industrial light poles being installed along the entire Dongtan Beach, not along the yellow brick road, but on the beach itself, in the sand, midway through the chairline.

 

The good news is that that loud mouth German who used to sit right next to you and converse with friends 100 meters away, wont be able to sit there anymore, because the pole has replaced his seat. The bad news is that the new monstrosities are green, and are also very German: brutally functional without the slightest attempt at aesthetics.

 

The green monsters are mounted on raw concrete bases that are so rough and unfinished they look like they may have been salvaged from the Maginot Line - after the German invasion. The total look is one you might find at a truck stop that wants to keep everything well lit to prevent truckers from peeing on tires or doing other unmentionables.

 

On top of each pole are four-story pole are four mercury-vapor lights that, when activated at night, will undoubtedly make the beach look like one of the runways at the new airport. It's not only ugly in the daytime, Can you imagine the mood it will set at night, especially for Loy Katrong ! Maybe we'll do our floats this year in the shape of a 747 to fit the occasion.

 

It's hard to believe what has happened to this lovely beach, which was still in an essentially natural state less than six years ago. One can only wonder how long a beach that looks like this can continue to suffer such assaults and still attract western tourists. I wonder if there's a Thai word for ecology.

[Gaybutton]

I wonder if there's a Thai word for ecology.

 

If there is such a word, my guess is that it is used about as often as we use "withal," "thither," and "gadzooks" in our normal daily conversation.

 

I am told that the reason for the lighting is to curb crime and sexual activities along the beach during the night. I can understand trying to do something about crime along the beach, but I suppose it didn't occur to anyone to increase police presence along the beach at night.

 

Curbing sexual activity? Of course! After all, why allow people to cruise the beach at night, looking for free sex, when they can go to bars and pay for it? After all, we have to support the local economy, don't we? So much for the romantic, moonlit stroll along the beach.

 

Let's not forget the people who live in condos along the beach and stay in hotels along the beach. Why permit them to have that star-filled sky and moonlit beach view at night when those who don't live there can't have it? Fair is fair. Well, we won't have to worry about people missing out on the view at night. Nobody will be living in the condos anyway. The units will all be confiscated and vacant as soon as the government starts confiscating them from people who bought via corporations.

 

I don't understand your complaint, Hedda. Are you actually saying a pristine beach ought to be left pristine when it can be overstuffed with beach chairs, be sandbagged, have a drainage ditch that overflows instead of draining, have a walkway that is falling apart less than a year after being built, have a set of loudspeakers installed to blare out messages in Thai when the majority of people visiting the beaches don't speak Thai, have giant screen TV's that don't work and never had anybody watch even when they did work and are just left there to rust their way into oblivion, have a background of condos with a number of floors that stretch well into the double digits, have raw sewage dumped directly into the waters, and now will have lights that give a whole new meaning to the word 'ugly'? What's wrong with you?