What are Pattaya's Long-Term Prospects?

[Guest fountainhall]

Looking around the various gay forums, it seems that more and more posters are expressing concern that Pattaya is slowly being overrun with Russians/East Europeans and those from Middle Eastern countries, a good few of them with families. With the TAT actively promoting tourism from those countries and arrival numbers rising considerably, I wonder what those who live there feel about their long-term prospects. If the prognosis is true, would this have any effect at all on your decision to remain in Pattaya?

 

Also, for those who are considering retirement there, does it give you any second thoughts?

 

Merely curious.

[Rogie]

I don't live in Pattaya and nowadays visit rarely, maybe once a year for just a few days, thus I cannot objectively comment on recent influxes.

 

Foreigners contemplating retiring to Thailand usually narrow the choice down to:

Bangkok

Pattaya

Chiang Mai

'somewhere in Isarn' eg. Udon, Ubon, Korat, etc.

 

I can well imagine a time (well before I ever set foot on Pattayan soil) when Pattaya was the choice for most retirees. I believe the sea was sparking in those days, the visible gay scene nascent but welcoming and clearly a major draw. Judging by comments made over the past few years, the cost of living was lower too, helped by favourable exchange rates. One sometimes hears about ranking places according to their quality of life, which would also include things like medical care in the event of illness or accidents.

 

Then there are the locals to consider. Stories abound of tourists being ripped off - jet ski frauds are still happening. The police are complicit in many of these and other shady dealings. Corruption is rife (to be fair it's a national problem). As per the thread about box jelly fish: Thai authorities are not the most transparent and honest in the way the public is kept informed.

 

Maybe the quality of life is just as good as ever, or maybe it's declined. Every ex-pat will have a different opinion no doubt. Personally I would be surprised if the influxes referred to in the OP made much difference provided there is minimal encroachment, so I wouldn't expect to hear of many well-established Pattaya ex-pats upping sticks in favour of . . . where exactly?

[Guest frequentflier57]

I first visited Pattaya 14 yrs ago.I would not like to retire there as it is too corrupt.Some people like to retire there so each to his own.

[TotallyOz]

Bangkok is a great city but the traffic is nuts and the prices are much higher for boys, food and housing. Pattaya is fun and exciting and has a lot to offer someone who likes the gay nightlife. Drinks are half the price or more than half of the bars in Bangkok.

 

I do fear that the city is trying to move to a friendly environment and away from the sex trade. I am just not sure that will happen soon. I see changes everytime I am there and the scene gets a bit more boring each time. But, that said, it is still the easiest place to find a guy for a long term thing and have fun with him at a reasonable price.

 

Arabs may make the area more conservative but that hasn't happened it.

[Guest]

Well the "Thai problems" such as get ski scams and corruption seem quite easy to avoid whilst on holiday in the country. Especially if one has no interest in Jet skis anyway. Besides, the wonderful Thai hospitality more than offsets their disadvantages.As for the Russians and Arabs, I can cope with them, providing they either behave or they're easy to avoid. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to avoid misbehaving drunken Russians* on the gay beach. Arrive too early & they may sit next to you. Arrive too late and the only seats left are next to them. As for the Arabs, well I've not had any problems with them so far. Perhaps the main threat from them could be the economic one, where a growing & profitable Arab market, drives the gay trade away to less convenient locations.

 

*Sometimes there are noisy drunken people of other nationalities, including British, but in Pattaya they seems less common than the Russians. Probably because the youth of West Europe find it cheaper to go on drinking holidays in the med.

[KhorTose]

Pattaya could still live on as a waste treatment plant. Hell it could be the biggest in Thailand.

[kokopelli]

I enjoy Pattaya and plan to retire there but I do think the future for gay life, as it currently exists, is bleak. I hope I am wrong.

[Guest snapshot]

Pattaya and the Russians and Eastern Europeans are perfect for each other.

 

People whinging about the Russians in Pattaya just need to accept that they've chosen to visit or settle down in a place that has that profile. 

[TotallyOz]

I think everyone is perfect for Pattaya and while I don't really like all the Arabs encroaching in Sunee Plaza, there is room for everyone in Pattaya.

 

I do find that most people from Russia I have dealt with in Pattaya to be nice.  The same I cannot say for the Japanese. They tend to look down on Thais and others.  Perhaps I am just over sensitive and don't understand the Japanese culture, but odd things have happened more than a few times with Japanese tourists. 

[firecat69]

There is no doubt the Russians and Arabs can be boorish but so can just about every other nationality.  The Russians are beginning to outnumber any other whites so they get noticed more for bad behavior.  

 

I fall into this trap also but certainly they don't come close to some European countries which will remain nameless. And definitely some bad behavior by some USAers  but there are so few of them it gets lost because of the huge numbers of Russians and Arabs with bad behavior.

 

Its only going to get worse because that is where the money is and Pattaya likes collecting it with both hands.

 

Who can blame them?

[KhorTose]

Its only going to get worse because that is where the money is and Pattaya likes collecting it with both hands.

 

Who can blame them?

No one, and considering how I feel about Pattaya, they are more then welcome to it.  My only fear is one frequent testy poster here (not you) may waddle his way up to Chiang Mai to avoid them and turn this place into a sewer.

[TotallyOz]

No one, and considering how I feel about Pattaya, they are more then welcome to it.  My only fear is one frequent testy poster here (not you) may waddle his way up to Chiang Mai to avoid them and turn this place into a sewer.

Are you referring to me KT?

[Guest]

There is no doubt the Russians and Arabs can be boorish but so can just about every other nationality.  The Russians are beginning to outnumber any other whites so they get noticed more for bad behavior.  

 

I fall into this trap also but certainly they don't come close to some European countries which will remain nameless. 

 

In Pattaya I've encountered quite a few examples of poor behaviour from Russians, including:

1 Being loud and drank on the beach from mid day onwards. Being rowdy and even dragging the foam covers off the beach loungers into the water.

2 Assuming everyone else is going to get out of their damn way when walking down the street.

3 Ignorant and inconsiderate behaviour in shops.  Such as a couple getting to the front of the queue and then make everyone else wait whilst the female half walks off to get something else.  (Yes I did complain)

4 Sitting in gogo bars for over 10 minutes, then leaving without buying a drink.

 

Admittedly this is a minority of them, but it's not good.

 

I've encountered no problems whatsoever with Arabs.

 

Of course other European countries have rowdy boorish elements, including particularly my own country. 

 

 

 

Long term prospects for the city are just fine.  It's a large and successful beach resort which is close to the main Thai airport. 

[Moses]

In Pattaya I've encountered quite a few examples of poor behaviour from Russians, including:

1 Being loud and drank on the beach from mid day onwards. 

 

Oh, I hate Germans for the same: they fill my lovely Prague with wild and drunk cry every weekend as drank tourists from Finland fill Russian Sankt-Petersburg every Friday and Saturday 

 

For me more notorious Russian bad behavior is to visit shops in swimsuits and walk by streets just in sports briefs instead of shorts.

[Rogie]

I'm going to propose a be nice to Russians amnesty. Anyone reading this message board is invited to post here on this thread anything or anyone that casts Russians in a good light.

 

I shall start:

 

Moses  

[Moses]

Rogie, ok, if that will help Russians to look more good, I agree: you can count me Russian  

[Guest fountainhall]

Vodka, caviar, the Moscow underground and the Bolshoi Theatre 

[Moses]

Pushkin, Lomonosov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Nabokov

Balanchine, Nureyev, Lifar, Nejinsky, Baryshnikov, Ulanova, Pavlova, Plisetcskaya

Rachmaninoff, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky

Rublev, Chagall, Esenstain, Tarkovsky, 

Mendeleyev, Gagarin, Kaspersky, Kalashnikov, Brin (Google), sputnik 

[Guest thaiworthy]

I'm going to propose a be nice to Russians amnesty. Anyone reading this message board is invited to post here on this thread anything or anyone that casts Russians in a good light.

 

I shall start:

 

Moses  

I thought Moses was Hebrew.

[kokopelli]

Pushkin, Lomonosov, ..... 

All of the above must be Russian but is there any other common denominator? I was trying to see if they were linked by profession or something else. I noticed a few gays.

[KhorTose]

Are you referring to me KT?

Darling Michael, you are a bike riding yuppie, and never waddle according to the reports I've heard.

[KhorTose]

Pushkin, Lomonosov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Nabokov

Balanchine, Nureyev, Lifar, Nejinsky, Baryshnikov, Ulanova, Pavlova, Plisetcskaya

Rachmaninoff, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky

Rublev, Chagall, Esenstain, Tarkovsky, 

Mendeleyev, Gagarin, Kaspersky, Kalashnikov, Brin (Google), sputnik 

You left out one of my favorite modern writers.

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,

[Guest fountainhall]

And how can you include Nijinsky without adding his lover, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev?    

[Guest fountainhall]

The same I cannot say for the Japanese. They tend to look down on Thais and others.  Perhaps I am just over sensitive and don't understand the Japanese culture, but odd things have happened more than a few times with Japanese tourists. 

 

Michael has raised the complicated issue of Japanese travelling abroad and how they react to others. His is not an unusual reaction, even though I am sure many of us have come across some younger Japanese who are very open and friendly. There is, however, a definite cultural issue here.

 

We have discussed many times on this Forum how it is often difficult to understand Thai logic, no matter how long we may have known someone. Perhaps one reason is that Thailand was never colonized; another that it closed it doors on the world for more than a century before slowly opening up again to western and other influences.

 

Japan, we need to remember, was all but completely shut off from the world for a much longer period – around 250 years when the seat of power rested with the Shogun military dictators. During this period of the Shogunate and the samurai warrior class, the mass of ordinary people always did as they were told. If ordered to jump off a cliff, that is what you did – without question! It was only when Commodore Perry used gunboat diplomacy to force open Japan’s markets in the 1850s that the country embarked on a period of massive change. As Britain had done with China and other European powers were to do elsewhere in Asia, the treaties signed between the US and Japan were “unequal”, granting the western powers one-sided economic and legal advantages. The Japanese elite realised the country had no choice but to modernize and adopt western ideas of industrialization, military might and a market economy if it was to be treated on equal terms.

 

Whilst peoples evolve over time, the isolation of Japan, followed by humiliation and then a single-minded determination never to be a victim again, has had a huge and continuing effect on the nation’s psyche. It is, perhaps, one reason why there is an in-bred cultural norm of the square-peg being bashed into the round hole. Japanese are expected to conform. The group always takes precedence over the individual. The group must be protected at all costs.

 

This does not fully explain why today many Japanese travelling abroad may seem difficult to westerners, but it is certainly part of the reason. Another is the lack of habitable land in the country. For centuries, the Japanese lived almost on top of each other in flimsy houses built of wood and paper. Such conditions, along with the fear of the samurai, inevitably resulted in the people developing a culture where you saw, but did not see; you heard, but did not hear. So, to all intents and purposes, it had not happened. You did your own thing, as it were, and you did not encroach on the lives of others.

 

And there are other reasons. In the early 1980s I met an elderly American who became a good friend. He had lived in Japan all his life apart from the period of the Second World War (his parents had been missionaries and he returned as part of MacArthur’s team). He always felt that the paradox of the Japanese – the surface manners and politeness contrasted with a deep-rooted confusion and often anger – could be summed up by looking at the education system. Even in the mid-1980s, there still continued a long unwritten code between a husband and wife that the husband could do more or less what he wished as long as the wife had control of the children and the household income. This resulted in most young children being excessively spoiled. Yet when these same children went to secondary school where a military type uniform had to be worn, the iron hand of excessive discipline cracked down, almost with a vengeance. This, he felt, was bound to set up deep conflicts in the minds of most Japanese boys/young men which, aligned with other aspects of Japanese society, set up barriers to openness with others, especially non-Japanese.

 

With the rapid post-war development of Japan’s economy and then the massive rise in the value of the Yen in the 1980s, things began to change for the younger generations. Outbound travel from Japan mushroomed to the point where anyone visiting Honolulu would be forgiven for thinking it could be Okinawa. More adventurous students would travel to more exotic countries, often on their own, enjoying a sense of freedom they rarely found at university or later at work. Yet for 99.99% of these, on their return to Japan, that freedom transformed back to conforming with the expected social mores and types of behaviour.

 

It will take many more generations for the mind-set of the average Japanese to change. Just as most westerners cannot conceive of a life without freedom of thought, most Japanese cannot understand how a society can function with such an all-encompassing freedom. As my friend had told me, it’s a paradox in a land beset with such paradoxes.

 

But back to Michael’s comment. I have no doubt some Japanese do look down on foreigners. But then, I have seen not a few of my own countrymen do likewise. The British traditionally have not set an especially good example overseas, unfortunately! On the other hand I think it helps to realise that for many Japanese, it requires a considerable mental leap to socialise more openly with non-Japanese whilst on holiday. This is not a form of condescension. Nor is it arrogance. It is, I think, more akin to a kind of inferiority complex. The feeling is probably something like: I don’t know how to handle this situation, I don’t speak much of the language and they don’t speak any Japanese, so better to keep my own counsel.

[Guest Jovianmoon]

...Perhaps one reason is that Thailand was never colonized...

 

Ah, that old chestnut. Yes, the Thais like to make a big deal about having never been colonised by a Western power. But mention the fact that they rolled over for the Japanese during the Pacific War and you'll get blank (and possibly slightly embarrassed) looks. The only reason that the Japanese spared Thailand the indignity of a full-scale occupation was Thailand's complicity in Japan's military expansion throughout the region - and that only to 'save face'.

 

As for the remainder of your comments, I largely agree. 

 

Cheers.