The decline and fall of naughty boys in Pattaya

[reader]

From Pattaya Mail

WEEKEND EDITORIAL

PATTAYA, Thailand– The-ever readable Stickman internet site for March 9 emphasizes that Pattaya or Sin City no longer revolves around sex and gogo dancers. It reckons only 2-3 percent of overseas visitors these days are primarily motivated by bright nightlife here, although the article doesn’t speculate what the rest of us are doing.

The column suggests that the declining ratio of naughty boys to mainstream tourists is caused by several factors. They range from the natural ageing of traditional westerners and the escalating charges for post-covid prostitution to the decline in the quality of the bodies on offer and the booming music which used to be fun and isn’t any longer. Of course, it’s impossible to quantify overseas visitors solely on the basis of their sexual proclivities. A foreigner may visit cultural heritage sites in the daytime but hurry down to Soi Pothole after dark. A businessman could be attending networking conferences whilst the sun is shining, but looking for a very different trade in the light of the moon.

To state the obvious, Pattaya has changed beyond all recognition. Five star hotels, penthouse condos, luxury malls, family-friendly entertainment and expensive restaurants are everywhere. Whatever bits of central Pattaya are still standing are in danger of being knocked down and redeveloped. Indeed, the major stumbling block to even quicker transformation is the shortage of both Thai and immigrant cheap labor rather than the lack of investors.

Nightlife is increasingly concentrated in streets or areas such as Soi Buakhao, standalone streets such as Soi Sex (Six) and bar complexes scattered throughout the city and Jomtien. There are at least 30 bars in Jomtien’s Rompho market stretch although only a few are really busy. In any case, they mostly cater for retiree foreigners wanting to drink, people-watch and chat with friends.

Stickman rarely mentions the gay scene, reasoning that his readers wouldn’t be interested. But here too the changes are substantial. At the Jomtien Complex, gay sex is certainly on offer but there’s a choice of restaurants and several professional cabaret shows catering largely for social groups. Whether the arrival of gay marriage will make much difference to non-Thais in Pattaya is a debating point. So far, insiders say, no real impact.

So Pattaya is at a sort of crossroads. The naughty boy market still exists, howbeit on a smaller scale than 20 years ago or even 10. It will likely continue to decline because that once-cheap lifestyle is increasingly expensive even as the steep decline in the Thai birth rate means there are far better life-chances for the 18-35 year olds than selling themselves to strangers on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Pattaya sits adjacent to the Eastern Economic Corridor which is fast becoming Thailand’s most successful technology hub. Chonburi province, which houses the city of Pattaya, is amongst the top three wealthiest provinces in the country according to Board of Investment business data. If naughty boys are now only 2 or 3 percent of tourist arrivals, that number could half by the end of the decade.

https://www.pattayamail.com/latestnews/news/the-decline-and-fall-of-naughty-boys-in-pattaya-493229

[Raposa]

What motivates so many people to go to Pattaya these days? The cultural heritage and the temples? The excellent beaches and clear blue water?

[reader]

8 minutes ago, Raposa said:

What motivates so many people to go to Pattaya these days? The cultural heritage and the temples? The excellent beaches and clear blue water?

You omitted the excellent public transportation system.

[bkkmfj2648]

16 minutes ago, reader said:

It will likely continue to decline because that once-cheap lifestyle is increasingly expensive even as the steep decline in the Thai birth rate means there are far better life-chances for the 18-35 year olds than selling themselves to strangers on a regular basis.

This sounds like a propaganda article in my opinion - as certain interest groups are HELL-BENT on artificially changing the image of Pattaya to something that it is not yet there.....

Based on what I highlighted above - YES the Thai birth rate is down and this VOID is being filled up with the guys from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam.  Why are all of these SEA nearby foreigners servicing the local Pattaya community?  Because there is a DEMAND - which this article alludes that DEMAND is diminishing.

Consequently, this article feels like it is trying to twist the on-the-ground reality that sin city is still vibrant in Pattaya even though there is now a HUGE movement to say that it is not.....

[Londoner]

Thanks, Reader , for raising this interesting issue.

I agree that the age factor is central; my generation of gay men spent their younger years in  a homophobic and legally-perilous environment. To us, Pattaya meant freedom and liberation. Younger guys don't need to travel thousands of miles for that now. 

Yet today's Pattaya, admittedly bland compared with the past, still offers us an enormous amount, particularly  if  it means  time spent with a loved one. The hotels remain cheap, embarrassingly so compared to the UK, the dining opportunities numerous, offering even better value. Even the beaches are cleaner. It provides an escape from  a northern winter, the denizens remain friendly and welcoming and the travel easier from the airport than back in the day.

My ninetieth visit is iminent  and I am still like a little boy looking forward to Christmas. The Pattaya/Jomtien  to which I return hasn't got the "edgy" flavour it once had but probably that makes it even more suitable for someone who has aged in three decades years as much as the city has changed.

The question on my mind is what will happen to the gay scene when my generation has gone. 

[Keithambrose]

6 hours ago, reader said:

You omitted the excellent public transportation system.

And the empty roads.

[thaiophilus]

6 hours ago, Raposa said:

What motivates so many people to go to Pattaya these days? The cultural heritage and the temples? The excellent beaches and clear blue water?

Don't 7* chicken and cashew nuts feature somewhere?

Also the ready availability of stamp-collecting accessories, of course.

[macaroni21]

I am hardly an expert on Pattaya as I don't visit often enough. However, I've been going roughly once a year for the past 20 years at least, so I think I can say something about how the tourism scene has changed.  Perhaps other members with more frequent visits, or who tend to stay for a month or more at a time can chip in.

For sure, the urban area has grown. There was a time when Jomtien was little more than agricultral land. For sure, the roads are much more congested than in the decade 2000 - 2010 so that means more people. There are more tall condos, but not so many tall hotels. Shopping malls like Terminal 21 didn't appear until after 2010, I think.

I wouldn't be so quick, therefore, to dismiss the assertion in the cited news article that there has been a relative decline of the sex scene as an attraction. That said, it is foolhardy to try to put a quantitative figure to it, like saying "2-3 percent of overseas visitors". As others have said, depending on the hour of day, visitors do various things. Looking at the crowds on Walking Street, I'd venture to say just about all visitors to Pattaya walk that street at some point, children included!

What I want to unpack is how the article's assertion may be true, but still not a healthy trend.

The news article spoke about overseas visitors. Actually, I think the biggest growth in visitors to Pattaya have been in domestic visitors. Many own apartments as second homes. Many drive from Bangkok to spend a weekend in Pattaya (thus the horrible traffic).

Growth in overseas visitors, by my observation, has long been of the packaged-tour kind. There seems to be three big groups: Chinese, Indians and Russians.

CHINESE

10 - 15 years ago, there was much discussion about huge tour buses carrying enormous numbers of Chinese tour groups. I have seen them myself, but in the last five years or so, I reckon they are less noticeable. This suggests that the Chinese packaged-tour numbers peaked sometime back and have not recovered. However, this is not to say that the Chinese are not coming to Thailand. They are, as I have seen again and again in my far more frequent visits to Bangkok. In the capital city, they are numerous. Increasingly, they are independent travellers, an evolution I expected from years ago given that China's GDP per capita is now US$12,000 (compared to Thailand's $7,000).

When Chinese did not have much of a choice regarding their itinerary (because they were coming on packaged tours), they came to Pattaya. Their programme was probably packed with Tiffany Show, a boat tour, Nong Nooch and such standard fare. In a packaged tour, it would have been very hard to be a buyer of sex. So, to the extent that packaged-tour volumes increased dramatically, then the sex trade must have declined as a relative attraction.

What I'm not so sure about is whether independent Chinese tourists are making their way to Pattaya. Or are they most sticking to Bangkok and Chiangmai? I somethow think they are giving Pattaya a miss (but others watching the Pattaya scene more closely may advise here). 

INDIANS

My observation of the more recent explosion of Indian tourist traffic is that it is very gendered. Males outnumber females maybe 10 to 1. Yes, there are some packaged tour groups, but I think most come on corporate incentive tours (thus predominantly male). This explains the relatively sudden appearance of many Indian music bars on Walking Street, and ethnic Indian barkers. VIsitors from India (predominantly male) will be interested in the sex trade, but for practical reasons such as being in the company of friends and colleagues, they might go no further than to gawk at the grils and tease each other. Mostof them probably cannot afford to actually hire a girl - too costly for Indian dispoable income - and anyway most cannot afford to be seen to be hiring a girl and bringing her back to the same hotel where 50 of your friends and workmates are staying. Someone might tell your wife!

So, if I am right, that however interested the (often male) Indian visitor may be in girls, he can't act on his impulses. This may be another excuse for those promoting Pattaya as a family friendly destination to brag about how uninterested in sex current visitors to the city are.

In case you're wondering about GDP per capita, India = $ 2,500. That is to say, Thais are more than twice as rich as Indians.

I read somewhere that academics of tourism generally see a GDP per capita of $10,000 as a threshold beyond which independent travel takes off. And as we know, independent travellers spend much more than packaged tourists. China has crossed the threshold. Thailand is getting close, but India is still far behind. This explains why company-paid tours (i.e. not even self-paid packaged tours, let alone independent travel) make up the majority of visits from Indians.

RUSSIANS

Certainly Russians come in droves, but I don't think they come in packaged tours (Moses may know better), though there is a fine line between chartered flights (followed by free-and-easy days) and all-inclusive packaged tours. However, they do come in family groups, which therefore means that it is hard for any family member to be bar-fining girls from Walking Street, Soi Buakhao or wherever the bars are.

THE BIG PICTURE

So all in all, there is reason to the claim that the sex trade as a relative indulgence of overseas visitors has declined over the years, but look more closely and two caveats stand out:

1. If not for the sex trade, packaged tours and incentive tours might not even choose to include Pattaya as a destination. If there wasn't theTiffany Show or Walking Street, would the groups from China and India come?

2. The quality of visitors that Pattaya attracts should be worrying. They are the low spenders, either because they are on all-inclusive packaged tours, or they are from a country like India that is poorer than Thailand. And if the Chinese experience is anything to go by, as soon as a market gets rich enough to produce independent travellers, they skip Pattaya.

[vinapu]

6 hours ago, thaiophilus said:

Don't 7* chicken and cashew nuts feature somewhere?

Also the ready availability of stamp-collecting accessories, of course.

as self designated expert on chicken with cashew buts I must say Pattaya is famous for many things but I'd not go there for that particular dish.

7 stars always applies to Unesco acclaimed , world heritage Foodland Patpong.

But you are absolutely right about abundance of said accessories !