What does the ideal Pattaya-ite look like?
Marketing people use the term ‘target market’ to aim their branding at the right people for the best cost effective advertising, but how does this pertain to the people that live in Pattaya and for regular tourists to the area?
If you were the head of the Pattaya Tourist Board who would you be aiming your messages at?
The Party people:
Pattaya is synonymous with the party scene, and expats will, when asked, reveal to their counterparts back home in a deadly quiet pub things that happen in Pattaya, and for those who are less travelled, they start to think these exploits are not even possible on any level, let alone horizontally.
A lot of what goes on is not really believed, and that often works in our favour, as we would not want every foreigner here ruining the neighborhood.
Yet it is all behind closed doors, Thai people don’t like passionate kissing in the street like Italians, they prefer to get you off the streets before they let loose on you. So for this reason yes there are scantily clad woman on the main drags, but looking is very different from touching, I am not sure why Europeans who have never been here think there is sex in the streets of Pattaya, I’ve never seen it, yet I have seen some pornographic scenes on beaches in Spain that shocked me!
Pattaya is not really for twenty year old lads, not sure about you but I would have been eaten up by this town if I got here when I was 20 years old. The best age to come here is 40 plus, because by then you should be more worldly wise and know when a Thai woman is telling you ‘you are handsome,’ and know that this is really their code for: “Buy me a drink big nose!”
You will have a little more spending power as you should have some sort of skill in your background to command a decent living, whether it’s on the rigs, as an International School Teacher or work online.
So ideally we are looking for 40 years Plus, financially grounded worldly wise people, who want to live in Thailand are not prudish to see girls or boys in short skirts or shorts when you wander down to main the bar areas, and people who know the difference between a good humored cat call and a proposal of marriage!
Open Minded People
The Pattaya-ite will be used to the stigma, expat ladies and men alike who choose to live in Pattaya Thailand, have bestowed upon them from their ne’er travelled misfits back home. We are often judged harshly mainly by people who do not live here for having younger partners. Those of us who have lived here for some time have learned the ‘Mai Pen Lai’ attitude, as in chill out and let it be. Lady-boys and Gays are as part of Pattaya as palm trees, so if you believe homosexuals should burn in hell, maybe a holiday to the Bible belt of the US would be more your scene.
As John Cleese said in the movie ‘A Fish called Wanda’:
“Do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing?”
Asians have a delightfully different and fresh approach to love and sex that will make any western person question how closeted they have been their whole life.
The Foodies
The people that live here are serious foodies, you can find Michelin star cuisine for a comparatively great price, and a ten minute stroll down the road you can be sat at the side of the road and eat fresh noodles for a dollar! We have every kind of food from all over the world, it is so hard to keep your weight down here. So if I was doing marketing for Pattaya I am looking for people who love to eat all kinds of international cuisines spicy or not.
The Beach bums
If you like to tan and love being sat under glorious sunshine all day with a good book, then here you are in paradise. The weather here is like clockwork, November to February is high season for a reason because we have the most sunshine and least amount of rain. And although you always see Pattaya bay in pictures which pre- Covid is always crowded and to be fair not that amazing as far as beaches go, the locals will take you to see some world class deserted beaches 15-45 minutes away that will take your breath away.
The Families.
Pattaya residents just smirk when the uninitiated say something stupid like; “Oh I would not take my children to Pattaya” simple because we have so many things for families.
The reality is 95% of Pattaya is about family and fun and only about 5% is the bar scene.
The open air swimming pools are a plenty, from the big parks with multiple slides and waves and currents. So many restaurants and pubs have pools: Imagine being able to have a steak sandwich and a beer in the pub and watch your kids swim all afternoon in the dusky sunshine, not something you can really do in the West, but its normal here.
If we had 30 degrees each day and a pool in the pub in UK then instead of having to sit outside on the kerb with a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps as a kid waiting for my Dad to have a swift pint as a child, then maybe I would still live there.
We have gardens and temples and so much for families to do you could not get it all seen and experienced in a month even of you tried. So I would be definitely be trying to educate the uninitiated about how family friendly Pattaya is.
