Move Forward MP Jaras Kumkhainam, who was recently elected to represent Pattaya and sections of Banglamung in the Thai House of Representatives, has revived the concept of Pattaya being a special zone with alcohol available 24/7, excluding public holidays. In the national election, his party garnered the most seats and is currently the favorite to seize power.
At a post-election celebration, Jaras stated that Pattaya needed flexibility because it was a party city and was popular with millions of foreign tourists every year.
The 24/7 Pattaya promotion has been around for a while. In an effort to increase new visitor arrivals in a favored Happy Zone, the visitor Association of Thailand proposed it in the wake of the 2010 Bangkok street protests that shut down international airports for several days.
The idea resurfaced in the closing stages of the last covid crisis as a means of accelerating Pattaya’s tourism resurgence. Khun Tan, who oversees a number of gin palaces in Walking Street and elsewhere, stated that Pattaya clubs and bars need later hours in order to satisfy patrons and make a respectable profit.
He further emphasized that rather than serving Caucasians, the new generation of clubs catered to Russians, Chinese, Indians, and South Koreans.
However, it is unlikely that any government would agree to give Pattaya first priority. Even if the real actions have only been half-hearted, every city police chief in recent memory has discussed the necessity to eradicate prostitution in this area.
Even the need for a 24/7 license in Pattaya is debatable given the apparent drop in the number of traditional fun-seeking male tourists from Europe, the United States, and Australia. According to immigration figures, Thailand has so far received about 10 million foreign visitors in 2023. However, Indians, Chinese, Malaysians, and Russians have made up the large majority.
The idea that Pattaya mostly attracts guys on solitary night owl crusades is disproved by the fact that over half of the arrivals have been tourist ladies.As Pattaya changes.
Thus agrees everyone. The journalist Bernard Trink, who may have coined the phrase “Sin City” forty years ago and famously remarked, “If I didn’t smoke a pipe, I’d smell sex in Pattaya,” is no longer the exclusive authority on the subject.
For example, in North Pattaya and along Beach and Second Roads, a number of bar areas have been cleared through demolition to make space for luxurious condominiums or five-star complexes. Although Neo or New Pattaya has not yet come, it is anticipated.
Even today, Pattaya entertainment can still refer to go-go dancers and transvestite cabarets, but it can also refer to golf courses, family-friendly attractions, five-star malls, and opulent hotels. Bangkok Stickman even made a prediction about when Pattaya’s sex scene would essentially disappear in a recent piece.Along Soi Buakhao, where the fight to locate the best English breakfast for under 120 baht or a cool beer for 50 baht is razor sharp, the classic Pattaya market, the economy farang, still thrives.
However, the majority of the clientele consists of male expats in their sixties, seventies, and beyond from the UK and continental Europe. Local Visa merchants that specialize in getting their one-year retirement extensions without “hassle” are concerned that once these people pass away, their positions won’t be filled.
There are also worries that Soi Buakhao may turn into a ghost town if immigration regulations were significantly tightened, such as by making medical insurance mandatory.
Even though the clubs close at 2 a.m., the international media, notably in Britain, continues to refer to Pattaya as a 24-hour sex city. In a recent article on a missing British adolescent who unexpectedly showed up in Pattaya, The Daily Mail cited assertions that the city was a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.
The city does, in fact, attract sex tourists, but their share of the global market is steadily declining. The greatest option if Thailand wishes to modernize its licensing laws is to make them available round-the-clock everywhere. It’s unnecessary to pick out Pattaya.
