Pattaya is now a shadow of its former self as an estimated 300,000 Thai and foreign residents have left the city.
This exodus, coupled with the princely sum of ZERO foreign tourists in SEVEN MONTHS, has left those who remain rattling around an empty shell of a once thriving seaside town on the Gulf of Thailand.
City Manager’s Office chief Teerasak Jatupong claimed last month that Pattaya, at its busiest, has a half-million Thais who are registered as living elsewhere in Thailand.
Nearly all of them worked in the city’s beer-bars, restaurants, entertainment venues and other tourist related sectors.
Even those who work in banks, pharmacies, hospitals, laundries, food markets and other non-tourist related businesses are only there to cater for those who do.
In other words, all the money flow comes from foreigners and the presence of foreigners.
Which is what you would expect in any holiday town. But, if you cut the foreigners out then you also cut the cash-flow down to zero. It’s a simple principle.
This disaster can be traced back to the week Pattaya’s genius of a mayor started throwing his weight around and forced anybody either entering or leaving the city to pass through a road-block perimeter, wearing face-nappies and signing their names into a book.
They would then be ordered around by idiots dressed in cheap uniforms and blowing whistles. (continued below)
Bicycle lanes, beaches and parks were arbitrarily shut down. Presumably because the brain of Thailand decided that cycling in a park was more dangerous than cycling on one of the main roads alongside.
This sort of thought process throughout the city over the last 6-months has driven most right-minded people away.
Even many expats, isolated from their own countries, have decided that moving to the Thai countryside, where there is still the freedom to live like a grown up, is a much better prospect than tip-toeing around Pattaya hoping not to attract the attention of the COVID 1984 authorities.
The result is a much smaller city. The mayor’s office has estimated the number of people remaining simply by the amount of rubbish now collected each day.
About 500 tons a day were picked up before the sham-demic, they say. Now it is only 200 tons a day. This is an example of the thought process employed by Pattaya’s finest minds.
Another example of the thinking going on is demonstrated by many of those who remain, such as tour guides, hotel employees and prostitutes who are all now pursuing new careers as street food vendors.
Without realising, it seems, that if there are no foreigners in town and 80% of their friends have already left then there will also be no customers for street food stalls either.
But they will find that out soon enough, when what remains of their savings has run out.
Already a cursory look around town reveals more street food vendors than customers.
And yet hundreds are prowling Pattaya’s empty streets hawking donuts, sandwiches, tea, coffee and just about anything else that is easily made at home.
Which is what most people do.
And so with little prospect of the arrival of new tourists anytime soon Pattaya looks all set to shrink even further.
If you thought this year was bad then wait until you see 2021 when everybody’s money has gone and desperation starts to set in. That is when the fun will really start. – Albert Jack
