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Pattaya Overview

Pattaya, known as Phatthaya in the Thai transcription, is a popular tourist city well suited for tourists who like to spend a holiday full of entertainment, beach fun, shopping and nightlife. It is a Bay and has all the ingredients of a good tourist resort, viz. good hotels and guest houses, restaurants, bars, pubs, and variety of eating joints, variety of shops, multiple avenues for water and land sports, avenues for entertainment, places for sensual pleasure, busy & quiet relaxing beaches, and sight seeing attractions. Pattaya has been recognized as one of the top few popular and most visited beach resorts in the world, with over 5 million tourists visiting Pattaya every year.

Pattaya is situated approximately 160 km to the south-east of Bangkok, on the North Gulf Coast of Eastern Thailand. It is the central city in the province of Chonburi and is a self governing municipal area having its own Mayor. It is considered to be the second best city in Thailand, after Bangkok and has been well developed with high rise buildings and modern amenities.

Pattaya, being a world famous beach resort, is well developed and has no dearth of hotels and guest houses to suit everyone’s budget. It also has a wide variety of eating joints to fulfil the tastes of people visiting from various parts of the world. You will find a good number of restaurants and smaller eating joints offering fresh seafood. You will find restaurants offering many exotic cuisines that include - Thai, Chinese, Korean, French, Italian, German and Mexican.

The climate of Pattaya is quite conducive for a beach resort and ideal for sun-bathing at the beach. For the sport-loving, there are multiple water sport activity options available, such as - swimming, deep sea fishing, boat sailing, speed boating, water scooter riding, parasailing, water skiing, scuba diving and wind surfing. There are also other sport activity options available at Pattaya, such as – aero gliding, go-kart racing, shooting, horse riding, archery, golf, tennis, bowling, gymnasium, etc. There are 21 golf courses within 1 hour drive from Pattaya.

For those who like to spend their holiday shopping, Pattaya houses numerous shops in the main street and also in some of the luxury hotels. You will find many fashion boutiques and shops of ready-made garments, silk, coral and shells, paintings, jewellery and trinkets.

Pattaya is a city that never sleeps. It has a busy night life with hundreds of restaurants, bars, theaters, cabaret shows, night clubs, bowling halls, billiard & snooker clubs, exotic erotic shows, discos, sauna & massage parlours, shops, etc. open until very late night. Pattaya is famous for its go-go and beer bars and its sex industry, which attract a major percentage of tourists to the city and play a significant role in its economy. However, there are several avenues for people who come here to holiday with their family and are looking for other means of entertainment and relaxation. So much so that even the Thais visit Pattaya on a holiday with their families. As long as you can ignore the sight of middle aged foreigners moving around with young Thai girls in intimacy, you will have no issues.

History of Pattaya

Pattaya's name was originally Thap Phraya, meaning Army of the Phraya - commemorating the surrender of Nai Klom's army to that of Phraya Tak (later King Taksin the Great), without a fight. Thap Phraya became Phatthaya (the name of the north-easterly wind at the beginning of the rainy season), and then Pattaya (the phonetic spelling). For centuries, Pattaya had remained a small fishing village on the gulf of Thailand. In 1960s, Pattaya was frequented by American servicemen who were fighting in the Vietnam War. The Army people would choose Pattaya as a nearby recreation center where they came to take a break from the War. They discovered what a beautiful place Pattaya was. They spread the word around and the sleepy Pattaya village began flocking with tourists. Today it has transformed into Thailand's premier and most visited beach resort attracting hundreds of thousand of pleasure-seeking tourists. The Fishermen huts along the beach were eventually demolished and at their place came up several modern hotels, bungalows and guest houses to provide accommodation for tourists.