After Bangkok and seeing Fernie, I hopped onto a mini-bus and headed down to Pattaya. When coming back to Thailand I’d initially thought about visiting both Chang Mai and Phuket, but with so much uncertainty at the time of booking and how much of Thailand would even be open I plumped for the safe bet of Pattaya. I figured two weeks beside the sea in a pretty big city wouldn’t see me experience too many issues.
It was a strange experience still though. Pulling into the Soi where my hotel was and there was barely a soul in site. As I checked into the hotel it felt almost like I was the only person there and the room had an unused feel about it. Taking a walk outside onto Second Road and it felt desolate … I’d never seen so little traffic and the addition of a huge Jumbo jet (to be turned into an eating area) in an area of wasteland nearby had a distinct apocalyptic feel about it.
Down onto Beach Road and things felt a little more normal with some signs of life. I even found myself dragged into the ‘Tahitian Queen’ for a happy hour beer, which was some experience at only 4pm! In the evening I first headed to Walking Street and visited my favourite ‘Pattaya Beer Garden’ for some food. Walking Street itself though was about 50% in darkness with so many closed bars and the ones that were open often asked for negative Covid tests to get in!
So on this trip I tried something different and visited Treetown which I’d heard good things about and later, LK Metro. Treetown is an area full of small bars just off Soi Buakhao with plenty of live music and food. It had a great buzz and was full of people who lived in the city rather than tourists. Although everything closed by 1am, it felt more normal and I had some great nights.
Whilst in Pattaya I got to meet up again with Sara who headed down from Bangkok for a few days to shoot. I made sure I took the time to visit the Big Buddha too, which somehow I’d managed to miss on the previous 2019 trip – despite only having been a few hundred yards away when I visited the city view point on Phra Tamnak Mountain! An awesome thing to happen was that I also finally got to meet a great photographer from the States (James) who happened to be visiting at the same time as me. We’d been chatting on Flickr for years and finally got the chance to meet up and talk all things photography over a few beers.
All in all, despite the weird peculiarities of post-Covid Thailand, this was probably my most fun visit to Pattaya and I didn’t miss Phuket one bit!
