Insider reports show huge drop in tourism to once-popular beach destinations

The story focused mainly on the popular beach area of Pattaya but it may as well be about any of the other traditionally popular beach areas of this country.

In the video the person was cruising around in Pattaya during the sunny time of year and noting how the area was very quiet and how most businesses didn't have many customers.

I have my own opinion on how this came to be but of course, the official government point of view is to ignore and deflect.

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One thing that is probably well-known about Pattaya is that it isn't really a great beach and as far as scenery is concerned, it is actually extremely lacking. There is nothing particularly special about the beach there and this is before we start to factor in that the entire seafront has been basically taken over by speedboats, banana boats, jetskis, and paragliding trips. The areas where you actually can swim have to be marked off by floating lines in order to keep the vehicles out of there and a constant glaze of motor oil is on the water in to the distance.

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I've been to Pattaya grand total of 2 times over the years and it was always at the recommendation of someone else. once you get there though, you quickly realize what your friend is all about because Pattaya, no matter what people try to say, is about one thing in particular: Prostitution.

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I learned something about my friend that I would rather not have known on that one trip where we stayed there just one night before moving on to Phuket where another friend lives.

This beach is nothing special, the sand, the water, all of it is really stock standard as far as the Thailand coastline is concerned and the only reason for it being as traveled as it is would be for the girls (and guys if you want) as well as its close proximity to Bangkok. Other than that, I see no real reason to go here really.

Lately though, their numbers have been very poor and the excuses fly about why that is. Thailand officials try to blame global economics and flight prices, but I think I know what is really going on here.

What happens in a Thai tourist area when it gets too popular is that there will all of a sudden be 200 of everything that is on offer and then when these places can no longer compete on prices and services they resort to scams. There are scams all over the place in Pattaya and the internet is awash with people that have been ripped off on everything from fake jetski damage, to taxi-fare ripoffs, to fake drugs. While a lot of the blame for getting ripped off lies on the shoulders of the person who allowed themselves to be ripped off, it doesn't help that you have to always be on your guard when you are just trying to relax.

The area is also awash with credit card skimming as well as restaurants that simply take a photo of the front and back of your card when you send it back for payment of your bill. So yeah, don't ever do that. If you need to pay with a card do it at the table or better yet, get some sort of app on your phone that does that for you. Cards are just too easy to steal.

But now Pattaya is crying that there are not enough tourists and a lot of accusations about there being "Too many Russians" or "too many Indians" are the usual suspects to push blame onto. The fact of the matter is that Pattaya and a lot of places like it were only popular because they were cheaper than going to other places and when the prices kept getting jacked up higher and higher, there isn't any incentive - well, other than the thousands of prostitutes - to go there anymore.

The places on the "famous" walking street have got people outside advertising that their specials are 99Baht beer and this is not a good deal at all. This is around $3 for a cheap lager (like a Miller or Budweiser) and if you compare this to just a few years ago where you would expect to pay less than 50 Baht at most happy hours, they are definitely profiteering. These prices with $3 being the happy hour price is similar to the prices that people would pay back home and I'm sorry, that's not what people come to Thailand for.

I don't know what Pattaya can do to turn it around but I do know that they probably wont do it, even if it was guaranteed to work. What's going to end up happening is that 50% of the places are going to go out of business and then the area will "reset." They will return to being friendly for a bit, reduce the prices back to a time when the place was popular, then slowly but surely return to thieving and scamming and charging too much as the circle of Thailand repeats itself yet again.

For me, I would say to simply stay away from Pattaya unless you happen to be a middle-aged man that has no shame with paying for a girl to hang out with you and if that is what you are like, go for it. I will not judge you. I just don't want that sort of life for myself and therefore I never really even consider traveling to Pattaya when I have time off.

By the way it is pronounced Pad-tah-yah, not patt-thai-yah. It irritates me when I see a video about the place from an "expert" who doesn't even pronounce the name of the city correctly.