The One and Only Pattaya

A recipe for Pattaya: Bring your mind's eye to Times Square (before Giuliani transformed it) or possibly the Amsterdam Red Light District, add a sandy beach with coconut trees and rows of beach chairs for rent, remove the drugs from the Amsterdam model, remove the possibility of violence or threat to your physical safety from the NYC model, be sure to include hundreds of foreigners walking the beachfront strip, many middle aged men as well as a fair number of families. Add hundreds of bars and go-go clubs advertising everything you'd ever want to see and everything you probably wouldn't want to as well. Add a healthy dose of cliched American Pop Music. In each of these establishments add a number of women in mini skirts or short dresses, staring as you walk by, at times saying "hey mister, where do you go". Actually, though they all consider themselves to be ladies, quite a few were born with the other genders equipment. Well, you get the idea.

Pattaya is actually such a spectacle that down the main strip, "Walking Street", you will actually see families, older women--people wholly uninterested in what is being sold--walking the strip cameras in hand to catch a snip of the largest sex show on earth. The number of woman and the number of bars and clubs are seemingly endless. Its a remarkable sight to see.

Believe it or not, I was in Pattaya for a sobriety conference. Hey, if there is any place where you don't want to catch yourself on a reckless drinking binge Pattaya is probably high on the list.