PATTAYA — Long-term expats are lamenting the latest wave of changes sweeping the city, claiming it has destroyed the delicate balance of scams, grifts, and workarounds that once made Pattaya “paradise.”
“I just want Pattaya to go back to exactly how it was in 1995,” said British expat Trevor Bexley, 68, from Romford. “Not like 1985, before I discovered it and was able to set up shop and things started to get cool, and not like 2005 either, because that’s when that smarmy American, Mitch Patterson, moved in across the street and started doing better than me. No, exactly like it was in 1995 because we had Irish pubs by then, and fake work permits were still available in an hour from that old Chinese guy in the little corner shop, behind Second Road.”
The new changes include stricter visa oversight, cashless payment systems, and Revenue Department audits. Bexley, who once gave “illegal dive tours by day, and managed a bar at night using my ex-wife as nominee,” admits he’s struggling. “Back then, cops would wave you through a roadblock if you slipped them 200 baht and a pack of Benson & Hedges. Now I’ve got men in ties coming directly from the central office asking me to present hardcopy receipts of all my business transactions. They kept speaking Thai, too. I mean, how am I supposed to live in Thailand if no one here speaks English?”
Other expats share the same longing for a version of Pattaya that exists only in their memories. “When I arrived in the early 80s, it was perfect,” said American retiree Jack “JD” Donnelly, 74. “No helmets, no check-ins, no tax. Just me, a Honda C100 Super Cub I didn’t register, and a steady income from selling used VHS sextapes out the back door of Peppermint Go-Go Bar. Now they’ve got live sex shows on the internet, and I can’t compete,” he said, trying to hold back tears, while attempting to hawk the last VHS edition of Debbie Does Dallas from 2001 to a passing Norwegian couple who quickly moved to the other side of the street. “Sorry, I gotta go. The 7-Eleven manager is telling me to get lost, or she’ll call the cops, again.”
For Australian expat Peter Wallace, 63, the tipping point was the crackdown on “volunteer” visas. “I ran a guesthouse for twenty years on a visa that said I was planting trees for a foundation. It was perfect. Then one day Immigration turns up in closed-toe shoes and starts asking where my saplings are. Saplings? Mate, they never existed outside the trifold pamphlet I submitted with my visa application.”
At press time, a new group of crypto bros had taken over the Hilton Pattaya penthouse, and were already closing deals to buy up the last old-timer go-go bars and reopen them as coworking spaces with no ashtrays.
Email Us: Info at NotTheNation dot com
