History of Pattaya
Until the late 1950’s Pattaya was a small fishing village like many others in the Gulf of Bangkok. Called Pad Tha Ya, which means the ‘wind blows from the southwest to the north-east at the beginning of the rainy season’, the name eventually became Pattaya.
Before 1956 Pad Tha Ya was just a sub-district of Chonburi and did not even have the status of a municipality. This covered only the Naklua area, which was extended to South Pattaya in 1964. In about 1959 Pattaya started to expand into a resort for visiting American GIs from a base in Nakhon Ratchasima with plenty of money to spend.
US navy men from nearby Sattahip, particularly during the Vietnam war, enabled great expansion of facilities available to visiting forces by local entrepreneurs, and Pattaya became an official centre of ‘Rest and Relaxation’ for American troops.
They were flown into U-Tapao airport, which was built for American use at the time, and hotel accommodation, shops, bars and services in Pattaya grew rapidly due to the increasing demand.
Many Thais, particularly from Bangkok, were also regular visitors for the weekend, many renting or buying small bungalows and beach huts in the area. From that point on, Pattaya grew very quickly as a holiday destination for both Thais and foreigners, and in 1978 the national government granted it city status to reflect this. ‘Pattaya City’ came into being on 29th November 1978, and this anniversary is celebrated every year.
The 1980s and 90s were also a boom time for Pattaya with a large influx of tourists from European countries, particularly in their winter. Later, as well heeled visitors moved south to the Andaman coast and Samui, a new generation of Russian, Eastern European and Arab nationals began arriving. The city’s administration has grown to cater for the increasing size and demands of Thailand’s biggest resort town, which now receives several million visitors every year, both Thai and foreign.
The city’s infrastructure has also grown to keep pace with increasing development, with construction of many condos in both Naklua and Jomtien, as well as “in-filling” of any available open space in Central and South Pattaya, making resources such as water scarce in the dry season. This has necessitated large public and private long term investment in major projects. The new Bangkok airport at Suvarnabhumi, which opens in the summer of 2006, will mean that Pattaya is only about an hour away on the new road which is under construction. This has brought another spate of development to Pattaya to meet what are seen to be the increasing needs of visitors.
Due to its proximity to Bangkok, and partly as a legacy of the GI R&R activities during the Vietnam war, Pattaya developed a reputation as a party city, a badge it still honourably holds today. With this came an influx of girls from the poor Isaan region of Northeastern Thailand who supplied the ever-growing sex trade, which is very much part of the city.
However, Pattaya also has its serious side and provides for a growing community of foreigners employed in the burgeoning eastern seaboard industries of the area. An estimated 12,000 people from all parts of the world live permanently in Pattaya, supporting a large establishment of restaurants, bars, clubs, societies and services set up specifically to support them. This number is said to swell considerably with the part-time residents who spent part of their year here. This is evident in the extraordinary boom in construction and property prices that the city has recently witnessed. More on Pattaya for ex-pats.
Pattaya is a modern city and you won’t find any old buildings, simply because there aren’t any, although the Buddhist Temples (wats) have all the character and splendour of older buildings. This resort city has grown apace with the influx of visitors, and will no doubt continue to do so.
