christmas in jomtien

Sunset at Dongtan beach








From one sleek modern airport to another. The new Bangkok airport is built in heroic brutalist style, with vast bridge-like trusses and fair face concrete everywhere. Unfortunately, unlike HK airport, it's already looking grubby (maintenance doesn't seem to have been thought through) and it's operating at full capacity and feels crowded just months after opening. It's also apparently 300 toilets short of planned, has a dodgy baggage handling system and many other problems - not sure why but you can bet that deposed PM Thaksin has something to do with it.

After a couple of days in a quiet guest house in a little soi (back street) in Bangkok I travelled down to Jomtien Beach to meet up with Ian, who has flown out from London to pursue a similarly lengthy (if rather more leisurely) trip.

Jomtien is sometimes described as the acceptable face of Pattaya. It's just the next bay along, linked by songthraews (small trucks with seats in the back that operate as shared taxis) that take about 10-15 minutes to get there. But it's a much quieter, smaller scale resort and at its northern end is a very nice beach (Dongtan) with no traffic and good sand and clean water. Ian booked us a spacious two room house in the Rabbit Resort, presided over by an American lady married to a Thai, who calls herself for promotional purposes Mrs Rabbit and is charming in that slightly edgy, highly controlled American way.


So it was to be a week of not doing too much except lying on the beach by day, exploring some of the more (and less) salubrious night-time offerings of Pattaya, with lashings of good Thai food washed down with Singha beer and those cocktails you only think of drinking beside a pool under a palm tree. You know the ones, with umbrellas and fruit and all that stuff.

Pattaya is worth a visit (as they say in Michelin guides) to experience the worst excesses of tourism. The famous Walking Street boasts some fantastic fish restaurants where you can select what you want live from tanks by the entrance and discuss with the waiters how you would like it. Forget about a menu. But, as the night draws on, it becomes a vision of hell (heaven to some): huge girly beer bars, karaoke joints, propositioning katoey, marauding drunken German beer bellied yobs and lobster coloured English slobs in soccer kit and flip flops. Neon flashing everywhere like the set of Miss Saigon and every place blaring music, taped Thai pop songs mixing with live copy rock bands, so many different numbers that it's just noise, a huge, brain thumping noise.


This place was a little fishing village once, until they built a Vietnam era American air force base and turned it into a R+R centre for the troops.


There are other diversions, more subtle, more calming, over which we can safely draw a veil; though it's worth mentioning the transvestite and gay shows such as Tiffany's, which is a Palladium sized theatre with three performances a night, fairly professional, and with more costume changes than Elton John's wardrobe. Later, the more intimate clubs in Pattayaland, featuring 'delicious divas and delectable dudes' kick in with novelty acts including naked fire eaters and erotic dancing.


Better to get back to the beach and listen to the waves lapping beneath the glittering stars. Christmas dinner by the beach. Bliss!