A Thai City of Sleaze Tries to Clean Up Its Act

An article in the New York Times by Thomas Fuller.

The article contains little new. Regurgitates many well worn negatives about Pattaya's sex industry and how it was all started by G.I.s on R&R from Vietnam. Moves on to Pattaya's attempts to clean up it's act and job done. A few column inches filled and few dollars more in his pocket.

Thing is the article feels like it was written from afar. Fuller states it takes 2 hours to drive from Bangkok to Pattaya. Not the last time I drove it it didn't. He also mentions Sexy Airline bar on Walking Street. I guess he means Airport Club. Yes, Sexy Airline is on the frontage but Airport is clearly the name of the bar.

Unfortunately Fuller has to finish the article as he started..... "We thought Amsterdam was the sex capital of the world," said Ms Bidenko, 28. "But now that I've been here, I think Amsterdam is a perfectly respectable city. He has to be joking, surely.

An extract of the article follows. Quote:

Somewhere in the world there may be a city with a more seedy reputation, a place more devoted to the sex industry and more notorious as a haven for criminals on the lam. But probably not.

When dusk comes to this beach resort, a sea of pink neon bulbs casts a pale glow onto the thickly made-up faces of thousands of women (and some men) who sit on bar stools waiting for their patrons.

If Las Vegas is Sin City, Pattaya is a bear hug from Lucifer himself.

And yet, amid the back alleys jammed with girlie bars and a beachfront peopled with what the Thais euphemistically call “service women,” there are signs of change..........

:Unquote

Yawn....

Pattaya Rag

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