“In this human-made paradise, entertainment reigned supreme, and all forms of leisure had their whispered, rum-breathed price.”
A semi-regular guest column about regularly ignored places
Each year, as many as twenty-five million people visit the sacrificial landscape of Pattaya, Thailand. If visitors don’t arrive by air, then they likely take the eight-lane motorway that zips them along the eastern Thai seaboard from Bangkok to the shores of Chonburi province.
They come for rest and relaxation, purportedly. Frantic development over the decades has put Pattaya at a far remove from its past as a pristine, natural coastline. It’s a place made to concede itself. Disuse does not define the area’s state of wild abandonment, but rather the hedonistic exploitation and exhaustion of land and sea in a bargain for economic prosperity.
