I learn many mistake from people!!!

[Sean Moran]

In Pattaya City, no rules!!, people can do anything they want!! We need to protect ourself everything because noone responsibility your life out of rules here !

It's true! Once I rode my mo-sai down Walking Street in broad daylight and nobody even stopped me!

(I was wearing an helmet though...)

Can you elaborate on these lawless ways a little bit please, Benja' ?

[Sean Moran]

I can't do that because people in Pattaya just want to spend thier life like this!!lol..they are very happy with no rules!
The Governor in Pattaya maybe out of order already, doesn't help anthing here!! I think The Governor should be restrict more and more discipline with Pattaya City! do not allow people to do what they want! So that why many bad people like to come Pattaya City for escape from arresting!!

I've only been to Pattaya around 5 or 6 times, so I do not know much about it. Each time has been to meet friends in the morning or afternoon, mainly in Jomtien. Then back to Rayong before sunset. The only thing I remember that was different about Pattaya to other provinces outside Bangkok was about the road rules, and Pattaya seemed MORE strict than Rayong in one way I can remember.

I went for a scenic ride through the city one morning because I had arrived 30 minutes early that day, and it was coming up to the traffic lights on Beach Road, if I remember. Normally, in Rayong, if you come to a red light but you're turning left on the moto-sai, and nothing is approaching from your right, then it is okay to turn left through the red light and continue, and it's a fairly sensible thing to do - if you don't then the moto-sai behind you will likely toot his horn or something to get you to keep going around the corner. It's just the done thing on Thai roads outside of central Bangkok.

So I slowly went around the corner, through the red but not across the intersection, and I remember two fellows on another mo-sai on my right shouting at me as I passed by. It seems that Bangkkok road rules apply in Pattaya. From that, I got the impression that the laws in Pattaya might be even more strongly enforced than other parts of Thailand, but maybe, as you say, this is because that part of Chonburi attracts more international criminals, and more local con artists to cater for them as well.

It's not the local people, but what we call the blow-ins in country Western Australia that make it necessary for stricter rules than perhaps other parts of Thailand enjoy IMHO. I do not want to become the Governor of Pattaya, thank you. Rather I'd prefer to just catch the first bus out of there.

[Martinus]

I beg to differ that the locals are very different from locals in other places as well
Pattaya is a crime magnet both for locals and foreigners

[Sean Moran]

Maybe, but how do you know that the bad guys are locals? Do they show you their birth certificates?

I was born here in the most isolated city on the globe, where I'm logged in from now, but the more bounty we seem to dig up out fo the ground in this state, the less likely it is that you might meet a native Western Australian in the street. The population of this city has swelled from under half a million when I was a kid, to around 1.5 mil now, and so the blow-ins outnumber us around 2:1.

Many of those who have moved here from interstate (ie. inter-province) or overseas were running from something not very pleasant when they first got off the bus here in Perth, and the leopard can't change his spots, and so I've watched what was once a friendly, trustworthy country town sort of state capital grow into a behemoth of chicanery and violence and all out evil. It is very difficult to know which strangers you can trust in a seaside town like this, and I'm a local.

If I was born in some idyllic tropical paradise like Pattaya once was, I don't know if I'd feel any happier about the way things have turned out there.

It's a complex question and I should shut up now that I've had a good rant.

[bfrm]

pattaya oh pattaya! could have well been oklaHOMa oh oklaHOMa or peyton place or casabalnca. love it or leave it. give it time to evolve and watch how it grows each day. i have been around it since there were no roads in pattaya nor even bar beers like marine bar and disco. remembered only that were barking deers, wild boars and all the pla lomas/dolphins swimming up to you. remembered only the young children running up to you as if they have just seen an elephant man descending on them and the many who while learning to drive a car for the first time in their lives bashing through the thick forest and undergrowths as if it was paradise lost