Who’s behind this site
Let’s get one thing straight from the start: any single guy who ends up on a site like this is here for pretty much one reason: Pattaya, and everything that comes with it. I’m not going to dance around that, and neither does the rest of this site. What I will do is give you a straight, no-nonsense starting point from someone who’s actually lived it, not just written about it from a forum thread.
My name’s Rob, and I am a long-term visitor and resident of Pattaya.
I first landed in Thailand back in 1989, long before Pattaya was even on my radar. It wasn’t until 2006 that I made it to Pattaya, and that trip was enough to have me coming back every couple of months. By 2007, I’d stopped visiting and just moved there outright, working a FIFO job that gave me long stretches on the ground between swings, the kind of downtime most tourists would kill for. As a hobby, I started writing this website in 2008.
Pattaya was home for the best part of a decade, until employment issues forced me to move away in 2017. That didn’t mean I stayed away, though. I was back a couple of times a year for a top-up, right up until Covid shut things down temporarily. Once I was able to I started visiting again. Retirement came in 2023, and these days I’m back in Thailand for good, living on what the locals call the Dark Side, the quieter side of town, away from the neon.
That’s the better part of two decades, with a global pandemic as the only real interruption, watching Pattaya rebrand and rebuild again and again without ever really changing underneath.
What this site is (and isn’t)
This isn’t a comprehensive guide, and I’m not pretending otherwise. Think of it as a decent set of directions from someone who’s already made the wrong turns, so you don’t have to. If it steers you clear of the obvious mistakes and points you toward what’s actually worth your time, it’s done its job. My hope is that it keeps growing into something genuinely useful, not another rehashed website.
Where the knowledge comes from
Everything here starts with my own experience: actual nights out, actual bar tabs, actual regrets. Where I haven’t tested something myself, I’ve leaned on mates who’ve been coming here as long as I have, and on the handful of Pattaya forums worth reading. I’d rather tell you “I haven’t done this one myself, but a mate swears by it” than pretend I’ve got firsthand knowledge of every soi in the city.
Fair warning
Nothing here is sugar-coated, and nothing here is dressed up to sound better than it is. If you want a site that talks around what Pattaya actually is, this isn’t it. If you want it straight, from someone who’s already made the mistakes, you’re in the right place.
