Beach Road Safari Park

Pattaya is heaving. The city is in the middle of a tourist boom and looks significantly different from this time a year ago. The bars are packed and the streets are overflowing with tourists, propped up by a healthy dose of US marines here for some R&R. A number of ships recently docked in the port just north of Pattaya and ever since a large number of rather stacked, thick-necked, buzz-cut Americans have been trawling the bars of Sin City. Driving back from the cinema at around 11pm last night, we spent a good half an hour crawling down Beach Road in horrendous traffic. The upshot of this was the best people-watching I think I have ever experienced! Men with huge bellies flopping out of the bottom of their brightly coloured floral shirts, men who looked like they hadn't had a proper meal in years, short men, tall men, men of all nationalities. They were all out last night.

To our right was the beach and the promenade that runs alongside it where, with the setting of the sun, the ladies of the night start to appear. By 11pm they lined the street. These are the freelancers, usually the ones who didn't make the cut at the bars and clubs but sometimes women that prefer to stand and wait for men to come to them rather than having to dance for their money. This makes for a real assortment of women - some struggling to keep their 'curves' in their short, tight dresses, some making sure they stay slightly in the shadows to hide their less than attractive faces, all mixed in with some girls who are rather more pleasing to the eye. Of course, there are also those 'women of the second kind' as the Thais like to call them. Amongst all these women, and in the darkness of the night, the ladyboys can often be difficult to distinguish from those with two X chromosomes, especially, I should imagine, after a few Singha beers.

Amongst the sad, desperate men, walking down the road clutching bottles of beer and ogling the women for sale, were ordinary tourists who wandered around open-mouthed, taking it all in, just as we had done when we first arrived. On several occasions we spotted Russian women who, from behind, looked just like one of the hookers on the promenade, dressed as they were in their short skirts, plunging necklines, and towering heels. How they managed to walk down the potholed pavement without falling over, I don't know. I expect there are a more than a few heel-related injuries in Pattaya each night.

By the time we reached the end of Beach Road, turning away from Walking Street, the destination of most of the walking traffic, I had seen more than enough - there are only so many beer bellies a person can take. It was time to leave the safari park.