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Re-invention in progress
By William Barnes[
Published: October 11 2008 03:00
A single page of reports from Thailand's seaside resort of Pattaya made grim reading in a recent edition of the local newspaper. A one-legged Finnish lawyer was stabbed to death when he caught his mistress's real boyfriend robbing his apartment. A scantily clad Thai woman, with an Englishman riding pillion, was knocked off a motorbike by a gang of youths who stole cash and a mobile phone. A German bar owner was stabbed by the owner of a neighbouring bar in a row over a clothes line.
Welcome to Pattaya, the sprawling, snarling, raucous sex capital of Thailand and - oddly - booming residential market, if estate agents and developers are to be believed.
In the 1970s it was still noticeably a fishing village, albeit one with numerous outdoor shanty bars filled with farm girls and rackety no-star hotels, pandering to US soldiers on breaks from their tours of duty in Vietnam. When mass market tourism discovered Thailand in the 1980s, Pattaya certainly got bigger but it is debatable if it got much better.
The wider dirt roads have finally been paved and an increasing number of glittering residential towers and plush hotels fills the coastline. There are international schools, excellent hospitals, foreign supermarkets, new shopping malls and 10 good golf courses nearby. And yet the place seems unable (or unwilling) to shrink the sleaze.
Some people, including Hong Kong Chinese on shopping and eating tours, treat the pulsating fiestas of earthy temptation as an exotic backdrop. Others are not as amused but seem to think that Pattaya can change.
One hoped-for catalyst is improved transport. Once a tedious half-day's drive from Bangkok, the town is now scarcely two hours away and just 90 minutes from the capital's big new Suvarnabhumi airport . This makes it more accessible than the "paradise" islands of Phuket and Koh Samui, both a plane ride away from the metropolis and - whisper it - often boring. The other up-and-coming "foreigner" resort, Hua Hin, is meanwhile a good three hours from Bangkok and has somehow become both chaotic and dull.
Could Pattaya have reached a tipping point, whereby its advantages outweigh its air of slightly menacing commerce?
"Mention Pattaya and people's eyes roll; fixed perceptions are hard to shake," acknowledges Nigel Cornick, chief executive of Raimon Land, which has pioneered the development of upscale properties at the resort. But "within the next 20 years we could see no gap between Bangkok airport and Pattaya. It could become like Los Angeles - one urban sprawl all the way down to the beach". And he thinks the multi-faceted sex industry will shrivel as a result. "Land values will rise until [the businesses] are no longer viable."
A first wave of condominium and house building in Pattaya, aimed at Thais seeking a weekend getaway from booming Bangkok, ended with the 1997 crash. But the second wave - driven by foreign demand - got going about five years ago. "Property buyers often start as tourists. People come and like what they see," says James Pitchon of estate agency CB Richard Ellis.
The number of visitors to Pattaya has been rising by 500,000 a year for the past five years to 6.8m in 2007, thanks in part to the expansion of low-cost Asian airlines. Catering for all these potential buyers are more than 100 real estate agents and developers ranging from Raimon Land to a German entrepreneur who is planning a 91-storey residential tower. There were 2,268 new condominiums brought to market at an average price of almost Bt90,000 (£1,500) per sq metre last year, up from only 465 at an average price of Bt60,000 (£1,000) per sq metre in 2002, according to Raimon Land's research department.
A brochure for one of the new buildings touts "a dream world, a place where 'normal rules' as we know them from the west don't apply, where 70-year-old men can marry 20-year-old beauty queens, where men look like women and everyone seems fine with that because tolerance is not just an empty word. If there are enough people who want to escape to their new-found 'paradise', it's enough to drive a property market!"
That is marketing fluff, of course (particularly the promise of February-December romance), but Thais based elsewhere do see potential in Pattaya. "It's got energy," says Jan Jirapakorn, a designer who bought a mid-size condo a year ago. "It's got to reinvent itself and where else is so close to Bangkok that's not boring?"
Still, cynical old expats hunched over in dim bars believe the building boom is outstripping demand. Many of the early condo towers have taken years to fill up and anyone with money to spend seems to be bombarded with discount offers. An added problem is that foreigners can't legally own houses in Thailand without a Thai partner, though there are always locals willing to sign the forms.
Peter, 65, a former private investigator and bailiff from Yorkshire, England, who declined to give his surname, is on his second Thai wife and poised to buy his third Thai house, for rental income. The first two cost about Bt1.2m each and are in his wife's name but the next will be leased for 30 years with options to renew. "What do I care about the long-term at my age?" he says when asked about the ownership arrangement. He tried living in Spain, which would have been less complicated, but prefers Thailand. In a place like Pattaya "you have to keep your eyes open" but generally "life's marvellous", he says.
Richard Haines, originally from the US, has a more cautionary tale. He bought a small condo with a glorious sea view on Jomtien beach only to wake up one day and find another tower being built in front of it, almost certainly in breach of planning laws. "The tenants are campaigning to stop construction but it's been a bit of nightmare," he says. "My advice is check everything and don't risk all your savings in Pattaya."
Thais still account for about 1.5m visits to the area and a quarter of property purchases. But there is an increasing Russian presence too, with an 84 per cent jump in arrivals last year to 889,656 and estate agents estimating that they could account for two-fifths of current condo sales. (More tourists come from Korea, China and India but few are keen on buying.) "Give a Russian warmth, good food and sight of the sea and he thinks he's gone to heaven," says Evgeny Balenky, a Thai-speaking correspondent for Russia Today. "You can rent your Moscow apartment out for $3,000-$4,000 now and live comfortably on that in Pattaya."
Although Pattaya is usually taken to comprise the city, its 4km-long beach and, further south around a headland, the 6km-long Jomtien beach, development has started moving north and south as well. The Ocean Property Group is, for example, selling big apartments overlooking a marina 10km south of the city for as much as Bt44.5m. "It's clean and peaceful yet Pattaya's edgy, exciting nightlife is only a short hop away," says Nusura Banyatpiyaphod, the company's managing director.
Given the pace of new construction and the influx of foreigners, greater Pattaya's future seems likely to be big. But will it become Torremolinos with more sex, Miami with better food or an Asian version of Cannes?
Seasoned observers struggle to imagine what it will look like in a decade or two.
William Barnes is the FT's south-east Asia correspondent.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Direct Link to FT Article on Pattaya on 11 October 2008
By William Barnes[
Published: October 11 2008 03:00
A single page of reports from Thailand's seaside resort of Pattaya made grim reading in a recent edition of the local newspaper. A one-legged Finnish lawyer was stabbed to death when he caught his mistress's real boyfriend robbing his apartment. A scantily clad Thai woman, with an Englishman riding pillion, was knocked off a motorbike by a gang of youths who stole cash and a mobile phone. A German bar owner was stabbed by the owner of a neighbouring bar in a row over a clothes line.
Welcome to Pattaya, the sprawling, snarling, raucous sex capital of Thailand and - oddly - booming residential market, if estate agents and developers are to be believed.
In the 1970s it was still noticeably a fishing village, albeit one with numerous outdoor shanty bars filled with farm girls and rackety no-star hotels, pandering to US soldiers on breaks from their tours of duty in Vietnam. When mass market tourism discovered Thailand in the 1980s, Pattaya certainly got bigger but it is debatable if it got much better.
The wider dirt roads have finally been paved and an increasing number of glittering residential towers and plush hotels fills the coastline. There are international schools, excellent hospitals, foreign supermarkets, new shopping malls and 10 good golf courses nearby. And yet the place seems unable (or unwilling) to shrink the sleaze.
Some people, including Hong Kong Chinese on shopping and eating tours, treat the pulsating fiestas of earthy temptation as an exotic backdrop. Others are not as amused but seem to think that Pattaya can change.
One hoped-for catalyst is improved transport. Once a tedious half-day's drive from Bangkok, the town is now scarcely two hours away and just 90 minutes from the capital's big new Suvarnabhumi airport . This makes it more accessible than the "paradise" islands of Phuket and Koh Samui, both a plane ride away from the metropolis and - whisper it - often boring. The other up-and-coming "foreigner" resort, Hua Hin, is meanwhile a good three hours from Bangkok and has somehow become both chaotic and dull.
Could Pattaya have reached a tipping point, whereby its advantages outweigh its air of slightly menacing commerce?
"Mention Pattaya and people's eyes roll; fixed perceptions are hard to shake," acknowledges Nigel Cornick, chief executive of Raimon Land, which has pioneered the development of upscale properties at the resort. But "within the next 20 years we could see no gap between Bangkok airport and Pattaya. It could become like Los Angeles - one urban sprawl all the way down to the beach". And he thinks the multi-faceted sex industry will shrivel as a result. "Land values will rise until [the businesses] are no longer viable."
A first wave of condominium and house building in Pattaya, aimed at Thais seeking a weekend getaway from booming Bangkok, ended with the 1997 crash. But the second wave - driven by foreign demand - got going about five years ago. "Property buyers often start as tourists. People come and like what they see," says James Pitchon of estate agency CB Richard Ellis.
The number of visitors to Pattaya has been rising by 500,000 a year for the past five years to 6.8m in 2007, thanks in part to the expansion of low-cost Asian airlines. Catering for all these potential buyers are more than 100 real estate agents and developers ranging from Raimon Land to a German entrepreneur who is planning a 91-storey residential tower. There were 2,268 new condominiums brought to market at an average price of almost Bt90,000 (£1,500) per sq metre last year, up from only 465 at an average price of Bt60,000 (£1,000) per sq metre in 2002, according to Raimon Land's research department.
A brochure for one of the new buildings touts "a dream world, a place where 'normal rules' as we know them from the west don't apply, where 70-year-old men can marry 20-year-old beauty queens, where men look like women and everyone seems fine with that because tolerance is not just an empty word. If there are enough people who want to escape to their new-found 'paradise', it's enough to drive a property market!"
That is marketing fluff, of course (particularly the promise of February-December romance), but Thais based elsewhere do see potential in Pattaya. "It's got energy," says Jan Jirapakorn, a designer who bought a mid-size condo a year ago. "It's got to reinvent itself and where else is so close to Bangkok that's not boring?"
Still, cynical old expats hunched over in dim bars believe the building boom is outstripping demand. Many of the early condo towers have taken years to fill up and anyone with money to spend seems to be bombarded with discount offers. An added problem is that foreigners can't legally own houses in Thailand without a Thai partner, though there are always locals willing to sign the forms.
Peter, 65, a former private investigator and bailiff from Yorkshire, England, who declined to give his surname, is on his second Thai wife and poised to buy his third Thai house, for rental income. The first two cost about Bt1.2m each and are in his wife's name but the next will be leased for 30 years with options to renew. "What do I care about the long-term at my age?" he says when asked about the ownership arrangement. He tried living in Spain, which would have been less complicated, but prefers Thailand. In a place like Pattaya "you have to keep your eyes open" but generally "life's marvellous", he says.
Richard Haines, originally from the US, has a more cautionary tale. He bought a small condo with a glorious sea view on Jomtien beach only to wake up one day and find another tower being built in front of it, almost certainly in breach of planning laws. "The tenants are campaigning to stop construction but it's been a bit of nightmare," he says. "My advice is check everything and don't risk all your savings in Pattaya."
Thais still account for about 1.5m visits to the area and a quarter of property purchases. But there is an increasing Russian presence too, with an 84 per cent jump in arrivals last year to 889,656 and estate agents estimating that they could account for two-fifths of current condo sales. (More tourists come from Korea, China and India but few are keen on buying.) "Give a Russian warmth, good food and sight of the sea and he thinks he's gone to heaven," says Evgeny Balenky, a Thai-speaking correspondent for Russia Today. "You can rent your Moscow apartment out for $3,000-$4,000 now and live comfortably on that in Pattaya."
Although Pattaya is usually taken to comprise the city, its 4km-long beach and, further south around a headland, the 6km-long Jomtien beach, development has started moving north and south as well. The Ocean Property Group is, for example, selling big apartments overlooking a marina 10km south of the city for as much as Bt44.5m. "It's clean and peaceful yet Pattaya's edgy, exciting nightlife is only a short hop away," says Nusura Banyatpiyaphod, the company's managing director.
Given the pace of new construction and the influx of foreigners, greater Pattaya's future seems likely to be big. But will it become Torremolinos with more sex, Miami with better food or an Asian version of Cannes?
Seasoned observers struggle to imagine what it will look like in a decade or two.
William Barnes is the FT's south-east Asia correspondent.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Direct Link to FT Article on Pattaya on 11 October 2008
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