Pattaya, Thailand

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Pattaya. The seediest place in Thailand...? Perhaps. It is kind of the Las Vegas of Thailand, centered around tourism, conventions, shopping and the sex trade. While I was there, the 14th Annual ASEAN Summit was taking place. It had been scheduled to be in Thailand last December but was cancelled due to the "Yellow-Shirt" PAD party demonstrations. The "Yellow-Shirts" took over the Suvarnaphumi International airport in Bangkok causing around 300,000 tourists to be stranded. The coup led to the ousting of the prime minister who was replaced with a PAD party member.


Now the "Red-Shirts" have been holding counter demonstrations claiming that the new prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, did not come to power democratically and new electionsshould be held. A group of "Red-Shirts" showed up in Pattaya to disrupt the summit. I saw what looked to be a relatively small group of protesters and a group of military guards, but it didn't look like anything major. Pattaya seemed relatively unaffected by any of it, but by the time I got back to Bangkok two hours afterleaving, the protesters had made their way in to the hotel. The ASEAN Summit was cancelled and the news was showing pictures of foreign heads-of-state being helicoptered off the roof and taken to a nearby military airport.

Walking Street Pattaya is an interesting place. Don't bring the whole family.

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Comments

[jt]

pattaya
Why not bring the family to "Walking Street"?