Pattaya Thailand was regarded as an anti-destination in the 1990s. Beach Road bars were packed with drunken beer louts from the UK and Germany. Prostitution was a free-wheeling enterprise for impoverished women from the Isaan Plateau. The beach was filthy and the sea was polluted, but I liked the town.
There were no backpackers or budget tourists ruining our good time and whole sections of the hinterland were either swamps or coconut plantations linked by sandy roads. All that changed with the damned Internet.
Trees were razed to develop housing for farangs.
Water holes were filled to build condos.
Traffic required new roads and everyone knows that roads kill paradise.
Almost as fast as do-gooders.
And soon the population ballooned from 90,000 to 300,000.
Too many people to sustain a Last Babylon.
I can only hope one day they all go back to where they came.
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