There are no shortage of crappy areas in Pattaya, and one of them is the area around Bali Hai pier. The pier itself is under constant siege from tour buses disgorging sweaty tourists who have unwittingly signed up for a boring chug across the bay in a dilapidated boat (keep an eye on the inadequate supply of life jackets folks, you may need to grab one), before being dumped for several hours onto the over-crowded and over-priced beaches of Koh Larn.
Moving south from the pier there is a huge boat park where noisy, belching tractors spend the day launching and recovering garishly painted boats. The park is a pleasant place for an evening stroll, provided you enjoy walking on oil-greasy tarmac whilst inhaling the pungent aroma that only the mixture of diesel and boat boy piss can provide.
Once you can negotiate your way around the traffic jam of buses, tractors and vendors selling junk, this is an area to escape from as quickly as possible. Or, if you are prepared to pay upwards of 95,000 baht per square metre, you can buy a condo in The Waterfront and enjoy the mayhem twenty four hours a day.
Actually, it should be called the smelly-boatyard-front because it will not front onto the water (development in red):
Tourist-bus-dropoff-point-front is another option. But Waterfront is probably marginally more saleable.
Their website stresses the stunning views from the condo, here is the not so stunning view from the boat yard, the crane in the background marks the construction site:
The sales office told me that they had sold more than 20% already. So hurry up and get your deposit down before they are sold out. And don’t worry about the fact that is less than 200 metres to the sea and therefore possibly an illegal construction, the sales office also told me that was not a problem; so all is OK.
The Waterfront, where sunsets glinting off a tractor become a reality.
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2015-04-12| “Everything put together, sooner or later falls apart” | Pattaya Days says[…] than six years, and the original developer didn’t get very far with it. Hardly surprising in my view given the location. Situated on the arse end of Walking Street, in an area awash with tourist buses […]