Thais Reinvent Gomorrah for Family Crowd

Life changed here forever June 29, 1959, the day four truckloads of GIs on leave pulled into this then-sleepy fishing village. They took a look around, saw some beautiful women and stayed for a week.

The Americans returned to their base, at Nakhon Ratchasima, and spread the word. Thus was born one of Southeast Asia’s most famous beach resorts--a center for GIs on rest and recuperation during the Vietnam War and for U.N. peacekeeping troops during the Cambodian mission of the early 1990s--and, today, for Thais and foreigners in search of, well, most of the same pleasures the soldiers embraced.

This onetime village has mushroomed into a sex-and-sand resort with 400,000 inhabitants--including 3,000 prostitutes--800 bars and more hotel rooms (30,000) than Singapore. Pattaya attracted nearly 2 million visitors between January and June, a 4% increase, even as most Asian markets were seeing their tourism industry dry up.

But city fathers are worried. They’re trying to take the edge off Pattaya’s Wild West reputation, if not its wickedness, and sell the resort to family vacationers: golf, beaches, good restaurants and great bargains while the currency, the baht, remains depressed.

“The sex image is something that dates back 20, 30 years,” said Sethaphan Buddhani, the local director of tourism. “Of course, sex is still here, but in our marketing I don’t emphasize it or deny it. If you’re not here for service girls, then how about trying one of our 15 golf courses?”

The high-density “hostess” and “host” bars on the south side of Pattaya have tended to attract a fairly low-end class of tourist as well as a sizable number of active and retired international criminals involved in prostitution, drug trafficking, money laundering and credit-card fraud.

Even Thailand’s prime minister described Pattaya last year as a dirty city and promised to clean up the place. To demonstrate his seriousness, Thai officials bused in foreign journalists 90 miles from Bangkok, the capital--hosting dinner at an open-air restaurant next to Suzie’s Massage Parlor--and put 1,000 additional police officers on duty in the city.

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But police haven’t had much luck explaining the deaths of 45 foreigners under mysterious circumstances in 1996 and ’97. Detectives, for instance, found the body of a 54-year-old Englishman in the harbor last year and ruled his death a suicide. The local paper, the Pattaya Mail, pointed out that it would have been difficult for the man to commit suicide: His legs and arms were bound and a rock was attached by rope to his waist.

The Mail has been a leader in the campaign to rid Pattaya of its European gangster influence and pitch the resort to tourists who do not favor tattoos and shaved heads.

“Pattaya’s residents want family values and respectability,” the Mail editorialized. “But the town’s poor image doesn’t come from nowhere. Though beautiful, Pattaya is not Snow White; she does not have a jealous stepmother trying to poison her.”

An American who is building an upscale restaurant here but did not want to be identified by name said that, five years ago, “I wouldn’t have put one cent in Pattaya. It was a dirty place, the roads were a mess, the average foreigner who lived here was either a guy on a pension or some bum who didn’t have two dimes to rub together, and the local government didn’t seem to care about the city. But that’s all changing.”

Indeed, though Pattaya may always have a sex industry, the campaign to recast its image is not without some notable successes. Roads have been repaired, the trash-littered beach cleaned up. A water-sewerage system is under construction, and the infrastructure is being upgraded with the help of a grant from Japan.

Close by are the golf courses (weekday green fees average $12; trained caddies are paid $4), including some championship ones. Eight theme parks have opened; water sports abound. Pattaya is Miami Beach without the chic or Art Deco.

“The next market we’re going after is the handicapped,” tourism director Sethaphan said. “We’ll be the only city in the region with access ramps and handicapped facilities in restaurants, bars, everywhere.

“Japan alone has 12 million handicapped. That’s a huge potential market,” Sethaphan said. “If they want the beach, relaxation, top restaurants, we’ll put together packages. If they want sex tours, we’ll arrange special guides.”