Why are there no big public parks in Pattaya?

[Pattaya One]

I am back in Liverpool in the UK for a couple of weeks, and now the novelty of being here has worn off, I find I am missing some strange things about life in Pattaya.

Forget the obvious comparison of a cold day on the River Mersey to a day in sunny Pattaya:

Liverpool – River Mersey near where it exits to the Irish Sea, with low tide rocky “beach” exposed.

An average day in Pattaya: Jomtien Beach recently

Although it is worth pointing out that obvious comparison, some other, unusual differences have struck me this week about being back in the UK.

In Pattaya Now

Reading the content on this website is different in cold, gloomy Liverpool, compared to reading it in Pattaya.

Here it is an excellent real-time link to the good and bad sides of the city, and the country, with some great articles (not mine) and highly relevant news stories.

It serves as a useful reminder that I have another life elsewhere, as I battle the cold and grey weather here.

Convenience Stores

Surprisingly, I am sorely missing the convenience of 24 hour access and the wide range of products sold in 7:11s and Family Marts on almost every street in Pattaya.

Walking down the dark, deserted local shopping streets in Liverpool at 9pm with only restaurants , off licences and chippies open, makes me realize how truly vibrant 24-hour life in Pattaya is.

Football (Soccer)

Another area where Pattaya scores highly.

In the UK, football usually kicks off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. That’s 9pm in Pattaya, and I am usually ensconced in a bar on Walking Street with a footy-mad friend, blowing the froth off my first Chang, waiting for the game to start on TV. And in Pattaya you can find many different  games being shown in many bars.

Here in Liverpool,  only a few pubs show football, and I went to watch a match at the weekend which uses an illegal box to get a foreign signal; the reception was rubbish and they lost the signal halfway through the match.

Also the difference between sitting on vibrant Walking Street on a Saturday night watching the game and sitting in a drab mid-afternoon Liverpool pub is, well, IMMENSE.

Museums and parks

I went into Liverpool the other day to see their new (and disappointing, I thought – but that’s another story) Museum of Liverpool Life – a 72 million pound venture, housed in a wonderful building on the seafront.

I then sat in a city centre park and wondered how it is that Pattaya doesn’t yet have a museum – of Thai life or something to pull in tourists and punters, who could even be charged for entry – nor yet a proper, large public park.

Admittedly, a lot of Liverpool’s best public buildings which house museums and libraries, and its many parklands were built out of donations from people made immensely wealthy by Liverpool’s sea trade, both bad (slavery) and good (everything else).

Maybe that’s what Pattaya needs; no, not slavery, but a generous benefactor - preferably one who needs to curry lots of “local goodwill” from important figures - to stand up and splash some cash to buy a large swathe of land and turn it into a park, or a museum, or both.

I believe there would be strong demand for a public park and an interesting museum in Pattaya, Thailand’s second city, from its residents and from the millions of tourists, Thai and foreign, who visit the city every year.

Although, being Pattaya, I doubt many others could be persuaded to hand over cash in advance to part-fund such a project by way of donations, given the number of people who have done a runner with far less of other peoples’ money in the past.

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