Playing with Pattaya bar numbers

[Pattaya One]

Just how many bars are there in Pattaya catering primarily to, and geared towards, a foreign clientele? The figures vary wildly, depending on who you talk to and how many alcoholic refreshments they might have had. If you include Naklua and Jomtien as well as the Thai karaoke and beer boozers the figure ranges anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 bars.

In truth, the number of bars catering primarily for foreigners runs to around 75 go-go’s (a 50 percent increase from 2001) and about 600-700 outdoor and indoor beer boozers in the greater Pattaya area (Naklua down to South Pattaya and out to Third Road).

Way back in 2000 I combined with a German man and we conducted a detailed survey of noting the name and location of every boozer catering to foreign clientele between Naklua and south Pattaya. From this we created a bar hopping tourist pocket guide called Pattaya Nightlife (www.pattayanightlife.de), a bi-monthly, free and detailed street directory. I no longer have any direct involvement with the publication and yes, it is missing the Dark Side (east Pattaya) and a few out-of-the-way joints (and, needs to be updated in many cases in relation to some places still extant), but it still gives a reasonable idea of the overall spread of the boozers of Pattaya.

The numbers of ladies who are gainfully employed in the town helping foreigners redistribute their wealth also varies wildly, from 10,000 to as many as 50,000.

Most go-go’s employ an average of between 20 and 40 dancing maidens (and that’s on the high side in most cases) while the beer bars can run from two or three drinks waitresses to 20 or 25 or more (again, a high figure in most instances).

So, with say 75 go-go’s employing an average of 30 girls and about 800 beer bars and the like with 20 employees, the overall number runs to just over 18,000 females. Given that I have used what I consider ‘inflated’ numbers, and throw in the massage girls and the freelancers, the real figure of is probably between 15,000 to 20,000 damsels aiming to help extract a wallet-load of stress from visiting foreigners and expat residents. There would be at least a similar number of females working in Fun Town who are not engaged in the horizontal mattress-testing trade, dutifully employed instead in the 7-11’s, Family Mart’s, supermarkets, Top Charoen’s, and a myriad of other service and supply centres all over the city.

©Duncan Stearn

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[adam4444]

15,000 to 20,000 thats handy ive only done just over 200 so plenty fun times to be had yet