Pattaya serves as an exciting city in the Gulf of Thailand, featuring many notable and world-class destinations culminated in one fantastic paradise. Pattaya is best known for its fast-paced lifestyle to awe-inspiring attractions seen nowhere else in the world. Additionally, the seaside city is also home a host of family-friendly hotels, nature reserves, premium shopping outlets, and leisurely attractions. While there’s a handful of information about Pattaya, here are five interesting facts tourists may not know about this bustling seaside destination!
Pattaya Grows by the Second
If someone were to think Pattaya would stop growing any minute, they’d be wrong. Pattaya, along with many other cities in Thailand continue to grow exponentially. The growth was attributed to the increasing number of expats traveling and living in Pattaya as their second home. Pattaya continues to be known as Thailand’s most preferred location for retirees also.
#1 Golfing Destination
Visitors looking for a calm and quiet atmosphere to golf in Thailand can do so here. Pattaya is the number one destination for this activity. Golfing has exponentially increased over the past years in Thailand and many cities throughout Thailand have small to large-scale golfing facilities. In Pattaya alone, there are over 20 golf courses within a 50-kilometer radius of the city; many golf courses can be easily reached by driving or local transportation.
In addition, many golf courses in Pattaya were used for major golf tournaments!
Beaches and Islands
Pattaya is home to a handful of attractive beaches, luring in travelers from around the world. Many of Pattaya’s beaches are well-known for their white sandy shores, stretching for kilometers at a time and crystal clear water, suitable for fun-filled water activities and sports.
List of Pattaya beaches:
- Jomtien Beach
- Na Jomtien Beach
- Pattaya Beach
- Koh Larn (Coral Island)
- Naklua Beach
- Bang Sae Beach
- Wong Amat Beach
- Dong Tan Beach
These are some of the notable beaches for tourists to sit back and relax on.
Diverse Water Sports
Luckily, Pattaya features a fantastic array of watersports such as sailing, windsurfing, parasailing, jet skiing, banana boat, snorkeling, and scuba diving to do while on vacation. The equipment can be rented on-site or from the shops within the area. Additionally, for many of these sports, children can also join in the fun. Koh Larn, for example, has facilities and instructors catered to help newbie divers get a grip with the ocean waves for snorkeling. For adults looking for a challenge, there’s windsurfing at Naklua Beach and Wong Amat Beach. Windsurfing is one of the more popular sports among the standard jet skiing and parasailing activities; windsurfing challenges the rider to steer the sail using only their bodies and without elaborate machinery to boot.
Banana boats are another fun activity do with children. However, it must be noted that the banana boat is suitable for older children (ages 10 and up) for safety reasons.
Fresh Seafood
Pattaya is home to some of the world’s greatest seafood dishes on the planet with thanks to the abundance of marine critters in the Gulf of Thailand. At night, fishermen leave the piers and journey out to the open sea to catch fresh fish, lobsters, squid, octopus, shrimps, and crabs to be sold at local fish markets. In the morning, fish markets are packed with people from the local areas to get their hands on the fresh produce. From then on, it’s off to the kitchens to deliver spectacular, mouthwatering dishes for everybody.
Thai seafood, in particular, comes in a wide arrange of presentations and flavors; additionally, there are strange dishes that tourists must try. One of the most unusual dishes to try is the horseshoe crab papaya salad (Horseshoe Crab Som Tum). The standard papaya salad doesn’t include seafood into the mix; in this case, the horseshoe crab is added to the salad (just the meat, not the shell of the creature). Although in some instances, tourists may be astonished (or appalled) by strange legs poking out from the dish! Other dishes ranged from grilled shrimps, barbecued squid, deeply fried sea bass in fish oil and smothered with sweet chili sauce, tom yum seafood are some of the menus tourists can sink their teeth into.
