Which image best sums up Pattaya Beach Road?

• By Street Stroller
• Inside Pattaya | Pattaya Focus
• 139 days ago
• 8

As we know, there is an awful lot going on down Pattaya Beach Road ("PBR"), day and night, so I thought we could usefully consider what image best sums up the more prominent features of this famous throughfare.

For example, and starting right outside Walking Street at the sewage pumping station, given the foul, disgusting odours from it (the pumping station, not Walking Street - usually), should any of us be surprised to see fetid sewage seeping up from the drains and into the street?

Euch

Would this foul photograph accurately sum up the evils of PBR?

And if that’s what’s coming out on the street I wonder what’s going into the sea?

Perhaps it’s best not to know, but this grim sight and stench is what greets tourists heading to and from Walking Street , and it makes an inauspicious start to a PBR stroll.

Full of Knackered Old Dogs

The above photo was also a possibility for the winner of the most appropriate PBR metaphoric image, given the state of some of the coconut bar veterans to be seen down there at all hours.

However it would be unrepresentative, on balance,  because there are many down PBR with a lovely bunch of fresh coconuts, if you time your walk right.

Plent of ripe fruit for the plucking at the coconut bar

It also has to be said that the creator of the sculpture shown in the leading photo in this article certainly wasn’t “shy” when it came to depicting the coconuts on his delectable model.

Given the many and varied scams underway on the beach, I thought the next photo might better-represent PBR.

Financially decapitated by the outrageous demands of the scammers

It suggests whenever you get scalped on a beach scam, you know where to come for a wig.

I don’t think it would be splitting hairs to suggest they have been very busy recently.

Balls of Granite

The above photo might be a suitable emblem for the jetski scammers and other con-artists on PBR.

Looking exactly like medieval European slingshot ammunition, I have no idea what they are really for. Maybe former obstructions to prevent cars driving on the beach?

Of course, it’s not just individual tourists who are scammed in Pattaya, or on PBR.

Sometime the whole city is scammed, and fittingly enough a monument to inadequate civic pride of a former administration sits, bold as brass, spalling and breaking up, at one of the busiest intersections on PBR.

And of course nobody will ever put a budget together to fix it when juicier morsels can fall from fatter budgets. ("Not my ploplem"), so we are stuck with it, as with so much else, decaying, unused, well-scammed, on the sidewalks of the city.

Shameless: a worthy monument to Pattaya's lack of civic pride and project budget skimming

But enough of the also-rans.

Finally, something which best represents life along this crazy throughfare:

I boxing you

And why?

Because it shows violence and theft, both an ever-present on PBR, day and night.

Sadly the second boxing figure has been stolen off its plinth, leaving its sole pugilist to fight it out on his own.

Much like tourists have to do down there every day, unfortunately, usually after having just been robbed or attacked, or both.

And a PS, as requested, scammers pointing at a jet ski with their uniformed friend.

Blimey, that micsoscopic?