Pratumnak Hill: Big Buddha, the Pattaya Viewpoint and Pattaya's Green Headland
Pratumnak Hill: Big Buddha, the Pattaya Viewpoint and Pattaya's Green Headland There is one place in Pattaya where you can stand in the shade of a temple tree, look north over the whole curve of Pattaya Bay, turn around and look south over Jomtien, and have an eighteen-metre golden Buddha at your back while you do it. That place is Pratumnak Hill — spelled Phra Tamnak and Pratamnak on some signs, and called Khao Phra Tamnak in Thai, which means Palace Hill. It is not high, at about 98 metres it is simply the highest natural point in the city, and it is not far, sitting on the green headland between Pattaya Beach and Jomtien Beach, about two kilometres south of central Pattaya. But in a flat, fast, vertical city, this one wooded hill changes everything. It is Pattaya's viewpoint, its most important temple, its fitness park, its quietest residential streets and some of its prettiest small beaches, all stacked onto a single headland. Almost every visitor photographs the hill wit...