Pattaya Thailand Guide

Bang Saray: Pattaya's Fishing Village, Its Quiet Beach and Seafood by the Pier Drive twenty kilometres south of Pattaya, past Na Jomtien and the turnings for the big attractions, and the high-rises thin out, the billboards stop, and Sukhumvit Road runs through countryside again. Then a small turning west takes you into Bang Saray — also spelled Bang Sare — a working fishing village in Sattahip district that was catching fish long before Pattaya became a resort city. There is a curved, tree-backed beach about three kilometres long, a harbour where boats still land an overnight catch at dawn, seafood restaurants clustered around the piers, and, on Saturday evenings, a small walking-street market near the harbour that is aimed at locals first and visitors second. Bang Saray is not a hidden secret and it is not untouched — weekends bring Bangkok families, and condos have arrived on its edges — but its rhythm is still a village rhythm: early mornings, long quiet afternoons, and dinner ...

Naklua and Wongamat: Pattaya's Old Fishing Town and Its Quietest Beach Every city has a direction it grew from, and for Pattaya that direction is north. Before there was a Beach Road, a Walking Street or a skyline, there was Naklua — spelled Na Kluea on the official signs, which means salt fields, after the salt pans that once glittered behind its shore. Naklua was a fishing village and a salt town when Pattaya was still a quiet bay the boats passed on their way there, and the remarkable thing, seventy years into the resort era, is how much of that older town is still standing in plain sight: the morning fish market, the wooden shophouses, the Chinese temples, the small piers, and families who have sold seafood on the same streets for three generations. Attached to its western edge, curving away from the fishing quarter, is Wongamat Beach — also written Wong Amat — a kilometre and a bit of sand with no beach road behind it, no jet-ski roar in front of it, and a line of resorts an...

Jomtien Beach: Pattaya's Quieter Six Kilometres of Sand Every visitor to Pattaya finds the beach in the middle of town first — the famous curve of Pattaya Beach, with its speedboats, its promenade and its non-stop hum. Fewer find the beach that local residents, long-stay visitors and Bangkok families actually use, and it is only ten minutes away. Go south, over the green shoulder of Pratumnak Hill, and the city exhales. The towers thin out, the road calms down, and a long, straight, tree-lined beach opens up and runs for about six kilometres toward the horizon. That is Jomtien. Jomtien Beach — Hat Jomtien in Thai, sometimes spelled Chom Tian on road signs — is Pattaya's second beach, and for many people it is the better one. The sand is wider than in the centre, the water is generally calmer and cleaner for swimming, the sunsets face straight out over the Gulf of Thailand toward Koh Larn, and the whole strip has a lived-in, unhurried feel that central Pattaya never quite ma...