What's wrong with this picture?

Another look at the unavoidable absurdities of Pattaya.

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Tourists can be seen relaxing in rows of beach chairs, sunbathing on the sand, and frolicking in the ocean at Pattaya Beach. We prefer to believe reports that claim none of this is wise.  Here's why:

First, a bit of background. When you walk around Pattaya, you'll often see grates next to the sidewalk gutters, beneath which flows something that smells so much like sewage that it may put you off your next meal. Maybe it isn't sewage. Maybe it's just opened durian fruit that fell down there. I don't know. I'm just saying.

The above scene is the boulevard that runs along Beach Road--a lovely place to walk because its surface is flat and unbroken, except by occasional large pipes that one must step over.  Here is one of those pipes. If you stop and take a good look, you'll see, on the street side, a portable pumping station and one end of the pipe inserted in the aforementioned subterranean maybe-sewage ditch. The contents of the pipe are clearly intended to exit across the sidewalk, onto the beach, directly behind a row of jolly beach chairs and tiki umbrellas.

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Soi 6 (Street 6) is a notorious red-light district set apart from the only slightly more conventional areas of Beach Road and Second Road. They say that everything goes on Soi 6.  One side of the street features largely "ladyboy" (tranny) bars such as Night Wish, The Viking, and The Clansman, and the other, female bars such Thumbs Up and Hi! Boss. Individual bars' employees doll up as everything from The Naughty Schoolgirl to Sailor Moon and The Bride All in White.  It is a Fantasy Fest for men of all ages and persuasions. Curious women have been known to go take a look as well.  

But imagine my surprise to see the storefront NURSING HOME bang in the middle of the constant thump of go-go music and pulsing pink and red neon. One wonders whether this is yet another theme bar that employs Naughty Nurses. At the very least, its residents must by now be deaf as stumps. One hopes so, anyway.

The long-haired gentleman just to the right of Bill's nose may have been on an outing for the night. 

I asked one Sailor Moon whether the institution was intended for Thais or Westerners, but she claimed never to have noticed it before.

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I had wondered aloud how often a fearlessly scooting motorbike is wiped out by a larger vehicle in Pattaya. It seemed inevitable, especially given how many farangs, with no experience driving in wrong-way, heavy traffic, rent them. Since arriving here, we've witnessed two such collisions. When you consider the probabilities, they probably occur hourly.

And this grim sight greeted us as we set out on a walk down Beach Road one afternoon.

A Japanese tour bus had hit this poor sod.  Bill, who knows how things work around here, announced, "They'll stand around gawking at him and not do anything." So he lay there in the midday sun, bleeding, TIT fashion, while traffic was directed around him and various emergency vehicles pulled up and then, for their own reasons, left.  The bus driver, all the tour passengers, two policemen, and several EMTs, as well as other onlookers (myself included), indeed stood around with their hands clasped behind their backs, gawking. The man was lucky not to be run over by another bus in the meanwhile. After nearly an hour of this, someone who seemed to know what to do arrived, put an inflatable cast on the man's leg, got him on a stretcher, and bore him off to the hospital, only about a block away. Someone else came and sprinkled sand over the blood on the road, and everything continued as if nothing had happened.

Moral of story: If you are hit by a bus in Pattaya, don't wait for help.  Get yourself to the nearest hospital by foot, even if one of them is broken.