Even for a city with an unsavoury and obviously unwanted reputation as the “largest red-light district on earth” – bestowed upon it by a British newspaper in 2017 – an evening of passionate love-making on a Pattaya beach for everyone to see is just too much.
A short clip of two tourists fornicating at night on a beach in a suburb in the east coast city in Thailand – oblivious to the handful of people around them – is again drawing attention to Pattaya’s image as “sin city”.
The news site Pattaya Mail said the video first appeared on a Russian channel on Telegram on Feb 6 and then later became viral when it was posted on Facebook by user Denis Krungtep on Feb 8 with the caption: “Is this normal in Pattaya?”
It provoked comments such as: “Oh, my God”, “Why not go to a hotel with such performances?” and “What kind of people are these?”
Many pointed out that the two people in the video did not appear to be Thais.
There were also calls for the couple to be arrested.
Pattaya Mail said the video was recorded along a “family-friendly” stretch of Jomtien Beach, between Soi 6 and Soi 7, near the Pattaya water sports complex. The beach draws a large number of Russian and Scandinavian tourists.
This was not the first such incident that has provoked outrage among Thais over inappropriate behaviour along Pattaya’s picturesque beaches.
In January 2020, Russians Roman Grigorenko, 26, and Daria Vinogradova, 19, were fined 5,000 baht (S$187) and forced to publicly apologise after they were seen in a video having sex on a Pattaya beach.
With its beaches, myriad hotels and raucous nightlife, Pattaya is a lucrative tourist hub and the heart of Thailand’s massive sex industry.
Agence France-Presse has reported that there are some 140,000 women operating as sex workers across Thailand. Tens of thousands are thought to work in Pattaya alone, it said.
Thai officials have been trying to reform the city’s image over the years, but even heavy-handed efforts by the junta under former prime minister Prayut Chan-o Cha have yielded little result.
