There is a moment of absolute, irrecoverable innocence that every expat and veteran in this city shares. You can never get it back, and you can never recreate it. It is the very first time you walk through the neon gates of Walking Street.
Tonight, a man just stepped out of a taxi at the intersection of Beach Road. He is 35, maybe 40. He has read the forums, watched the YouTube vlogs, and listened to the exaggerated stories from a buddy who came here five years ago. He thinks he is prepared. He thinks his armor is tight.
As he takes his first steps under the massive LED screens, he feels like a tourist at an aquarium, safely tapping on the glass. He is completely unaware that the glass is about to break.
The Sensory Assault
What he sees right now is pure chaos.
It is a visceral assault on the senses. The bass from ten different open-air bars is colliding in the middle of the street, creating a deafening, vibrating wall of sound. He smells the sharp, distinct Pattaya cocktail: grilled pork skewers, cheap perfume, motorcycle exhaust, and the faint, sweet decay of open sewage.
He sees the girls in neon bikinis tugging at the arms of passing men. He sees the touts thrusting laminated drink menus into his face. He passes a group of stunning ladyboys; he strictly tells himself to look straight ahead, but his eyes betray him, glancing back over his shoulder in bewildered fascination.
He walks with his hands deep in his pockets. He smiles politely but shakes his head at everyone. He thinks he sees the system. He categorizes the people around him: the predators, the prey, the desperate, the tourists. He feels incredibly smart. He is the observer, hovering above the madness.
This is the first of many delusions he will experience tonight.
What He Doesn’t Know
This is where the story gets interesting, because every veteran reading this knows exactly what is waiting for him in the shadows.
He looks at the girl in the red dress smiling at him from a doorway. He just sees a bargirl trying to make a quota. He doesn’t know that three hours ago, she wired her entire week’s salary to a farming village in Buriram. He doesn’t know that she is actually incredibly special. He doesn’t know that in exactly two weeks, he will be sitting with her on a cheap plastic stool outside a closed massage shop at 4:00 AM, drinking a warm Leo beer, telling her secrets he has never told his therapist.
He looks at the older Western man leaning heavily against a light pole and feels a pang of judgmental pity. He doesn’t know that the man has been coming to this exact street for twelve years, and that after a brutal, life-destroying divorce back in Manchester, he sat on this very curb and cried because the chaotic neon was the only thing loud enough to drown out his own head.
He looks at the bars as if they are disposable tourist traps. He doesn’t know that the small, dimly lit pub to his right has stood on that exact spot for twenty years, surviving military coups, economic crashes, and a global pandemic.
The Final Illusion
Halfway down the street, right around Soi 15, he stops.
He takes a deep breath of the heavy, humid air. He looks at the swirling mass of humanity and thinks to himself: “This is exactly what I expected.” Or maybe he thinks: “This is nothing like I expected.”
It doesn’t matter. Both thoughts are equally wrong.
Because right now, he thinks Pattaya is a place you look at. He thinks it is a geographical location you visit, consume, and leave. He hasn’t yet realized that Pattaya is not a place. It is an event. It is something that happens to you while you are busy thinking you are just watching it from the outside.
He will keep walking toward the Bali Hai pier. He will buy a beer. He will go back to his hotel room feeling like he has survived his first night in the jungle.
Let him enjoy the feeling. Let him have this one, brief moment of innocence. Because tonight is the very last night of his life that he gets to be just an observer.
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