RedSwoosh. free your links

There must have been a great deal of miscommunication between Team Swoosh and the citizens of Bangkok who directed us to Pattaya. We were looking for a house with fast internet access on or close to the beach. But the locals must have understood this as, “We are looking for a throng of Thai ladies, boys, and lady-boys on or close to the beach”. This is the only explanation I can think of for the highly recommended Pattaya.

After arrival, it did not take long before Travis declared Pattaya ‘the Tijuana of Asia’, and Team Swoosh concentrated their efforts on work rather than establishing headquarters for the longer term. Shielded from the outside world the Swooshers thoroughly enjoyed an office in the lobby of a Marriot Hotel while staying in a $10/night guest house across the street. We had the cheapest internet access in town, yet a plan was quickly set in motion to share our one wireless connection. scissors + patch cable = crossover cable. Clearly, we were not thinking because the amount we saved on internet access was negligible. The real cost of our Marriot office was in the drinks we ordered. The drink prices were reasonable as well, but only by western standards. Life was good, but only in the lobby.

Pattaya seems to offer little more than cheap thrills and a run-down rotating restaurant. I have spent two years in various parts of the developing world and nowhere have I seen a sex tourism destination as thriving as Pattaya. The city certainly does not have the saddest and most desperate looking sex workers, but it seems to have the most. That said, there was no play in Pattaya unless you consider Travis’s late night excursions to ‘make phone calls’.

With morale dropping quickly, we left Pattaya to the old white men and their escorts in search of the paradise on the postcard in the first post.

-w