Pattaya construction and transport report

Trip report from January 2025: Walkability and bad street layouts, Pattaya construction notes, the ghost tower, future high-speed railway and monorail, Jomtien Beach as a future apartment hotspot, and air quality.

Pattaya is on the eastern side of the Bay of Bangkok in Chonburi province. I visited Pattaya in January 2025 after visiting Sri Racha. This report covers walkability, construction notes, and future transport projects for Pattaya.

Sri Racha and Pattaya are only 30 km apart, but there is no bus or van service between the two cities (or at least none that are obvious). I ended up getting a Grab, which always feels like a transport fail when I have to resort to a taxi. The two cities are part of the Pattaya-Chonburi Metropolitan Area, and Chonburi is in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), though there doesn’t seem to be any plan to make it easier to integrate the cities with buses. There is the high-speed rail plan (more on that below), but they should have better bus integration first.

Sri Racha is known as the Little Osaka of Thailand, and this got me thinking about how the Bay of Bangkok/EEC area should strive to have an integrated transport system like Osaka Bay or Tokyo Bay.

Walkability and bad street layouts

Pattaya (and Thailand cities in general) are not great for walkability, but one thing that Pattaya has got right is the beachfront promenade. The main beach walk is about 2.8 km (a 39-minute walk according to Google Maps), and the path is smooth and without any obstacles.

I went for a walk when I arrived, and I saw three wheelchair users during my walk. I don’t think I’ve seen three wheelchair users in a week while walking around Bangkok.

After walking this long promenade, I realised that there is a lack of beach promenades in Thailand. Hua Hin is a good example of a city beach having no promenade. The beachfront in Hua Hin is occupied by hotels, and it’s difficult to find the beach entrances if you are unfamiliar with the beach.

The best beach promenade in Thailand?

Going inland from the beach, there are long, narrow roads that lead to the next main road (Pattaya 2nd Road). There are no crossroads here, so once you are in this lane, you have to go all the way to the end to get out of it. This is a similar design to the roads in Bangkok off Sukhumvit Road.

For example, here is Pattaya 4, which is a road that connects the beach to Pattaya 2nd Road. Pattaya 4 is 400 metres long with no crossroads.

Pattaya 4 Road

The absurdity of this street design is highlighted when you book a Grab taxi and see the route they take to get to you.

So close, yet so far.

Sidewalks appear again once you get to the 2nd Road, though there are many impediments to walking. I saw a wheelchair user cruising down the road, as there is not enough flat surface to use a wheelchair on the sidewalks.

Pattaya construction notes

There are condo projects all over the city, so I walked around to get a feel for what is being built.

There are not as many beachfront condos as you would think, so seeing PTY Residence Sai 1 being built on the beach road is an unusual sight.

Most of the large hotel and apartment towers are inland, where there is more land available. This poster of apartments by the Riviera Group shows apartments that are shaped like the long blocks of land created by the road system.

An example of a long and skinny block being developed is the Grande Centre Point Pattaya 3.

Grande Centre Point Pattaya 3

The Grand Solaire Pattaya is going to be the tallest building in Pattaya once it is complete. The website doesn’t say how tall, but it has 67 floors. It will look extra tall as it sits on Pattaya Hill.

Also on Pattaya Hill is an abnormally large block of land that has been cleared.

The abandoned Bali Hai tower (officially The Waterfront Suites and Residence and unofficially the Ghost Tower of Pattaya) is still awaiting its fate after construction ground to a halt in July 2014. The most recent announcement hints that a decision about the project can be made soon.

Future high-speed railway and monorail

I visited Pattaya before the pandemic, and I was hoping that by the next time I visited Pattaya, the 3 Airport High-speed Railway would be open. Unfortunately, the project hasn’t even begun construction.

The current railway from Bangkok operates twice a day, and it’s so slow that even train nerds like myself take the bus instead of getting the train. The high-speed railway will be transformative for Chonburi, though, as I mentioned about Sri Racha, it’s not going to be useful for travel between Sri Racha and Pattaya. The stations are far inland, so by the time you get to each station and travel, it would have been just as quick to drive. Chonburi should create a regional railway, which I will explore in another article.

Pattaya is going to connect the high-speed railway station to the beach area with a monorail. Pattaya has been talking about building a monorail since 2010, but like the HSR, it is stuck in the planning stage.

A monorail is the preferred option as there is no room on the ground for a tram or light rail, and a monorail will supposedly take up less space than an elevated MRT. An underground metro system has not been considered.

The monorail will travel from the high-speed station along North Pattaya Road. This is a wide road that leads to the beach, and it will be the easiest section to build.

Terminal 21 Mall at the corner of North Pattaya and 2nd Pattaya Road

The monorail route gets difficult when it turns into 2nd Pattaya Road at Terminal 21 Mall. 2nd Pattaya Road is the only logical place to put the monorail, but it’s going to be a tight squeeze. No wonder they are taking so long to plan it.

A monorail will go down this road

Jomtien Beach

The monorail continues over Pattaya Hill to Jomtien. This is also in Pattaya City, but crossing the Pattaya Hill makes it feel like you are in a different place. The nightlife on Jomtien Beach is not as debauched as in Pattaya Beach, so Jomtien is where you go if you don’t want to say you are staying in Pattaya.

The monorail will travel along Jomtien 2nd Road, which, like Pattaya 2nd Road, is the first road after the beach road. The Jomtien 2nd Road is much wider, so it will be easier to put a monorail down the middle of it.

I can see Jomtien 2nd Road becoming like Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok. Sukhumvit Road has become a canyon of apartment towers that have followed the path of the BTS Skytrain. There are already apartment towers on Jomtien 2nd Road, and more are being built. Having a monorail at your doorstep that connects to a high-speed railway to Bangkok and three airports would make this a great address.

Jomtien 2nd Road

Jomtien Beach has the same problem as Pattaya Beach (and Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok), in that the roads connecting the beach to the 2nd Road are long and without crossroads. For example, here is an undeveloped block of land between the Second Road and the Beach Road.

There are more undeveloped blocks of land in Jomtien, so it would have been better if the local government had intervened and split the blocks up into small lots. Instead of a 400-metre-long block, this should have been split up into 4 smaller blocks. I use the gridded-out streets in Danang as an example of how a vibrant beach community can emerge if there are smaller blocks. It’s easier to walk around, and it creates a more diverse commercial area instead of one monolithic apartment block.

The beach in Jomtien is not as wide as Pattaya Beach, but the beach promenade is just as walkable. The promenade was being renovated when I was there.

Air quality

Another issue that Pattaya faces is the worsening air quality that affects Thailand at this time of year. I was in Bangkok during an airpocalypse, and escaping to the coast is not a cure when Central and Eastern Thailand is enveloped in smog from agricultural burning.

I saw an AQI unit on the beach in Pattaya, which had real-time updates of the air quality. I was lucky to have a good day under 100 before it got hazy again.

I never check weather reports in Thailand, as you know what you will get most days. It’s either hot and dry or hot and wet, depending on the season. I’m now finding that I check AQI websites daily like I check weather reports in seasonal places.

This pollution crisis is now an annual event, and there are the usual demands for action, but nothing is changing.

Future Pattaya

Before the pandemic, I said I would visit Pattaya again once the high-speed railway is open. At this rate, I don’t know when the railway will open, so I won’t make such a statement again.

At least the haze makes for a great sunset