I agree with every word of that article. Once again it is a perfect example of the mistake of catering to one group, not necessarily to the exclusion of others, but definitely ignoring others.
A couple years ago a friend and I wanted to try a large Chinese restaurant we noticed on Pattaya Tai. When we walked in the staff looked at us as if we were insane. One staff member who spoke reasonable English explained to us that they serve only the Chinese tour bus groups. We were refused service and asked to leave.
That has come back to haunt them now and if they go out of business, as far as I'm concerned they're getting what they deserve. Even if they start opening up to non-Chinese customers, I for sure will not be among them.
With this number of businesses suffering and who knows how many jobs lost, if these venues, large and small, ever manage to recover, I hope this time they'll have sense enough to cater to everybody, not just one specific group.
I sympathize with and feel sorry for the Thai workers on the bottom rung of the ladder losing their jobs and sources of income, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for the bigwig investors who thought catering virtually exclusively to the Chinese tourists was a great idea.
And the Pattaya powers-that-be - you know, the ones who thought it was a set of great ideas putting all kinds of restrictions on the beaches, controlling opening and closing times of entertainment venues - forcing them to close hours before holiday makers want to stop having fun, trying to change Pattaya's paradigm to make it a "family oriented" holiday spot, coming up with absurd regulations about guest houses and hotels - look where all this nonsense got them. Now they preside over a city going broke. And I think that would eventually have happened anyway with or without the Chinese tourists.
