Central Pattaya

This guide to Central Pattaya opens in 1925 with a nineteen-year-old, Tiang Chirathivat, arriving alone in Bangkok from Hainan Island with no family and no money. You'll hear how his small shop across the river grew with his son Samrit into the Central name, and follow the family's expansion over the following decades toward the beachfront in front of you. It's the story of one immigrant's shop scaled up across nearly a century of a family's bet on Thailand.