Pattaya Beach

This guide to Pattaya Beach follows two very different stories that shaped its name and character: the American servicemen who turned this fishing village into an R&R stop during the Vietnam War, and a seventeenth-century march by the general Phraya Tak along this same coast. It traces how a surrender that avoided a fight left its word behind in the town's name. Listen for the seasonal wind still blowing off this stretch of sand.