Pattaya

By road ¡47 km from Bkk, about 2.30 hrs’ drive, by Bangna-Trat Highway or Highway 36 or motorway from Rama 9 Rd. Daily coach service from Bangkok Eastern Bus terminal. By rail, about 3.30 hours. (See Useful Calls for phone numbers). Pattaya’s name originated from the march of Phraya Tak (later King Taksin) and his followers from Ayutthaya to Chanthaburi just before the fall of the former capital to the Burmese invaders in 1767.
When Phraya Tak’s army arrived at the vicinity of what is today’s Pattaya, he encountered the troops of Nai Klom who tried to intercept him. Nai Klom was awed by Phraya Tak’s dignified manner and his army’s strict discipline, so he surrendered without a fight. The place the two armies confronted each other, was later called Thap Phraya, which means the Army of the Phraya. This was changed to Phatthaya, which happens to mean the wind blowing from the southwest to the northeast at the beginning of the rainy season. Today the spelling of the name has been simplified to Pattaya.
For the past centuries, Pattaya was a small fishing village almost cut off from the outside world. But after its beauty was discovered by the first group of American servicemen from Nakhon Ratchasima in 1961, sleepy Pattaya became Thailand’s premier beach resort which annually attracts hundreds of thousands of pleasure-seeking visitors. Fishermen’ s huts along the b ;ach were replaced by a full range of accommodations from super deluxe hotels to bungalows and mini-pocket guesthouses.