Tourists
flock to the beaches over the long Labor Day weekend.
Phasakorn Channgam
Peaceful times brought tourists back to Pattaya Labor Day
weekend a year after the city was left virtually deserted due to
increasingly violent street protests in Bangkok.
Crowds were plentiful along Jomtien Beach with Thais,
many of them from the capital, flocking to the seashore with their families
for the three-day weekend.
Beach chair vendor Lamduan Sriprai said this year saw
more tourists arrive for Labor Day Weekend April 30-May 2 than she
remembered coming for two or three years.
It certainly marked a rebound from 2010 when “red shirt”
antigovernment protestors had taken over Bangkok’s shopping and business
districts and, on May 2 last year, the government began threatening to
forcibly clear blockades with military troops. That crackdown would come a
week later with battles and riots that would leave 91 people dead.
