The Pattaya Marine Department is again promising a crackdown on speedboats operating on Pattaya Beach instead of using Bali Hai Pier.
Department Director Eakarat Kantaro told the Pattaya Business and Tourism Association at its Dec. 21 meeting that all the boat operators know the regulations, but some still choose to ignore them to get a leg up on competition at the crowded South Pattaya pier.
The National Council for Peace and Order announced on May 8, 2018 that speedboats must all move to Bali Hai Pier because embarking and disembarking passengers on the beach was unsafe and tour buses clogged traffic.
More speedboat docks were put into Bali Hai and hundreds of millions of baht were spent on upgrading the entire pier. And, for a few weeks, boat operators did vacate Pattaya Beach – fearful of fines of 500-5,000 baht.
But it quickly became apparent that no one in authority – from either the army or Pattaya City Hall – would actually enforce the ban and the boat operators returned with impunity. A year later and the beach was used daily.
The Covid-19 pandemic overshadowed the problem for two years and with so few tourists, no one really cared where the speedboats pulled in, if they did at all.
But now that tourism is back to full throttle, the Marine Department promised that, this time, the law would be enforced.
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