The chairs are empty, stoves cold, taps dry and the pool tables covered in dust. Bar and restaurants in Jomtien Beach’s Rompo Market are gone. Some put up “for sale” signs. Others just walked away.
The homeless have taken the place of the foreign tourists who once ate and drank at Rompo. The only stalls still surviving are selling mobile phones or tattoos, with a few doing cook-to-order takeout.
While restaurants in Pattaya can still offer dine-in service, there is very little money in it these days. Most eateries have remained closed, not even trying to get by on deliveries, as the only ones profiting are app platforms like Foodpanda and Grab Food.
Thanawan Kulmongkol, president of the Thai Restaurants Association, told Thai media this week that business is dire everywhere, but particularly in the Bangkok metropolitan region and the Deep South, where dine-in service has been banned yet again, just a month after being restored.
She complained that restaurants are being blamed for the skyrocketing Covid-19 cases in the country, even though none of the active clusters can be tied to eateries. Meanwhile, shopping malls, supermarkets and outdoor markets remain open, fueling the thousands of cases a day.
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