Pattaya Beach’s new parking system blew a tire on its first weekend, with confused tourists finding their wheels locked after parking in the wrong spots and getting tickets when they parked in the right ones.
City officials made a big show of repainting bus stops to increase parking, before the holiday weekend, but one hand apparently didn’t know what the other was doing, as police ticketed people parking in the new spots.
Meanwhile, Thai tourists in town who got confused and parked on the right-hand side of Beach came back from splashing in the water to find their wheels locked. They took it out, of course, on the beach chair vendors they had rented from.
Vendor Veerasak Chiewkit said the city’s left-side parking plan was doomed from the start, with tourists confused by white, red-white, and yellow-white zones. He noted that beach chair operators had wanted parking on the right-side. That, however, was vetoed by traffic police, claiming it would be unsafe.
On Sept. 7, beach vendors filed a letter with city hall calling for changes to the new system to make it clearer where tourists can park and demanded explanations why tickets and wheel-locks were used when the city desperately needs tourists.
Many Thai visitors said they would never return to Pattaya after the parking problems, they wrote.
Deputy Mayor Ronakit Ekasingh pledged to have municipal police better educate drivers where they can and can’t park.
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