The new “normal” has been anything but for Pattaya’s many bar workers, who have bounced from waitress jobs to pool party hostesses to online sales to survive.
Three women who used to work at the beer bars around the Marine Plaza Hotel – Fah, Tan, and Tai – were working one recent weekend at a hotel pool party, serving drinks and keeping guests company. It was the closest thing to their old jobs they’ve had for months.
Tai said Thailand’s four-month bar shutdown was an earthquake-level shock for her and her bargirl friends. They returned to the Northeast, but there were no jobs and nothing to do there. So, they came back to Pattaya to find whatever work they could.
Finally, in July, bars were allowed to reopen, but they quickly realized there were not enough customers to stay open. Their bar, which catered to Middle Eastern tourists – shut down again three weeks later.
The Pattaya bargirl social network that once kept tabs on customers and hot prospects was turned into an employment network. Word-of-mouth about possible gigs, such as pool parties, brought hostesses to hotels and condo buildings for one-day assignments with hopes of more later.
Other bargirls found other options, finding jobs as waitresses in restaurants, selling second-hand items at local flea markets or trying their luck selling products on Facebook and Line.
The three said that women like them who hitched their lives to Thailand’s tourism train will not survive unless they adjust to this “new normal”. For them, the bar workers said, new normal is doing anything they can to find enough money to live on each day.
All of the pool party pretties said they hoped that the start of limited tourism this month under the Special Tourist Visa will bring visitors back to Pattaya and a semblance of the “old normal”. But with STV tourists headed to Phuket and Chiang Mai – and their numbers extremely limited – it’s unlikely the STV program will improve the situation in Pattaya.
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