The jokes, jibes and mockery on social media were inevitable when, after 286 days at sea, a United States aircraft carrier filled with 5,000 sailors docked at a city notorious the world over for sex tourism.

It had been the longest modern naval deployment, so American TV teams descended on Pattaya anticipating mayhem as frustrated crew – fresh from a Middle East war zone – encountered the neon-lit go-go bars, massage parlours and beachside prostitutes that throng the pulsating Thai resort.

This is, after all, the simple fishing village that half a century ago was transformed into a notorious hub for prostitution as tens of thousands of US troops fighting in the Vietnam War spent their R&R there.

Today, with 120,000 registered Thai residents and up to 70,000 foreign expats, Pattaya is reputed to host at least 60,000 sex workers.

After almost ten months at sea, conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln had deteriorated. Even its captain, Dan Keeler, admitted his ship ‘looks like a dirty car in a parking lot’.

Yet, apart from one drunken fight and a few discreet hook-ups, his crew – which included hundreds of women – mostly spent their time on land eating, shopping and enjoying the beach, boosting both the city’s economy and its ongoing efforts to shift its image.

‘Pattaya has a reputation as a place for nightlife and having sex,’ said its mayor, Poramet ‘Beer’ Ngampichet. ‘But we try to change the reputation – you can get everything here. Now we can say that this city is also a family destination.’

He talked glowingly about Pattaya’s beaches, conventions and sports facilities. Yet the first thing I saw upon arrival here as I left my taxi was a scene symbolising its gruesome image: a very portly British pensioner holding hands with two young Thai women. ‘It makes me uncomfortable too,’ admitted the mayor when I told him.

Today, with 120,000 registered Thai residents and up to 70,000 foreign expats, Pattaya is reputed to host at least 60,000 sex workers

There was a cosmetic clean-up of the city before the US sailors disembarked, with a few token arrests of sex workers. But now the spotlight is falling back on the sleazy side of ‘Sin City’ with looming indictments of two Western farang (foreigners) for murder.

First comes the case of Simon Carman, 45, an Australian accused of strangling an underage prostitute in an argument allegedly over money. He was seen on security cameras holding her hand waiting for a lift in his block of flats just before her death.

Police believe Carman picked up Tunchanok Donhomla – a 17-year-old who came to the city a week earlier from a poor rural area – by Pattaya’s beach in June.

Her naked body was found in a suitcase dumped in long grass by rail tracks.

Days later, a 21-year-old British woman was arrested over the fatal stabbing of her 34-year-old boyfriend – reportedly from Stoke-on-Trent and running a cannabis farm – at a luxury rented villa by the city. She claimed he had committed suicide.

I have visited more than 100 countries, witnessing many sleazy scenes and dark places as a journalist – but Pattaya’s ‘party’ scene is without parallel.

‘When you see the age of some of the girls and how they are presented, it’s just an indictment of humanity,’ says Chris, a retired Australian on a golfing trip with friends. ‘I like the people, the food, the golf here – but I don’t like all the abuse of females.’

Men walk alone or in small groups along the most infamous streets filled with bars such as Slutz, Bliss or Little Hole and crowded with women who work in them, pleading for custom dressed as schoolgirls, nurses or in the skimpiest of G-strings.

Some grab men’s arms or grope them, calling them ‘handsome’ and ‘sexy’ even when they are so fat, old or drunk they can barely walk. It is a head-spinning blur of loud music, blinking lights, hustling women – all trying desperately to lure in clients.

There are ladyboys – a Thai phrase for transgender women – seeking trade, a neon-lit ‘Boyz Town’ area, signs promoting lurid ‘ping pong’ shows, promises of ‘sexy girls’ for Indians or Russians.

I have visited more than 100 countries, witnessing many sleazy scenes and dark places as a journalist – but Pattaya’s ‘party’ scene is without parallel

Women sit in wire cages, waiting for men to throw balls at a target so that they tumble into a tank of water below them.

In surrounding streets there are scores of massage parlours. Women wearing the uniform of their ‘spa’ sit outside, many middle-aged or older. They chat, eat or look listlessly at their phones, calling out greetings to try to entice passing men.

‘Of course it is the sex capital of the world, whatever they might say,’ said Paul, 58, a courier from Sussex whom I met leaving a bar on Soi 6, the most notorious street. ‘If you want sex with a girl, you can get it anywhere here. You only have to look at a girl to get it.’ 

He has been visiting the city since he was 21. ‘Pattaya is what it is. There are nicer places in Thailand but lots of people come here. When I first came it was half the size, so that must mean it’s popular. There’s nowhere in the world like this.’

There are 22 million visitors a year to this city two hours from the capital Bangkok – but some are less open about their activities. One British man in his 50s sitting with a younger Thai woman told me he was on his ninth trip to Pattaya but knew nothing about its reputation. ‘I’ve not seen anything like that,’ he said, smirking.

Later, I met a lorry driver from Birmingham. Dressed in an England football shirt, he had just arrived that day. He admitted he was drunk, declined to give his name and told me it was his 18th time in the city ‘but I’ve never been down Soi 6, God’s honest truth’.

I watched as he stumbled down to the junction with that same street. Then he turned around and – seeing me observing him – walked straight back, muttering as he passed that he had become lost and was heading back to his hotel for the night.

Women working in the bars typically earn just over £1 for each drink they persuade a man to buy – and they decide if they wish to go off with them for sex.

If they fail to cajole enough customers into buying drinks, they can get sacked.

Prostitution is supposedly illegal in Thailand – leading to charges of hypocrisy from the Service

Women working in the bars typically earn just over £1 for each drink they persuade a man to buy – and they decide if they wish to go off with them for sex

Workers in Group Foundation (Swing), a voluntary group that provides health services and campaigns for sex workers.

‘The Thai economy relies on tourism, and a big part of that income comes from sex work, but they deny that. It is strange and ironic,’ said Chalidaporn Songsamphan, a professor of political science at Thammasat University in Bangkok who chairs the group.

This clash was highlighted by Pattaya’s affable police chief.

‘Sex is a part of human life,’ said Colonel Anek Srathongyoo. ‘There must not be under-aged sex. There must not be violence or rape. But we cannot forbid them if the relationship is consensual.

‘It is natural for man and woman to fall in love. It is not prostitution. They may find each other interesting while drinking in the bar and then they consensually go together to the hotel.’

Last year, this stunning tropical country – ‘the Land of Smiles’ – attracted 33 million tourists.

Professor Songsamphan said some estimates suggest that foreigners seeking sex are responsible for more than half the £34billion earned from this crucial sector last year. ‘So many people from Europe and the US come here to fulfil sexual desires they cannot get at home,’ she said. ‘If they wanted the same sexual services at home in wealthier economies, it would be so expensive, so they come here to get them cheaper.’

She argues that, while this can justifiably be seen as exploitation, most sex workers came from very poor places – often in Thailand’s rural northern regions – with few other opportunities to earn sufficient money to support their families and villages.

Or in the succinct words of a 71-year-old man from Redditch, Worcestershire, a frequent visitor to Pattaya sitting with his mate and two Thai women in a bar: ‘I know it’s all about spending the money – but I’ve got the money and they haven’t.’ One bar ‘girl’ aged 46 said she worked on a farm until last year, cutting and carrying wood for as little as £2 a day. Now she can earn £200 a month just from drinks ‘since I am very friendly and flirty’.

‘I don’t care if customers are fat and ugly,’ said this petite mother of two teenage children. ‘If they are nice and polite to me, I am willing to entertain them. Most are good, but if I find anyone who is not polite, I’ll walk away.’

Mac, a British bar owner and YouTuber, said women can clear 50,000 baht (£1,116) a month from drinks and tips, plus five times the minimum wage of 400 baht (£9) a day ‘if [they’re] doing any side hustles I don’t know about – and these girls aren’t paying tax.’

One former factory worker told me she was so naive when she first started working that when she was asked to give a massage to a man she thought ‘they meant a massage like I would give to my grandma’. She was amazed to receive half her previous monthly wage for one hour of sex.

Despite the best efforts of the mayor of Pattaya and his team, this city has a way to go to rid itself of its tawdry reputation and transform it into the family holiday resort of their dreams

Ticha, 30, was sitting by the beach waiting for clients. She was a rice farmer doing part-time prostitution in Pattaya to boost her income. ‘I only come here when there is no farm work for me,’ she said. ‘I am not very happy having sex with strangers.’

Like many others, she hopes a foreigner might fall for her. ‘I really wish to find a nice Western man who can take care of me and love me,’ she said forlornly.

Regular visitors told me of friends who married women they met in Pattaya. Some moved to Thailand – a man from Nottingham I met on Soi 6 now lives in his wife’s rural northern village. Others take their brides back to the UK.

Older Western men with much younger Thai women are a common sight in Pattaya. Some have retired there, others are on holiday. And, of course, not all these women are sex workers.

At Maximum Performance, a clinic specialising in testosterone replacement, a staff member said they had ‘thousands’ of customers – mostly older foreigners suffering from low energy or sex drive who choose the course of treatment that does not shrink their testicles.

‘Many of the customers live here. Others come every year for two weeks and have a shot at the start of their holiday,’ she said. ‘It can be for exercise, or it can be for girls.’

In Pattaya there is also the sordid underbelly of paedophilic abuse – as shown by the recent murder case. The age of consent in Thailand is 18 – yet among the sex workers I found standing by the beach was a nervous 16-year-old ladyboy.

She had been selling herself for three months, explaining how her family ran up huge debts after its thriving transport business went bankrupt during the Covid pandemic and then an uncle was jailed for drug dealing, leading to big legal fees. ‘I feel disheartened,’ she said, adding that her customers were mostly Westerners, Russian or from the Middle East.

‘My family used to be rich but sent me to be a sex worker here. If I collect enough money, I’ll switch to a regular job.’ This shy teenager could not get a bar job since she was underage so had to risk working on the streets. ‘Yes, I am afraid sometimes – but not very much since I was born male. I can fight, I can defend myself.’

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Lisa Hamilton, the head of Pattaya Nightlife Business Association, who runs a bar and guest house close to where Carman stayed in a suburb a couple of miles from the main strip, said many ‘dirty old men’ came to the city for sex with far younger women. ‘I think there is something wrong with their minds,’ she said. ‘Some are nobodies in their home country with little money. Then they think they have big money here.’

Yet Hamilton – who is Thai and was married for 22 years to a Scotsman two decades older than herself until his death from cancer – said most tourists were respectful, some were lonely and many sought company as well as consensual sexual relationships.

A group of British expats were in her bar, mainly ex-military who meet there weekly to raise cash for charity. One pensioner said it was so cheap to live in Thailand he never cooked at home. Another man, the father of a ten-year-old son, told me Pattaya was a ‘fantastic’ place to raise children.

Dave Lee, 59, a former RAF technician who met his Thai wife in the Middle East, admitted he found it ‘a shock’ when he moved here 32 years ago. ‘You can get what you want in Pattaya,’ he said. ‘If you want to go looking for it, it’s all there. But if you’re married like me and happy, you don’t. I drink in a family-run pub, there’s no sleaze, nothing. It’s just like any normal pub.

‘A lot of guys that come here have been through the mill. They’ve lost their wife or are lonely, they just want company. Sometimes it makes you cringe if I’m honest – old guys, young girls. It turns your stomach. But you don’t know about their lives.’

His British friend Meran Moore, 60, a former secretary who has lived in Pattaya for five years, said: ‘We just had a friend over from Britain so took them to see Sin City. You can see the ones who hate it – their faces filled with anxiety – and that breaks my heart.’

Clearly, despite the best efforts of the mayor of Pattaya and his team, this city has a way to go to rid itself of its tawdry reputation and transform it into the family holiday resort of their dreams.

Additional reporting: Pratch Rujivanarom