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On February 14th, Valentines Day, the city of Pattaya presented its residents and visitors with a very special Valentine – a bus service.
So what? All cities and towns have some sort of a bus service. Well up to now, the only service in and around Pattaya has been provided by the venerable Baht buses, and whereas these are functional, they could hardly be said to be appropriate for a modern city, being basically pick-up trucks where passengers sat on a pair of barely padded bench seats in the rear section, protected from the elements by a flimsy tin roof and not much else. If the bus was full (maximum around 10 persons, depending on their size), then the option was to wait for the next one, or stand on the rear uncovered platform and hang on for grim death (for more information on these ‘Baht Buses’, see the website separate section ‘All about Pattaya’).
But now, we were to have proper buses, with proper seating and doors and even air conditioning, and best of all, for a trial period, these would be free to use.
So on the 14th, we gathered at City Hall for the inauguration of this service, which of course could not commence without due pomp and ceremony.
Earlier in the day, the religious ceremonies had been performed to ensure the new service would be suitably blessed, now the speeches and marching bands were to be performed.
 So around 2 o’clock, I arrived to find the buses already lined up and a large number of schoolchildren, plus a band, all decked out i n colourful uniforms, awaiting the arrival of various civic dignitaries.
Soon all assembled under a covered awning in front of the city hall and after the playing of the National Anthem, speeches were made (all in Thai) and then we all headed to board the fleet of buses for the inaugural ride around the town.
Preceded by the band, now mounted astride an open truck, we made our way out of the city hall gates, turned left down North Pattaya Road to the city’s only roundabout.
 There we turned left into Second Road, which is currently a one way street with traffic flowing the other way, but a special contra-flow bus lane had been created for this service.
In fact, this was in no small measure, a major reason for the creation of this service. A few months earlier, this two way road had been made single way, initially due to road works, and later continued like this when it seemed to improve traf fic flow.
Most people were in favour of maintaining this, but there were some serious objections, not least from the owners and customers of the Central Festival Shopping Centre, Pattaya’s premier shopping mall, situated some way down this road and now unable to be reached directly by anyone coming from North Pattaya.
People, going there were forced to take a very roundabout route, and none of the existing Baht bus routes proved any way convenient.
So by providing a special bus lane for this new service, it could now pass directly in front of this shopping centre, and in fact this was our first stop, where several more people boarded.
We carried in down Second Road to the traffic lights at the junction with Central Road. As these lights were now only set to permit traffic flow in the other direction, we wondered how this problem would be overcome, but for today it was simply done by turning them off and having police control the junction.
In fact at virtually every intersection, no matter how small, there was some control in place to ensure our smooth passage, and also to ensure no Baht bus protest blocked our way - for it had been rumoured that they were not at all happy and might stage s ome counter measure.
As it happened, apart from one, parked very deliberately at one of our designated stops, no such protest ensued.
From Central we turned down to the Beach Road, where the usual collage of parked rental bikes and tour buses made our progress very slow (no bus lane here), but we carried on down to Walking Street, thence left into Pattaya South Road, and left again back up Second Road, this time travelling with the traffic all the way back to the roundabout and back into the grounds of City Hall.
There we disembarked and a fresh group boarded as the bus convoy set off once again.
Very impressive, around the town in just about one hour and arriving back, cool and clean and without a trace of the usual ‘Baht bus bum’ that one usually suffers from after a journey.
Not too sure about the steerage class vehicle though (see photo) - actually the band travelled in this, playing all the way.
Later in the day, the normal service, which appears to run about once every 20 minutes was seen travelling around the town – complete with passengers.
We were told that the free experiment would run for 6 months but we now understand that following discussions with the Baht bus drivers, this will be curtailed and a fare, yet undetermined, will be levied from the end of March, at which point the Baht buses will also be permitted to use the contra-flow bus lane.
Time will tell how this all pans out.
To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.
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