The early 1990s played a very important role in the future of Pattaya as a city. In my opinion it should be classed as the first real estate boom even though by today’s standards it was more of a bang or maybe just a loud noise.
The strange part about the whole thing was that it was fuelled almost entirely by Thai nationals! The developers were Thai, the target market was Thai and consequently the buyers were almost exclusively Thai.
These years saw, for the first time, the emergence of a middle class in Thai Society. Called Yuppies in some other countries this middle class was formed from professional couples who were both earning good salaries and had disposable income.
Credit cards came on to the scene in general use where earlier they had only been the tools of the wealthy.
Until this time the use of a Visa card anywhere would cost you three per cent and American Express cards would cost you five per cent.
This new, affluent middle class along with the improvements in the Bang Na Trad road and the completion of the Chonburi bypass (this was still long before the motorway or the elevated highway) it was now possible to make a weekend trip to Pattaya without spending most of it in a vehicle.
Other changes were happening in Pattaya as well.
Pattaya now had a supermarket that was worthy of the name! Foodland had opened in late 1989 and was a massive improvement on anything that was available earlier so it was therefore an immediate hit with all the expatriate residents as well as the visiting Thai weekenders. So much so that late Friday night it was impossible to park there and queues to pay were longer than the ridiculous ones at Tesco Lotus you find today.
A great deal of this change was linked to the first government of the time led by the Prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan.
Chatichai’s government had, in my opinion, many similarities to the one led more recently by Thaksin Shinawtra. It invested heavily in infrastructure projects and by doing so linked the more remote areas to the more developed areas gaining a lot of popularity.

Military coup
The flip side was also very similar, corruption was rife, the amount of public spending ending up in private pockets was astronomical. Chatichai’s government was brought to an end when once again the military could stand for no more of the blatant corruption and a coup in 1991 ended the government.
The coup by Army Commander Suchinda Kraprayoon took place in February 1991 and the coup leaders, who called themselves the National Peace-Keeping Council (NPKC), appointed Anand Panyarachun and Prime Minister.
Anand’s government wrote and put into place a new constitution and scheduled an election for March 1992. After this election a coalition government was formed which appointed General Suchinda as Prime Minister.
Now remember, we have for the first time a middle class who are not only doing fairly well financially but are increasingly well educated so this appointment after the coup started massive public protests.
Trying to quieten down these protests, Suchinda stated that he would support a change to the constitution making individuals who had not been elected to Parliament ineligible for the premiership.
This almost worked, but General Suchinda was not going to give up his position so easily. The two leading government parties stated that they would allow General Suchinda to serve out the current parliamentary term as Prime Minister. This sparked off a huge outcry and despite bans preventing people travelling to Bangkok a strike and public rally was held in Sanam Luang on 17th May.
Over the next three days there were continuous riots, clashes with police and the army was called in. The violence escalated and upon the arrest of the rally leader, Chamlong Srimuang, the whole thing got completely out of control.
There were running battles with police and army, police stations were burned, cars set on fire and millions of Baht worth of damage was done. Worse than all the damage was the loss of life. Some 52 known deaths were attributed to military arms fire and more than 3,500 demonstrators were arrested.
Some of those arrested were tortured, or doused in fuel and ordered to remain seated in the sun.
The whole incident was finally brought under control in the only manner that would work and that was by Royal intervention. Princess Sirindhorn and Crown Prince Vajiralongkom both made TV and radio addresses to the nation and then at 9.30pm on 20th May King Bhumibol Adulyadej met with Suchinda and Chamlong, demanded peace and that they use parliamentary procedures to settle all their differences.
On May 24th Suchinda resigned and Chamlong asked all the protesters to disperse.
Wow! Looking at this now, you have to wonder how it was possible that anyone would stay living in Thailand or even consider moving here after such a huge international incident.

Expats in the dark
I was living in Pattaya during this whole period and if you want to know how this affected us in our daily lives I will tell you. Of course you have to take into consideration that at this time there were no mobile phones in Thailand, no UBC TV or Sophon Cable so the only news that you could watch was Thai TV and this was only on in (not very clear) English once a day. Therefore for the majority of foreigners living in Pattaya they did not even know it was happening.
The fact that most Thais were glued to their TVs passed them by as they were unable to communicate about what was going on. Even the official line from the embassies at the time was just “don’t travel to Bangkok unless you have to go to the airport and then stay on the expressway”
During all of this period with a coup going on, demonstrations, student riots and general mayhem, what was Pattaya doing? It was building condos and in such a variety that the whole market was covered.
In South Jomtien we saw the completion of Baan Somprasong and one of my early favorites, Golden Sands.
On Jomtien another favourite of mine Coconut Beach and of course Jomtien Plaza.
On Pratumnak we saw the completion of Sugar Beach, Star Beach, Pattaya Hill and who can forget the ageless Sweet 1?
Out on its own was Hagone condo, still a bit of an anomaly in the market. In Pattaya we saw Markland and out on Sukhumvit the Casa Espana.
It was Wong-Amat, however, that saw the real growth during this period with the likes of Baan Rimpah, Silver Beach,
Sky Beach and Wong-Amat Garden all of which are still considered to be excellent buildings that have aged well over the intervening years.
Next issue: The run up to the 1997 crash.