Editor's Picks
Chosen by our editors. No sponsorships, no featured spots, no algorithms. Just the places we love enough to send you to.
Chosen on merit. Editor's Picks are never paid.
cafes · East Pattaya, Siam Country Club Road
Considered coffee and properly made food, away from the beach entirely.
A small, quiet room on the east side doing specialty coffee and made-in-house food at a standard that would hold up anywhere in Bangkok, without the traffic or the crowd.
Read the full guide →
cafes · Central Pattaya
Light roasts done properly, with the sea across the road.
A small roastery that treats light roast as light roast rather than a marketing word, opening early enough to beat the heat and staying open into the evening.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Central Pattaya
The steak dinner Pattaya did not used to have.
A small, tightly run kitchen doing classical steakhouse cooking at a standard that would hold up in Bangkok, with service that remembers you.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Thepprasit
Thai cooking worth dressing up for.
Refined Thai in a room full of orchids, with a kitchen that will genuinely adapt dishes rather than just nodding at the request.
Read the full guide →
bars · Central Pattaya
The view that makes Pattaya make sense.
Thirty-four floors above Beach Road with an uninterrupted arc across the bay, and the single best place in the city to watch the sun go down.
Read the full guide →
beaches · Koh Larn
Clearer water, fewer people, ten minutes over the hill.
Everything Tawaen offers with a fraction of the crowd, and water that is noticeably cleaner most days.
Read the full guide →
attractions · Naklua
A hundred metres of hand-carved teak, still unfinished after decades.
The one attraction in Pattaya that genuinely has no equivalent anywhere else, and it is still being carved while you walk through it.
Read the full guide →
hidden-gems · Naklua
Buy your seafood at the market, then pay someone at the back to cook it.
The most direct route to good seafood in Pattaya, and one of the few genuinely local experiences left within twenty minutes of Beach Road.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Lake Mabprachan, East Pattaya
Lakeside dining that takes the cooking as seriously as the view.
The most refined kitchen on Mabprachan, doing Mediterranean and European plates with real technique in a setting most of the lake's venues can only gesture at.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Khao Talo, East Pattaya
A wine list with no end and a kitchen that earns it.
European cooking with genuine ambition at prices well below what the plating suggests, backed by one of the deeper wine lists on this side of the city.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Huay Yai
The Pattaya steakhouse, relocated to where the parking is easy.
The same kitchen standard that built Patrick's reputation in town, in a larger Huay Yai room with a Sunday roast worth planning a week around.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Soi Pattaya 13, Central Pattaya
The Sunday carvery that fills the room every week.
A long-established pub that has held its standard for years, with an all-you-can-eat Sunday roast that is the reason most people first come and the food quality that makes them return midweek.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Pratumnak Hill
Arguably the best English breakfast in south Pattaya, at a price that makes no sense.
A small Pratumnak room turning out breakfasts, Friday fish and chips and a Sunday roast that regulars book ahead for, at prices from a decade ago.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Naklua
The seafood restaurant everyone means when they say seafood restaurant.
Hundreds of tables at the water's edge, a menu built on the local catch, and the sizzling oyster omelette that people drive down from Bangkok for.
Read the full guide →
restaurants · Na Chom Thian
Thai food on a cliff, with the whole gulf underneath you.
Three terraces cut into a clifftop south of Jomtien, with the best sunset table on this coast and Thai cooking that holds its own against the view.
Read the full guide →
attractions · Jomtien
The night market to take a family to.
Across the road from the beach, calmer than the central markets, and a food section with more range than the size suggests.
Read the full guide →
attractions · South Pattaya
A working temple in the middle of the city, with a night market attached.
A genuine neighbourhood temple rather than a tourist site, and the market in its grounds is one of the more authentically Thai places to eat in central Pattaya.
Read the full guide →
attractions · Pratumnak Hill
The Pattaya City sign, the whole bay, and no entrance fee.
The definitive view of the bay, free, open from early morning to late at night, and ten minutes from the centre.
Read the full guide →
attractions · North Pattaya
A themed mall that is genuinely worth walking around, and the food court is the point.
Each floor built around a different world city, a food court that is one of the best-value meals in Pattaya, and enough air conditioning to lose an afternoon in.
Read the full guide →
activities · Nong Prue, Central Pattaya
Diamond and Predator tables, and the biggest tournaments in the country.
Tournament-grade equipment on both sides of the room and a competition calendar that draws serious players from across Thailand.
Read the full guide →
activities · Central Pattaya
Open around the clock, with snooker, darts and table tennis alongside the pool.
The most complete games room in the city and the only serious one open 24 hours, with staff who will play if you have arrived alone.
Read the full guide →
bars · Soi Buakhao, Central Pattaya
Live rock every night, a rotating band roster, and a kitchen that holds up.
The most consistent live music venue in Pattaya, with a nightly band rotation, tribute acts worth planning around, and food good enough to eat before the set.
Read the full guide →
wellness · Naklua
A proper spa, with a consultation form and therapists who read it.
Genuine therapeutic massage in a calm, private setting, with a pre-treatment consultation that most places here skip entirely.
Read the full guide →
activities · Jomtien
PADI five-star centre with small groups and instructors people remember by name.
A well-organised dive school where the teaching is patient and thorough, and the wreck trips are the reason experienced divers keep coming back.
Read the full guide →
