The Best Places in Pattaya

Ask ten people for the best places in Pattaya and you will get ten lists shaped by whatever they happened to walk past. This is a shorter list, and a slower one. Everything below is an Editor's Pick, which in practice means three things: someone who lives here has been, it is still good on a normal weekday rather than only on its best night, and nobody paid to be on the page. Editor's Picks are never paid, and that is the whole point of them.

Nine places, grouped by what you actually want them for.

Best places to eat in Pattaya

Four rooms that cover most of what an evening out here can be, from a quiet coffee-and-food place on the east side to a clifftop that people book weeks ahead.

Cafe des Amis

Pattaya's long-running fine dining benchmark. Decades in one location, still the room people book for anniversaries and closed deals. The kitchen has nothing left to prove and cooks like it.

Patrick's Huay Yai Steakhouse

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.

Rimpa Lapin

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.

BRU Coffee & Bar

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.

Best place for a drink with a view

If you only have one evening and you want the city to explain itself, go up.

Horizon Rooftop

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.

Best things to do in Pattaya

One that exists nowhere else on earth, and one that will happily absorb a hot afternoon.

Sanctuary of Truth

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.

Terminal 21 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.

Best places to stay

Both of these are built around families, and both are the sort of resort people plan a whole trip around rather than use as a bed.

Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort

A lost-world water park with a hotel attached. The most complete family resort on the coast, with a themed water park, a private stretch of Wongamat beach and enough on site that you need not leave for a week.

Grande Centre Point Space Pattaya

A space-themed resort that families plan whole trips around. The highest-rated large hotel in the city, with a serious water park, a genuinely committed theme and Terminal 21 a short walk away.

Where to go next

The full, current list lives on Editor's Picks, and if you want the rest of the collection, by area, category and price, start with Explore or just ask the AI Guide what you are in the mood for.