Pattaya People TV has to be the funniest TV station in South East Asia. As a self confessed lover of crap television, Pattaya People TV is the perfect format for when I visit the area on the odd blue moon... Watching the cheesy advertorials, bad production and general naffness are a real treat for a crap tv addict like me, I wouldn't have it any other way.
The channel is mainly habited by lots of white haired expats, promoting their various nooks and businesses, performing bad interviews, in cross dialects, and giving endless explanations of how and where to find their respective plots. These are interlaced with smallish Thai language sections, Pattaya TV uncut 'challenges', which range from weird to outright bizaare, plus, a never ending cheese board of gory news items about the various drug-dealing, shop lifting, street-shooting, car-crashing antics that carry on in day-to-day life in Pattaya.
The advert sections are a winner for all crap tv addicts (although even I tire of the constant repeats)... mostly created by the in-house production team at Pattaya People, the ads all have a similar feel, sound, format, and nearly always include the business owners themselves, yapping on about whatever it is they do...... but, far from being a bad thing, this honesty often gives a real insight into the character of many of these businesses.... and what is going down in Pattaya in general.. I once visited a restaurant because of an advert on Pattaya People, the guy came across well, and we all had a nice meal to boot.
But the existance of Pattaya People TV underlines what an odd and confusing place Pattaya is. Expats have been able to carve out a fairly substantial piece of the action, seemingly independent from the local general population, some might say 'taking over'. As far as I'm aware, most of the local Thai's don't seem to mind, indeed I'm sure many welcome some of the opportunities which arise.. But I can't imagine anywhere else in the world that has a TV station broadcasting in a foreign language to a foreign population at it's heart... Although surely there are other examples? Or could this be another 'only in Thailand' moment?
Underneath the surface, past all the staged sanook, drunken holiday japes and bi-cultural awkwardness, the daily news reports on Pattaya People are a cold and harsh reminder of some of the real ongoing tragedies that occur ... I watched a report about a Thai girl in her late twenties who hung herself in her tiny tin-shack of an apartment. Her husband was a motorcycle taxi driver, returning after a long day to find her body. Nothing was left for the imagination, the images were on film for all to see. Apparently, this girl was so depressed because of lack of money, she hung herself right there in that miserable apartment. How bloody awful.
And then following on, we have two cheesy beer-bar adverts, actresses with etched smiles, badly chereographed dancing, and glazed eyes..... it all makes you wonder...
Strange place.
I leave you with a typical example of Pattaya TV uncut 'challenge'. The presenter, Mick, a right cock-a-ney geezer, challenges a couple of holiday makers to a drinking contest at a new beer bar thats just opened in town... Think David Brent meets Danny Dyer ....
Cringe TV. I love it.
