‘Good girls go to heaven – Bad girls go to Pattaya’.
T-shits with this and similar catchphrases fill up the unstable shelves of the small open-air clothing stalls along the Pattaya Beach Road. To most tourists, slogans like these matches perfect with their conceptions of the notorious city south of Bangkok commonly known for its huge number of go-go bars.
But that image is maybe going to change, at least if you ask Swedish Rolf Uusitalo, who sells luxurious condominiums in Pattaya for the Swedish real estate developer Logans Thailand Co., Ltd.
From Lapland to Thailand
There is a long way from Rolf Uusitalo’s native city of Kiruna, located north of the Arctic Circle as the most northern city of Sweden to the tropic country of Thailand. But he does not have any plans of returning to the cold long Swedish winters.
“I have get way too adjusted to the warm climate to ever want to move back home, so I will probably stay out here”, the forty-eight-year-old says.
But that does not mean that he is completely detached to his Scandinavian roots. The architecture of Logans Avatara Condominium, where Rolf Uusitalo spends most of his waking hours is – with its minimalistic clean lines and use of bright wood types – looking very Scandinavian compared with the voluminous decorations of the majority of the buildings in the area.
“Actually most people who see our building, including the local Thais, is astonished by the simple and modern architecture of the building, it seems like this style emanates a high level of quality” Rolf Uusitalo ads.
Out of the smog
Since he went on his first holiday in Thailand twenty-six years ago, Rolf Uusitalo has been in love with the country of smiles, an infatuation so immense that he eventually decided to leave the cold climate of Europe behind and move to Thailand on a permanent basis.
“I really like the culture here, people are much less subjected to time-tables and schedules as we are in Europe, and even though it almost has become a cliché to say it, the population of Thailand is really nice and welcoming” Rolf Uusitalo says.
For more than ten years he now has been living in Thailand, where he got a job at Logans in Bangkok. But after a couple of years he left the smoggy air of the metropolis and moved out to the coast, a decision he has not regretted.
“Out by the ocean the air is fresh and pleasant, even in the hottest season. In Pattaya I always eat my meals outside in contrary to sitting in the dry air-condition as I did in Bangkok”.
Much more than Walking Street
“The reputation doesn’t give enough credit to the city; Walking Street is just a small part of what the city has to offer. There is an excellent live-music scene, the beach here is pictorial and some of the country’s best golf courses lie in the area”, Rolf says.
And it doesn’t seem like he is the only one of that opinion, right now there is a great activity in constructing luxurious condominiums in the area, especially by the Jomtien Beach Road where Logans also has located their building.
“It is a bit distant from the centre of the city, but on the other hand there is a peaceful and quiet atmosphere out here which many people prefer, besides, there is only a ten minutes drive from the core of the city. So I think the reputation of Pattaya will be changed in five years from now” he ads.
