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The Pattaya Mail on August 2 carried on ominous headline announcing "Pattaya’s gay bars being targeted for upcoming crackdown" where both the local governor and the Interior Minister stressed that more needed to be done to ensure that Pattaya's gay bars adhered to the law.

When said laws are related to drug use, underage patrons or underage sex workers or closing times then this is serious business and I am sure most people will applaud these moves, when it comes to "nudity and lewd shows" then I am sure opinion will be more divided, and one does not know whether to laugh or cry at the statement that "gay bars must not be used for prostitution or as fronts for prostitution", and by the time we got to a hotelier expressing concern for Pattaya’s reputation as a "family destination" all hope was obviously lost.

Police action in response to this has of course started, and I am certainly not going to sink to the level of cynicism shown by a poster to an Internet discussion forum who reported that a bar in Sunnee Plaza that had been raided and closed permanently last month has just been raided and closed permanently again this week as part of this campaign.

A slightly less cynical view was put forward in a letter to the editor of the Pattaya Mail in the August 16 edition. The writer said the comments on prostitution were "to say the least naive", and felt it was unfair for so many Thais to spend their time visiting prostitutes or having mia noi's while at the same time trying to deprive visitors of such things!