The Darkside (East Pattaya)

Cross Sukhumvit Road heading inland and you are on the Darkside — the expat name for East Pattaya, coined (the story goes) by a bar owner on Soi Khao Noi back when this side of the highway was unlit fields and tourists never ventured over. Nothing sinister: dark as in no streetlights. Today it is the residential heartland of Pattaya, a sprawl of housing estates along Soi Siam Country Club, Soi Khao Noi and Soi Khao Talo, with the reservoir everyone calls Lake Mabprachan as its centrepiece.

The eating and drinking scene here works on a completely different logic from the tourist strip. The restaurants and bars clustered around the lake and along Soi Siam Country Club are small and owner-run, and they live or die on repeat custom from residents rather than passing trade — which acts as a quality filter the beach road doesn't have. The range runs from British sports pubs doing Sunday roasts and fish-and-chip Fridays to lakeside terraces, a genuinely good Indian kitchen, and fine-dining outliers that would hold their own anywhere in the city, at prices set for people who live here.

The disqualifier is transport. There is no beach, no neon strip, and effectively no public transport — the baht-bus routes don't serve these sois, everything is spread out, and without your own car or bike you will be stranded. If it's your first visit and you want Pattaya on your doorstep, stay west of Sukhumvit and come out here for dinner instead.

What outsiders miss is how much daytime there is. The ten-kilometre lane around the lake is the best traffic-free run or ride anywhere near Pattaya, Thai Wake Park does cable wakeboarding on its own lake, and Siam Country Club — host of the LPGA's Honda Thailand event — is up the road along with half the region's best golf. Add the family attractions strung along the way out and the Darkside fills a day easily before the bars open.

It is also the part of Pattaya most obviously growing. The estates keep spreading east, and the U-Tapao airport expansion and the Eastern Economic Corridor are pulling investment through this side of town — the Darkside gets less dark every year, and the bar and restaurant scene is growing with it.