A Rainy Day in Pattaya: What Still Works

The indoor attractions, and how long each takes

They cluster in the centre, which is convenient when you do not want to travel far in the wet. Art In Paradise is trick-art photographs and takes an hour or two depending how seriously your group takes the poses. Ripley's Believe It or Not sits inside Royal Garden Plaza on Beach Road and bundles several attractions, including a walk-through haunted house and a seated ghost train, which are separately ticketed.

The Dolphinarium and Underwater World are both short visits rather than days out, and Mini Siam's miniature landmarks are outdoors but quick. FROST Magical Ice of Siam is the genuinely indoor oddity — an ice-carving hall you need a coat for, which is a strange and welcome thing to want in Thailand.

Ratings vary more across this group than anywhere else on the site, so check the individual pages rather than assuming.

Malls, which are better here than that sounds

Terminal 21 is the one to pick — themed floors, a big cheap food hall, and enough to it that an afternoon disappears without effort. Central Pattaya on Beach Road is the other large one and connects straight into the beachfront. Royal Garden Plaza has Ripley's inside it, so it doubles up.

This is also the sensible moment for a massage, which is on more or less every street in the city. Reckon on 250–300 baht an hour for traditional Thai on Soi Buakhao and the back streets, 300–400 on Beach Road, and 500–800 at a mid-range spa. Foot reflexology runs cheaper at 200–250 an hour off the main roads, and oil or aromatherapy dearer at 300–400. A tip of 50–100 baht on a 250–300 baht session is generous, and it goes to the therapist in cash rather than on the card.

Markets carry on

Be careful with the advice you will read elsewhere that Pattaya's markets are covered. Very few are completely under a roof, and as far as I know every one of them is open to the weather to some extent — a rainy evening thins the crowds without closing anything, but that is not the same as staying dry. Thepprasit is the big one and runs nightly, Rompho is Jomtien's everyday market, and Runway Market sits under the ferris wheel, but you will still meet the rain at all three.

One is genuinely covered and one is half of it. Pattaya Night Bazaar in the centre is entirely under a roof — several aisles of clothing, bags, watches and souvenirs — and it opens at 10am rather than in the evening, which makes it the only market here that properly works for a wet afternoon rather than a wet night. Jomtien Night Market has a large roofed section through the middle with further stalls and seating out in the open beyond it, so you can stay dry in part of it and not in the rest. Pick the Bazaar if it is actually raining and Jomtien if it merely might.

Food markets in the rain are one of the better versions of this city, honestly. Everything steams, nobody is in a hurry, and you can eat your way along a row of stalls without queueing.

What to abandon, and what to swap it for

The island is the one worth a phone call. Rain on its own does not stop the Koh Larn boats — they run through plenty of wet weather — but a genuinely rough sea does, and that is a handful of days a year rather than a feature of the season. If it happens at all it is most likely between July and September. Check before travelling to Bali Hai rather than after, and treat a cancellation as bad luck rather than something to plan around.

The Sanctuary of Truth is largely open to the weather, and the Sattahip navy beaches are a long drive for sand you will not sit on. The water parks are the interesting case: rain does not close them and the queues thin out, so a wet day is a perfectly good day to go — though the day is plainly better in sun, so if the forecast gives you a choice, take the dry one.

Muay Thai at Max is indoors and on most nights, and a cabaret show is entirely weatherproof, both of which make decent evening replacements for a washed-out afternoon.

When the rain actually comes

The wet half runs roughly May to October, and it is not evenly wet inside that. September and October are the heaviest months of the year by a wide margin — 213.6 mm and 224.5 mm on the thirty-year record — while July and August are much lighter at 103.6 mm and 91.2 mm. If you are dodging anything, dodge late September and October rather than the whole stretch.

Even in the worst of it the pattern is bursts rather than whole days, and the sun between them is strong enough that people forget it was raining an hour ago. October, the wettest month on the record, still averages only 14.4 days with a millimetre or more of rain — fewer than half the days in the month.

November to February is the dry, cooler, busiest stretch. March to May is hot and mostly dry. If you are choosing a month purely to avoid rain, the first of those is the answer — and the trade is the crowds and the prices that come with it. Full month-by-month numbers are on the best time to visit page.