I got out of bed this morning and opened the door to discover that somebody had hung a sign on the handle which read: "Please, No Molest". It's always nice to know that somebody is looking out for me when I'm away from home, although, to be fair, I think I would be in far more danger of being molested on the streets of Pattaya South Beach than I am ever likely to be in my own hotel room. Although I'm pretty sure you could find somebody out there willing to provide that service if that's what you're into.

After going downstairs and stuffing myself full of complementary breakfast - considering the amount I'm paying for this place, I'm taking whatever they're offering - I went out for a morning stroll along the promenade. This, as it turned out, was my first mistake of the day. Unfortunately, a typical morning in Pattaya can be summed up by the following thought process: "Wow, it's a bit hot out here, probably should've worn a hat... Where did that mirage come from?... My legs appear to have stopped functioning... Can somebody please call me an ambulance?". At around mid-day, the sun decides to put in an appearance and the temperature on the front suddenly goes from being pleasently warm before lunch to the inside of an industrial oven during the afternoon. Nobody told me this. On reflection - which, ironically, is exactly what I could see shimmering in the road ahead of me for much of the day - I should have suspected what was coming when I first noticed all the dogs lying around in the street, tongues hanging out, lapping hopefully at mirages and barking "Kill me now" as I passed. The next time I hear the expression "Mad dogs and Englishmen", I shall remember Pattaya fondly.

I stopped at a petrol station to buy a drink and get out of the sun for a couple of minutes, sending the cashier into a flurry of activity when I presented her with the 1000 Baht note the ATM had just given me - leaving the place unattended, just in case I wanted to help myself to the stock or anything, she ran off down the street in a state of panic looking for a bank from which she could obtain enough money to give me my change. 1000 Baht is about 20 pounds. Life really is different out here.

Wandering along the road later, staring wildly into the sun and hallucinating that my drink was evaporating, I began to become quite adept at jumping out of the way of oncoming trucks. Most drivers here haven't actually got a clue how to drive, which is quite frightening until you get used to it - motorists overtake on both sides, and if there is a car in both lanes they just force them apart and drive down the middle. I've never seen such aggressive driving - it's like living in a scene from a seventies car chase, only much much worse. All they need is a few piles of empty cardboard boxes on the street corners and they've got it sorted. Everybody here honks for the sake of it every few hundred yards, even if there's nothing in sight, and I've even seen cars driving quite happily on the wrong side of the road because the correct lanes were full - oncoming traffic doesn't seem to regard this as remotely unusual, and just drives around them nonchalantly. Finally, glad to be alive and in one piece, I fell into a seat in a local coffee shop and lay my map out on the table to see what there was to do in Pattaya that didn't involve a visit from the vice squad.

In the Royal Garden Plaza shopping centre, which is about the only place where the sun can't get at you and the air conditioning actually works, was a big Ripley's Believe it or not museum. This was certainly not something I had been expecting, but it gave me a welcome opportunity to get out of the heat and spend a couple of hours wandering between the exhibits and marvelling at the madness of the world. If you've been to one Ripley's, you've been to all of them - one is pretty much like another - but that still doesn't stop me from being fascinated by every single absurdity on display. There's the man who found he could entertain people by hammering nails into his head on a regular basis, the guy who made his living from cramming three snooker balls in his mouth, and hundreds of other accounts of people who really should get out more - all accompanied by waxworks, photos and newspaper stories just in case we don't believe a word of it or can't imagine what such a thing would look like. Theres the horse with three legs and the baby with two heads. There's the collection of head-hunters tools from darkest Africa, complete with shrunken heads. There's a room where the walls, ceiling, floor, tables and chairs are all out of perspective and your brain does cartwheels trying to work it out - you're invited to place something on a flat surface and watch it roll off, or sit on a flat chair and slide off. I've been to several Ripley's in my time - there's one in Brighton - but it's always worth another visit due to the sheer number of nutters who crawl out of the woodwork every day willing to push the boundaries of intelligence and believability in pursuit of fame, fortune and an extra buck or two. I was accompanied, on this occasion, by a group of Japanese tourists who buzzed from exhibit to exhibit going "Oh" and "Ah" occasionally, but not actually bothering to take anything in. I wondered why they hadn't stayed at home.

Arriving at the exhibit for the world face-pulling - or gurning - champion, I came across a notice inviting me to try and pull a more ridiculous face than the one shown, providing me with a convenient mirror for this purpose. Having spent a good ten minutes letting out all my tensions, sticking out my tongue, rolling my eyes, blowing raspberries and contorting my face into all sorts of expressions it wasn't originally intended to convey, I turned the corner to discover that lots of people were laughing at me. I'd been pulling faces into a one way mirror, and they'd all been watching me from the other side. This is the sort of thing you'll find in abundance at Ripley's Believe It or Not, so if you don't like people laughing at you or being the butt of a joke, I probably wouldn't bother going. Ripley also seems to have a certain penchant for optical illusions, leading to many a tourist leaving the museum with crossed eyes and the telltale limp of somebody who has just broken his leg attempting to walk on the ceiling. In this category, there is one exhibit in particular to look out for - it turns up in all the Ripley's museums I've been to, and still manages to catch me out every time. As you approach a pleasant beach scene at the end of a corridor, you see an attractive young lady standing, stark naked, with her back to you on the sand. It is really quite amusing to stand beyond the exhibit and watch men and women alike rushing around a small dividing wall to get a lecherous peek from the front, only to discover that the sand is empty. No naked lady. Nothing. Just a deserted beach scene. You can sense the frustration as people bob their heads back and forth around the wall - lady, no lady, lady, no lady. It's amazing what you can do with a well placed mirror.

By the time you arrive at the furthest reaches of the Pattaya strip in the evening, the appearance of familiar fast food outlets and dodgy looking clubs tells you that the nightlife isn't far away. Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on whether or not you happen to have arrived in town wearing a dirty raincoat - this also means that you're about to be hit full in the face by a world of neon covered sordidness. Walking street, as the southern end of the strip is called, does manage to take you by surprise - but not entirely for the reasons you might be expecting. At first, your eyes are certainly drawn to the unbelievable amount of neon tubing advertising fetishes you didn't even know existed, but before you have time to fall over with shock or head for the nearest nymphette in a red dress - again, depending on your reasons for being here - you start to notice all the families. Among this world of vice and corruption, local people can be seen out for an evening stroll, stopping to look at menu boards outside restaurants or to wave at a friend chatting up a girl in a bar. Every one of them seems totally oblivious to anything untoward going on around them, and this seriously messes with your head. This is what life is like in Pattaya. How do you apply your own morals to a world where the line is so much harder to cross? At home, many people would take a bus miles out of their way just to avoid a seedy area - here in Pattaya, parents lead their children along the street on the way home, apparently unfazed by awkward questions being thrown at them from all sides. It's hard enough trying to work out how to explain the facts of life to a precocious child who probably knows it all anyway and has just decided it might be fun to watch you squirm - what exactly are you supposed to say when your five year old points at a sign and asks you what a dildo show is?

Nearly every building on Walking Street is a bar, in which the most striking nymphets in long red dresses crowd around waiting to pounce on any red blooded male who makes the mistake of sitting down or hovering too long at the entrance. At least a proportion of these will be ladyboys - men either dressed as women or having had the operation - and believe me, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. It's not like in the west, where any man you see on the street wearing a dress is very obviously a man in a dress, complete with beard and sideburns. Here, you could spend an hour talking to someone without having a clue, only to discover the horrible truth when it's far too late. When someone tells you they've been seen on TV in Thailand, you really need to ask them to clarify what they mean.

It's impossible not to know what Walking Street is all about as soon as you arrive. Until recently, just as the main road swings around at the end of the strip and heads out of town, the entrance to the pedestrianised nightlife district was framed by a large brightly lit archway telling you exactly where you were - "Walking Street, Welcome to South Pattaya", it said in letters large enough to dazzle the sun. This sign was topped by a large picture of the king, which I think it's safe to say I found a little strange to say the least - I can't imagine Queen Elizabeth being particularly happy to see her image adorning the entrance to a massive sex club, but I guess this is just another example of culture shock Thailand style. Since my visit, this sign has apparently been replaced by a giant electronic billboard advertising the clubs of Pattaya, which many people say has taken away a lot of the charm of the place. Really, that's actually what they say. This giant, neon filled world of sex clubs and prostitution has lost some of it's charm since they put a billboard up. Hands down, this is the single most disturbing thing I've ever heard.

Prostitution - and that's exactly what Walking Street is all about beneath the thin veneer of legal strip clubs and casinos, is as illegal here as it is elsewhere, but widely tolerated. Rough looking bouncers who give the impression that they couldn't form a sentence without help hang about outside bars watching for any signs of the police, with the result that by the time the vice squad arrive on the premises, everybody is innocently sipping their drink and saying "Can I help you, officer?". There are regular raids, but you can tell that the hearts of the local police officers just aren't in it - it's clearly easier to watch over Walking Street with a beady eye and a certain amount of tolerance than it is to come down on it like a ton of bricks and drive everything underground - and I think I'll leave it there. A full debate on the rights and wrongs of what happens here is far beyond the scope of this blog. Depressing, yes. Wrong? You decide.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.