When Ripley's Believe It or Not! opened in Pattaya, in 1995, there was one question on everyone's lips: why bother when the immediate surrounds are so much more incredible? A couple of decades on, the seaside-city resort is Thailand's premier adventure playground, pulling in close to a million visitors a month and serving up a phantasmagorical entertainment cocktail containing rather more than sun, sand, sea and the other thing. Just as Monopoly players end up on Go, at one time or another all travel articles about Pattaya land on Walking Street, known to those of a philosophical bent as the Old Kant Road.