me thinks OP has never been to Pats or is clueless. pattaya is a shithole. broke a tooth in LOS and was referred to an American dentist there. figured, 'why not, a trip to the beach'. there is no beach- just a small strip of barren sand on polluted water being patrolled by ladyboys and pimps. as to the girls... if you pay $100 for a girl in pattaya- you're really trying. you can't walk 5 steps down by the beach or the bar area without a pretty girl offering herself to you to 1000-1500 baht- a far cry from $100 (granted, at the dollar's current descent, it could be $100 one day!). and there is NO WAY IN HELL someone claiming to live there doesn't know this. 5 minutes there and i knew it- without searching it out either- it's just there- it's the only reason this town exists as near as i can tell. crime is more an issue there than other areas of Thailand and a reliable internet connection is more fantasy than reality. for scalpers- good luck. and when the internet goes down and you're in a position, best hope it's not nighttime in LOS, when every girl in the kingdom is doing her part to bring the cell bandwidth to an unusable crawl. cheap sex with hookers and bar conversation with dodgy s/ex-pats: yep. trader's paradise: uh, no.
Marc Faber lives somewhere in the north, in the middle of the Thai jungle. He was on Bloomberg saying they grow the best weed he has ever smoked.
There are "ladyboys" like there are gay bars in the United States. Those places are clearly marked so you can avoid and steer around them. No one is going to try to fool you and its fairly obvious who they are. If you are paying 1000-1500 baht for a woman then she is probably busted. The better looking women go for 2000-3000 (pay to the bar+her rate) baht per night in the quality go-gos. If you are looking at the beach for the talent, then you will pay 500 baht but the dental work and other things would be challenging for me to stomach. The pricing for women is an efficient market. In Manhattan, there are also prostitutes. The difference is that if you take a woman on a date in Manhattan, spend $100, well, you may never get laid. However, here its 100% chance. There are shitholes in Pattaya, but there are also plenty of shitholes in and around New York City. I might point out places like Paterson, East Orange, Newark and even parts of Stamford. Bronx, Harlem, etc. What you trade and how you trade it will dictate what you need technology wise. Do you really need a superfast connection and direct link to the market? My guess is most don't need that. It all depends. However, all I know is that I can look outside the window and see the ocean. The view is more scenic then any place in America. Everything is at a much lower price and there are good looking women down the street and a total party scene.
I can agree with some of the above mentioned. Thailand is a wonderful place to live ( I live there myself, in Chiangmai in the North) but Pattaya would be my last choice. To spend a weekend there can be fun sometimes but everywhere else in Thailand you have nicer people, more beautiful scenery, better beaches, cleaner seawater, cheaper accomodation etc. As far as internet is concerned, for my own use it is good enough. I'm not a scalper and mostly have to put in my orders only once a day.
Here is a different view of the condos. There are high-rise beach front condos like this all over Pattaya. Im not certain what more you could want. I guess some guys will always find something to bitch and complain about even if they are placed in a tropical paradise with unlimited access to women. There are not just Thai women here, but Russian and Eastern European. I have hundreds of photos of condo projects and other things. I think I know this place well enough.
I might add that when I was much younger, I too thought there was a difference between the prostitutes and non-prostitutes. However, I have since learned that both of them take your money and there is no real difference. I guess some guys here will have to age a bit more and get taken to the cleaners a few times to learn this lesson.