Sanctuary of Truth to South Pattaya before the light goes

How people actually make this trip

• By baht bus

  The wooden temple stands off a numbered Naklua soi at the far north of the city, past the point where the beachfront loop turns back. Getting out means first getting back to the roundabout at the top of Second Road.

• Where you change

  One change at that roundabout, then the beachfront loop south. It is the same transfer as the Naklua beaches use, and it is the only one on the route.

• By motorbike taxi

  The Naklua sois are narrow and the walk out of them to the main road is longer than it looks on a map, which is why the first leg is often done on two wheels rather than on foot.

What you pass, in order

1. The temple grounds on the shoreline
2. The numbered Naklua soi out to the main road
3. The roundabout at the top of Second Road — the transfer
4. The beachfront run south past the malls

Where this goes wrong

Coming out of the soi and turning north because the main road looks the same in both directions. North of here the city thins out fast, and the return traffic thins with it.

Daytime and evening are not the same trip

The temple closes for the day well before the town gets going, so this route is walked in daylight in one direction and after dark in the other. The northern leg is the one that empties out first, and it empties before the beachfront does.

The visit ends before the town starts

The temple is a daytime destination: it closes for the day well before the city's evening begins. That produces an unusual shape for a journey. You travel out in full daylight and back at the point when the north of the city is emptying, not when it is filling up, so the return leg is quieter every minute you delay it rather than busier.

For anyone planning to visit the shop on the same outing, this is the whole of the practical advice: the northern leg is the constraint, not the southern one. Once you are back on the seafront run you are inside the part of the network that keeps going; before that you are dependent on a stretch that thins early.

Getting out of the soi is the real first leg

Naklua's numbered sois are narrow, walled and longer than they look on a map, where they appear as short spurs off the main road. On the ground they are the part of the trip where you cannot see very far ahead and where nothing much passes, which is why the first leg out to the main road is often done on two wheels rather than on foot even by people who would happily walk the same distance elsewhere.

The other thing about them is orientation. Inside a walled soi you lose the sea as a reference, and a wall on both sides removes every cue the rest of this city gives you for free — no shopfronts, no water on one side, no traffic noise coming from a direction you can name.

Questions people ask about this route