Nightlife & Entertainment
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For many of Bangkok’s male visitors, nightfall in the city is the signal to hit the sex bars, most notoriously in the area off Thanon Silom known as Patpong. Fortunately, Bangkok’s nightlife has thoroughly grown up and left these neon sumps behind in the last ten years, offering everything from microbreweries and vertiginous, roof-top cocktail bars to fiercely chic clubs and dance bars, hosting top-class DJs: within spitting distance of the beer bellies flopped onto Patpong’s bars, for example lies Soi4, Thanon Silom, one of the city’s most famous happening after-dark haunts. Along with Silom 4, the high-concept clubs and bars of Sukhumvit and the lively, teaming venues of Banglamphu pull in the style-conscious cream of Thai youth and are tempting an increasing number of travelers to stuff their party gear into their rucksacks. Though Silom 4 started out as a purely gay area, it now offers a range of styles in gay, mixed and straight pubs, DJ bars and clubs, while the city’s other main gay area is the more exclusive Silom 2 (towards Thanon Rama IV). As with the straight scene, many gay bars feature go-go dancers and live sex shows. Those listed here do not. Most bars and clubs operate nightly until 1am, while clubs on Silom 4 and Silom 2 can stay open until 2am, with closing time strictly enforced under the current government’s Social Order Policy. This has also involved occasional clampdowns on illegal drugs, including urine testing of bar customers, and more widespread ID checks to curb under-age drinking (you have to be 21 or over to drink in bars and clubs) – it’s worth bringing your passport out with you, as ID is often requested however old you are.
On the cultural frond, the most accessible of the capital’s performing arts are Thai dancing, particularly when served up in bite-size portions in tourist shows, and the graceful and humorous performance at the Traditional Thai Puppet Theatre on Thanon Rama IV. Thai boxing is also well worth watching: live experience at either of Bangkok’s two main national stadia far outshines the TV coverage.
Bars and Clubs
For convenient drinking and dancing, we’ve split the most recommended of the city’s bars and clubs into three central areas. The travelers’ enclave of Banglamphu takes on a new personality after dark, when its hub, Thanon Khao San, becomes a “waling street”, closed to all traffic but open to almost any kind of makeshift idiosyncratic art works. Young Thais crowd the area to browse and snack before piling in to Banglamphu’s countless bars and clubs, most of which host a good mix of local and foreign drinkers and ravers. Venues here tend to be low-key, with free entry (though some places ask you to show ID first), reasonably priced drinks and up-to-date sounds, or there’s always plenty of kerbside restaurant tables, which make great places to nurse a few beers and watch the parade. Away from Khao San and nearby Soi Ram Bhuttri, Thanon Phra Athit is famous for its style-conscious little restaurant-bars where tables spill over onto the pavement, and the live music is likely to be a lone piano-player or guitarist.
Downtown bars, which tend to attract both foreign and Thai drinkers, are concentrated on adjoining Soi Lang Suan and Soi Sarasin (between Thanon Ploenchit and Lumphini Park), and in studentry Siam Square, as well as around the east end of Thanon Silom. Lang Suan and Sarasin boast several live-music bars, while the western end of the latter (between the jazz bar, Brown Sugar, and Thanon Rajdamri) supports a gaggle supports a gaggle of a good-time, gay and straignt, DJ bars that are very popular with young Thais at weekends. On Silom 4, while most of the gay venues have been around for some years now, other bars and clubs have opened and closed with bewildering speed. All the same – once you’ve passed through the ID check at the entrance – on a short, slow bar-crawl around this wide, traffic-free alley lined with pavement tables, it would be hard not to find somewhere to enjoy yourself. If, among all the choice of nightlife around Silom, you do end up in one of Patpong’s sex shows, watch out for hyper-inflated bar bills and other cons – plenty of customers get ripped off in someway, and stories of menacing bouncers are legion. Thanon Sukhumvit also has its share of girlie bars and bar-beers (open-sided drinking halls with huge circular bars) packed full of hostesses, but it’s also garnering quite a reputation for high-concept “destination bars” (where the décor is as important as the drinks menu), as well as being the home of several long-established British-style pubs.
During the cool season (Nob-Feb), an evening out at one of the seasonal beer gardens is a pleasant way of soaking up the urban atmosphere (and the traffic fumes). You will find them in hotel forecourts or sprawled in front of dozens of shopping centres all over the city.
