The FARANG Speaks 2 Much (tfs2m)

So let’s take some time out from the Big Three naughty nightlife areas (Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy and Patpong), and take a gander at some of the alternatives. This article’s just a basic overview - each area will be examined in more detail in the near future - and feel free to suggest areas I haven’t covered yet.

nb. I’m not currently too interested in covering regular (ie. non-naughty) bars/nightclubs; there are plenty of those in our home countries…

Sukhumvit soi 4

Soi 4 isn’t just Nana Plaza and Nana Disco - there are plenty of beer bars and pool halls around here if you take off the blinkers. Starting with the Morning Night beer bar, whose DJ seems to own precisely one album (Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Greatest Hits), you can wander up past Nana Plaza and the Nana Hotel, to the Golden Beer Bar, facing Nana Plaza’s own beers bars in Lucky Luke’s and Big Dogs.

Further up the soi, the beer bars continue, and pool tables become more numerous until we hit the Swan Bar, where you’ll find more pool tables than you can shake a stick at, a big screen featuring either music videos or sports, and to be perfectly honest, rather overpriced drinks for a pool hall (฿100 and up).

Sukhumvit soi 7/1

When I first came to Bangkok, soi 7/1 contained only the world-famous Eden Club and a couple of rather lost-looking bars. Now it’s an explosion of colours and sounds, featuring the premier after-hours venue in Tequila Dragon, live music every night at Absolute 7 Bar, and in Magic Table it even has a gogo bar.

In between these three lie a number of beer bars; many now containing pool tables and/or offering food. A few hotels and “sexy massage” touts make up the numbers, and Subway tops it off with overpriced sandwiches and reclining freelancers for all.

Sukhumvit soi 22

Sukhumvit soi 22 is not only chock-full of bargirl’s apartments, it also contains a staggering number of oft-ignored bars. Starting with Flyers, the pool hall on the corner, you can wander up past a host of “happy ending” massage parlours, and a number of smaller bars including Tina - one of only two gogo bars I’m aware of located outside Nana, Cowboy and the Pong (the other is soi 7/1’s Magic Table - see above). You can then either turn left into Washington Square (see below) or on to the huge host of beers bars in and around soi 22’s Queen’s Park Plaza.

These bars, much like those at Washington Square, seem to cater for the older resident crowd, although tourists are also rife. They’ll generally contain a pool table, a half-dozen or so “girls”, and an arsenal of reasonably-priced booze. The resident ladies, friendly as they may be, are generally that little bit more um, mature than those found in the more traditional venues though. And since this writer’s still on the vernal side of thirty, he prefers to seek his jollies elsewhere.

Soi 22 does now also include a few classier venues such as Titanium. Head upstairs in here and you’ll find a bar carved out of solid ice. Bring an overcoat…

Sukhumvit soi 33

Soi 33 seems to be the spiritual home of the ex-pat with a superiority complex. Sneering at the “sex-pats” who frequent the chrome pole labyrinths, the denizens of Soi 33’s “painter” bars (the bars are (mostly) named after artists such as Renoir, Van Gogh, Degas, Monet etc) flirt with girls who are wearing evening dresses rather than bikinis, and hilariously will pay double or triple prices for their drinks and barfines. A small Heineken will set you back the best part of ฿200, with the bar-fine set at anything up to ฿2,000.

Of course, the ladies in question are exactly the same Issan girls you’ll find in the gogo bars, and will have exactly the same tattoos and stretch-marks under those dresses. Still, in Thailand appearance is so often everything. I fail to see the point of these establishments myself, but some people (Bangkok Bob, for example), seem to adore them. Soi 33 does boast a few more of those “happy-ending” massage parlours, another S&M club in Demonia, and on the side-soi 33/2 you’ll find The Office Bar & Grill, which isn’t a bad place to watch live sport on TV, with draught beer available at a much more sensible ฿59.

Washington Square

Centered around the ladyboy cabaret theatre, Mambo, Washington Square is the favoured haunt of the Bangkok old-boys - Trink himself would wax lyrical about the Square back in the day, but its current champion is none other than everyone’s favourite xenophobe/loudmouth/racist, local “author” Dean Barrett.

Wander around the square, which is situated between Sukhumvit sois 22 and 24, and you’ll come across a host of bars, some of which may offer food (Bourbon Street apparently do some very tasty American “cuisine”), pool, and decent (or otherwise) beer. All offer female company, of course, but as on Soi 22, these ladies are perhaps a little more mature than I am, and I shall spare them my company until such time as age catches up with me…

Anywhere Else?

Rachada and RCA feature a ton of cute girls in their nightclubs, but you can’t barfine them, so they’re not quite what I’m looking to cover here. Thong Lo has a few “Hi-So” pubs and bars, but again they’re not quite “naughty nightlife”. Same goes for the discos up on Ekkamai and the Thai drinking holes on New Petchburi Road. There’s a ton of gay bars and “boy” gogos on Suriwong Road behind Patpong, but I’d frankly rather leave that for someone else to report on. Sukhumvit One Plaza is just dire, and the “soapy” massage parlours will have their own section on the site, coming (inevitably) “soon”. But we’ve still only visited the areas around Sukhumvit and Silom Roads - where next?