Silom Soi 4 and other Bangkok, Thailand Nightlife Tips

Nightlife Spot: Too many to name

This place was always hopping but the clientele seemed to change. There is a mix of foreign and Thai but probably more foreign. The soi is full of people and lined with bars and telephone booth-sized dance places. We had a great time our first trips there in '98 particularly at the Tapas bar. Lots of house music. A friend and i went again a year later and sat in front of a bar and felt out of place unless we were holding hands - everyone around us was gay. Then a year later we were there again and the crowd seemed to be all international school students - very young and monied.

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Theme: Nightclub
Dress Code: Anything you want. The tigher the better.
Address: Silom Soi 4
Directions: Next to Patpong

Nightlife Spot: The Saxophone

Good live music. On weekend nights they would hold blues jams that were amazing with lots of performers trading the spotlight. There was a tiny Asian blues singer who would belt out mindblowing vocals with great backup.
It starts out as a place to talk and listen to live music, but it gets louder as the evening progresses, and around midnight, it really starts to cook.
It is smokey and the Beer Singh flows well on draft.

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Theme: Live Music
Directions: SE side of Victory Monument (anusawaree chai) traffic circle in Bangkok

These are not favourites, but this and the next 2 tips are a slice of Bangkok night life. I'm not sure there is anything else quite like it but then my travels are not exhaustive. They are all skin markets more or less. They are Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza, and to a lesser extent, Patpong. I am not suggesting these places are for everyone, but they are an experience.

The least in-your-face of these is Patpong. Sure, there are lots of hustlers on the street trying to get you into the bars, but the vendor stalls almost drown out the flesh trade. The initially raunchy reputation has drawn tonnes of tourists over the years, and with that, vendors started to invade the area. It is now a family experience to walk thru the place and see anything and everything on sale. Behind the closed doors are girlie bars, still there with shows like live sex shows, women shooting darts and blowing up balloons - and not with their hands or mouths. I have never gone into the bars here, but they are more oriented to tourists. A walk down Thaniya Plaza in Patpong at night will take you past many many many lovely Thai working women that seem to be gushing out of their nightclubs onto the street. At one bar they are dressed up as Singapore Airlines flight attendants. This street houses quite expensive girlie bars that are geared toward Asian men. There was one good non-girlie bar called the Barbican in Thaniya Plaza that was a good hangout in 1999-2000, but do not know if it is still there.

One thing about Patpong - if you do decide to go into the bars, do not venture upstairs, even if staff invite you to. This is where the scams take place - where you cannot leave unless you pay a couple of thousand baht, situations like this. So be warned.

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Theme: Adult Spot
Dress Code: Then there is Soi Cowboy. This is located one street north of Sukhumvit Road, between sois 21 and 23. More low key crowd-wise, lower priced and lined with girlie bars. The girls hang around outside and want to talk to you as you walk by, trying to get you to their bar to by a drink so that they can collect a royalty. There aren't as many sex-type bars here - the workers are more laid back and often just want to chat and drink with you so that you can buy them drinks of which they get a cut. You can go here to watch sports on TV, and enjoy chatting up a Thai or just being on your own - employees don't stay on your case if you are just want to keep to yourself. Beers are not priced too high.
Clientele here and on Nana Plaza is 95% foreign male, quite a few expat regulars.
[Continued on next tip..]
Directions: Patpong - between Silom and Surawong Roads, Saladaeng Skytrain stop
Soi Cowboy - between Sukhumvit Soi 21 and 23, one block north of Sukhumvit Road

Nana Plaza is another experience. It is two floors of different bars full of live entertainment and hardly clothed to topless (if not less) working girls. They take their turns on stage, holding on to poles, doing mindnumbingly monotonous body palpitations, and if you think it is boring to look at, have a look at their faces - they are bored silly, but it brings them money. When they are not on stage they are trolling the bar for guys and girls who are looking like they will buy them a drink or take them home. It is pretty full contact at times for workers and their clients in the bar although management generally discourages this.
At Nana, there are lots of losers who get an ego boost by thinking these women are attracted to them physically. Hard Lesson #1 – if you have a big nose and white skin, you have money. That is the attraction.
I should mention that many of the bars-businesses in Nana are Australian owned – nice that they make money off the skin of other cultures.
Also, not all the girls are over 18, the legal age Thai women may have consensual sexual relations. Some lie to get the job.
Now, I am under no delusion that some of these women don’t take advantage of the cold-cocked bedazzled fat-walletted men that can’t believe someone so beautiful came and sat beside them out of a crowd of men, but for the most part, it is the women that are being taken advantage of in this situation. They are not there because they want to be, but they have to work somewhere. They don’t get a lot for doing this – 6000-8000 baht a month with long hours, but it is something they can do with little to no education. Plus whatever they get if they are taken out of the bar for more action in private (this might include necessary medical attention when some lout roughs her up).
To take them from the bar, you pay the manager 500 baht or so to compensate him/her for the lost income of not having her indoors swinging from the fire poles.

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Theme: Adult Spot
Dress Code: Usually coming from a poor northeastern province without a lot of opportunity, the women don’t have much choice. Often bars employ scouts to go to villages and entice the young women. So you hear stories of a girl’s cousin from her own village convincing her and her friends to come work at this great restaurant in Bangkok, and when she gets there, THIS is what she meant?
Unfortunately, another reason Thai women work here is in hopes of meeting a foreign guy that might take them back to their country, in which life is of course better than here in Thailand. We have all seen or heard of the movie “Pretty Woman”, right? Again, love has nothing to do with this – it is about survival, escape, and misconceptions of an easier life. Foreign men for some reason have the reputation of being kind husbands. This error in judgement can often lead to abusive relationships where the Thai woman is far from home and helpless.
I have seen and talked to too many of these people, before and after having arrived in Bangkok, having worked on the social development side, trying to change conditions that force women to have to go work in these exploitative jobs.
Keep in mind that at any of these bars the sweetie sidling up to you with the big smile and buxom bod might be a man. A good way to check is the Adam’s apple – prominent on males, but surgery is making it harder to see this. A scarf of some sort around the neck is a give-away.
Well, I am rambling. I don’t suggest that you go and become a purveyor of these “Thai goods”, but it is interesting to go a see what these places are like. Some argue that at least this employs people. If you do not agree with this subjugation of Thai women, don’t spend any money. If you can, sit and have a talk with one of the workers that speaks English, and listen to her story. It will leave you walking away with an empty feeling. These are some of the ill effects of tourism in Thailand.
Directions: On Sukhumvit Soi 4 close to Sukhumvit Road