One Night in Bangkok

One Night in Bangkok

Bangkok is rapidly establishing itself as Asia's capital of cool, with excellent live music, jazz-and-blues clubs, hip bars, dance venues, and great restaurants. Nightlife across Bangkok has something for everyone, whether you want to sip a few beers at a pub on Khao San Road, dance at a trendy nightclub along Sukhumvit Road, or see seedy Patpong.

Due to a steady expat population, the city has a number of British and Irish pubs, most with live folk, pop, and rock music. Japanese newcomers have made karaoke bars a staple of Bangkok nightlife as well. And Thailand's own high society ("hi-so's") of the beautiful and young can be seen carousing at swish hotel bars and dancing in clubs so luxe that you have to line up behind black velvet ropes to get in. Thais most often hit the clubs in groups. It's common practice for a group to invest in a bottle of whiskey to be shared among friends. The younger generation enjoy parties, and often host them in different venues around the city.

To keep up with the times, drinks have taken on an entirely new look. Bar owners pay big bucks to fly in "international mixologists" from pedigree nightclubs and bars to act as consultants. These mixologists create drinks using spices, flowers, herbs, and tropical fruit. As traditional drinks gather dust on the shelves, new drinks that caught on include: Blood Orange Caipiroska; Mai Thai made with cucumber, coriander, and chili vodka; Mint Mule, which uses honey vodka as its base with ginger and mint leaves; and the infamous Tom Yumtini, made with chili and lemongrass, a martini you can only find in Bangkok.

In an effort to crack down on late-night clubs and the drug and sex tourism associated with them, in March 2004 the Thai government posed a midnight curfew for all go-go bars, massage parlors, bars, pubs, and nightclubs. The quest to rebrand the country as a land of beaches, temples, and sunshine immediately caused a huge outcry from club owners and workers, who warned that tourism would be hurt by the curfew and unemployment would skyrocket. Authorities compromised a few months later by dividing Bangkok into zones, allocating each area to have a different curfew, which moved back last call to 2 AM for some businesses. Nowadays, restaurants, pubs, and cafés close at midnight, and bars, nightclubs, and massage parlors at 2. These curfews are not set in stone. There is always a rotating cast of after-hours places staying open until 5 or 6 AM, and many owners have contested that certain establishments linked to the government are allowed to stay open later.

-Wendy Kassel