Pattaya Nightlife News and Reviews

Stickman reports that manager Ricky has been fired from Sisterz. No doubt he will find another opening soon.

Strange that the buzz not so long ago, was that Ricky was an owner.

The bar seemed to be going well for those liking a show and drinks. For me, the bar never seemed to get customers hooked up with the girls.

Meanwhile the low season has claimed another victim with the Russian music venue, Ocean 10 closing its doors.

Despite the change of nationalities strolling down Walking Street, perhaps Pattaya is not yet ready for too many bars that are both expensive and non sexy.

I have never quite got the hang of this bar. It seems just a matter of luck whether the girls are feeling naughty or demure.

There are a fair few pretty girls and perhaps not quite enough customers. So the girls can get a little bored. But if you catch them at the right time, they can be a lot of fun.

The table dancers used to look for tips but the excess of table dancing venues tended to put a stop to this style of operation.

The chances of bagging a pretty girl for a bit of fun on your lap make this bar worth a visit, but one should be ready to make a quick departure when there is nothing doing.

I stayed long enough to witness one of the most un-erotic shows on Walking Street. Two girls not interacting, not dancing and taking any clothes off whatsoever.

There wasn't much else to do in the bar either. It seems seriously short of girls and the mamasang sets them all dancing to try and look as if there is more going on there is.

One dancing girl was trying to ask for a drink via signals from the stage but that does little except make me drink up quicker.

Maybe just bad luck with the timing but I guess not.

At a prime time visit, the bar was very lively. Plenty of whooping and holloring as the guys were lining up to throw ping pong balls and cash at the girls.

It was clear that most of the high spirits were down to holiday fun and the novelty value of a gogo.

From an expat point of view I don't really see why it should be so popular. The girls were distinctly average (that's not to say that there aren't pretty girls, the Walking Street average is pretty good). The drinks prices are on the high side too.

My only theory as to why the bar attracts holiday makers is simply down to the rather good name, particularly as Thee Dollhouse is a well known chain of lap dancing bars in USA.

The girls were not being friendly to me though. They probably spotted the micro gesture of disdain towards the frequent attempts to sell me ping pong balls.

Still you can't knock a bar where everyone is laughing and having fun...you just have to quietly go somewhere else.

People have always wondered why Pattaya doesn't have a venue for freelancers along the lines of Bangkok's Beer Garden on Soi 7.

Well bar owner Pattaya Pete (previously of FLB) has bought a venue that he hopes will emulate the success of the Beer Garden. The venue is hardly a garden though, as it is at the back of the Pier Complex overlooking the sea.

It is a large venue and will feature reasonable prices so as to encourage customers and girls to hang around and buy a few drinks. There will be no bar fines.

The workmen are currently busy so further news soon. The bar will be named Pattaya Beer Garden.

Pook Bar on Soi 6 is being renovated during March and will reopen on April 1st.

As reported previously, the GoGo idea is being dropped and the upstairs area will now become a lady boy body massage parlour.

I've always had a soft spot for this bar because it always seemed like they were trying, even when it wasn't working too well, and I quite liked the original layout of theatre stage and runway, which was unique and suited some of the shows very well. It now has a center island stage just like nearly every other go-go.

The supposed aim of the remodeling is to get the girls closer to the customers, pity no one has explained this to the dancers, because you're more likely to be entertained by a service girl. When I suggested a ladydrink to a dancer sitting near me I pretty much had to explain the concept. She then sipped the drink while staying a demure six inches away from me. Not my idea of getting closer to a customer.

At least the bar now has service girls, which is an improvement, but instead of replacing the service boys they seem to be supplementing them. Curiously, the manager was formerly of Carousel, which also has service boys. Perhaps he likes them. Anyway, I'm pretty sure customers don't because there is always the suspicion that they are the boyfriends of the girls, which is inhibiting.

While the remodel does make room for an extra row of bench seating, which is a definite plus, this bar has always had seating layout problems. The benches seem to have been made for a different bar, being shorter than the wall they are up against, and apparently nobody can figure out what to do with the corners.

The bar has always had a cold feel with its stone floor and glass tables, and the remodeling seems to be trying to take the edge off this with some artificial plants, including hanging some plastic pot plants from the ceiling. It looks as ridiculous as it sounds.

The shows seem to me to be not quite as good as they were, but they are pulling in the customers. Perhaps Roxy is The Future Of Entertainment as it claims.

The 2 Donna Bar is located in the centre of the Jomtien Complex on Thappraya Road.

The two partners are Joy and Dow who are at the bar every day and night, they will sit down and introduce themselves to all new customers and are not shy about buying a drink (or accepting one!!). Both are pretty well known in Jomtien and seem to know everyone that comes in or passes the bar.

No pool table but all the live English Premier League games are shown.

Prices are lower than most bars, (except next door where drinks are almost given away) beer 50-70 baht, shorts pretty cheap and lady drinks are the standard 90 baht.

Loads of girls, 15 at the moment, nothing too stunning, but a few are pretty cute all can talk English, some young some not so young and one Katoey, all the girls are pretty good crack and up for a laugh, especially if you go inside the bar and close the doors.....

The younger cute ones disappear most night before 10.00 so get there early for a better choice

Barfines are the standard 300 baht, no ST rooms but the girls will take you round the corner if you want,

Verdict, nice atmosphere good reasonable priced drinks and a good bunch of girls with two owners who will make you very welcome.

Gulliver's, the well known Bangkok restaurant and bar comes to Walking Street from 21st March.

It is located just a few metres from the Beach Road end of Walking Street.

The Bangkok branches are also well known for attracting freelancers.

There is already a branch in North Pattaya but its isolated location meant that it has had little impact on Pattaya's night life.

Update: Walking Street

The bar is actually named Walking Street and is displayed as if a London Underground station sign

Catz is a well presented bar at the smaller end of the scale although not as small as some. It is set out as a classic "shoebox" go-go with comfortable bench seating down both sides and a narrow island stage in the middle. The bench on the right is sub-divided into three booths but they are too large to be considered private having two tables each.

There are about fifteen average girls, a couple eye-catching, a couple less so. The dance roster is one-on one-off with over half the girls on stage at a time. There are no shows.

My first visit was initially off-putting, the girls weren't showing at all and they all seemed to be wearing Morality Ministry issue customerproof knickers. However the girl that volunteered to take care of me was willing to show me anything I liked once the ladydrink was ordered so the on-stage modesty was probably just because the police were on the prowl.

My second visit went completely the other way. This time the girls were showing and the customerproof knickers were gone but so, apparently, was the warm welcome. I bought a girl a ladydrink but when the girl I had spoken to previously came off stage and came over, the first girl just walked off. The girl who had entertained me before knocked back a couple of ladydrinks and went back on stage without making much of an effort, and I got the distinct impression I wasn't supposed to come back.

I could have just been unlucky in my choice of girls but they didn't seem to want to entertain or be bar-fined, although they were happy to take the ladydrinks. I felt my money was welcome but I wasn't. Tellingly, on neither visit did the bar have more than a handful of customers, none of whom were being particularly well entertained.

One visit to Catz is quite enough.

Champagne A-GoGo is the latest casualty on the closed GoGos list.

However the reason is down to licensing paperwork and the bar will re-open as soon as it is sorted.

Better news from Soi 15 where Rock Girls has re-opened.

So for the moment, the gogo count stays at 77

Taboo Club was padlocked as of 17th March 2007. It seems that the March lull is shadowing that of the US banking sector.

Maybe good news at Magic Palace A-GoGo though as there are plans for some sort of rescue attempt. But for the moment Pattaya is down to 77 girl gogos operating.

Ray visited Taboo just before its closure his comments turned out to be more of a post mortem than a review

Review by Ray: Don't Go There

The last time I visited this bar it had been packed for a dance competition so I was quite unprepared for the scene of desolation that greeted me when I swept the curtain aside and stepped in. Peering into the gloom I found one, two, yes two other customers. Not terribly popular then.

This is a medium to large square bar with a center stage and a couple of satellite stages. There is bench seating around the walls, tables and stools scattered about and a sofa in the corner. The decor is industrial basement and the lighting is Saturday Night Fever.

Which is this bar's main problem, it clearly thinks it's a disco. Spotlights seem to be aimed haphazardly and motorised lights sweep around the room straight across customer's eyelines. I noticed the other two customers were carefully sitting in the corners where the search lights didn't reach. Does the management need pictures?

The girls are average, which is to say a couple are eye catching, but were not showing on either of my two visits. They are arbitrarily divided into dancers and showgirls, dancers wear bikinis, "show" girls wear considerably more. The dancers I treated to a ladydrink were friendly enough but because of the bizarre dance roster, the showgirls do a number and then the dancers do one, they were popping up to go dance every three minutes. More yo-yo than go-go and not conducive to more than a single drink.

This bar gives every impression of being owned by an absentee falang, maybe he'll come back soon and sort it out. Until then, Taboo means "don't go there".

Changes are afoot in Soi 8. The owner of the old Prince Hotel (Mr Mike Shopping Mall) recently informed the beer bar owners of hid plans.

He wishes to expand the current bar complex and to finish renovating the old Prince hotel. The new hotel will have approx 200 rooms and be known as the Baron Hotel. It's main entrance will be via Soi 9, however there will be a walkway via Soi 8 past Cherry Bar to the hotel.

The beer bar complex (to be known as Baron Beer Bar Complex) will have a total of 20 new beer bars and 2 disco / gogo bars.

The good news is will there will one DJ sound system for the whole complex, security to keep out vendors and brand new sexy bars.

The bad news is that to have a new bar, means the old one has to be knocked and a new one built. The date for this to happen is the 1st May. He is saying this will take only one month to do, but living in Thailand and being pessimistic, it will probably be two!

As was reported here, X-Zone has acquired a mamasan and a few showgirls from the more popular Windmill Club. On my first visit it seemed that importing a couple of dirty girls and their sexy show into an otherwise ordinary go-go was a bit of a gimmick, unlikely to last, but it was early, both in the week and in the evening, and so I decided to check it out again at weekend peak time.

It's often occurred to me that the larger bars could try a little harder to provide secluded corners for private play. I'm not particularly shy myself but I do sometimes resent providing a free show for tightwads. The three booths on the right as you enter X-Zone are just what I have in mind.

On my second visit most of the girls were busy taking care of customers but the rear corner booth was occupied by a couple of dejected girls apparently too plain and small breasted to attract any custom. On the principle that if there's one thing a girl hates more that being pulled about by an unattractive customer it's not being pulled about at all, I ordered up a couple of ladydrinks and set about getting them out of their bikinis, which took about five seconds.

In the privacy of out little corner we soon had some very uninhibited play going on and the Windmill girls were quickly matched and surpassed. All it cost me was a couple of ladydrinks and red notes, good value in my book. Ironically, they ask you to go outside if you want to smoke a cigarette.

X-Zone is finally starting to live up to its name.

Pattaya's GoGo bars seem to be suffering at the moment with yet another closure.

Rock Girls A-GoGo has closed on Soi 15 jut off Walking Street

The casualty list this year now reads:

• Magic Palace A-GoGo
• Rock Girls A-GoGo
• Fun Room A-GoGo
• Y.U? Club
• The E Gothic A-GoGo

And lady boy gogos:

• Pook A-GoGo
• Tornado A-GoGo
• Goldfingers A-GoGo

There are still 78 girl gogos still going though.

Magic Palace A-GoGo has now been dark for a couple of nights.

The rumours are that the farang owner has done a runner and that the girls have already dispersed to other bars. Doesn't look good for Magic Palace.

Meanwhile Fun Room A-GoGo on Soi 15 is oscillating between open and closed and is currently closed.

This reduces the gogo count down to 79.

Still smoky and a full place. It is a shame such a small place gets packed with smokers leaving no air to breathe for others. I had a real headache just after one hour.

People stay in front of you waiting for you to leave to get a place, kind of stressful.

Lady drinks are now 110, not 100 as previously reported.

The thrust of 2 meetings at Alcazaar this week is that the Government is keen on early closing of bars and has threatened some more severe enforcement measures to get what they want.

It seems that the closing time for Pattaya's entertainment zone is 2am. This zone covers most of Pattaya bars between 3rd Road and the beach from Walking Street to Pattaya North Road (maybe the Naklua bars are in the Naklua entertainment zone).

Unfortunately the bars on the Darkside are outside the zone and hence should close at 1am (although midnight was mentioned in one report)

There were also worrying mentions of 18:00 as an opening time. Also it is not clear how strict these closing times will be for beer bars which have rarely being forced to close early (although they have sometimes had to turn out the lights and music).

The discos and nightclubs also seem to be under the same cosh and as soon as the police have finished ensuring that the gogos close at 2am then the police have then been closing the discos such that most are closed by 2:30 or 3am.

There have also been mentions of bikini requirements but these seemed sporadic in a tour of gogos last night with plenty of bars still showing but some covered up.

Local Police are currently enforcing a 2am closure of bars in accordance with instructions from Central Government in Bangkok who would like to see all late night entertainment venues around Thailand close at this time.

The Policy appears not to affect the closure of open air bars such as beer bars which are not being closed and remain open sometimes around the clock. How long this closure policy will remain in force is unknown.

Over the weekend, Police Lieutenant General Jeatanagorn, the Commander of Region 2 Police conducted a brief inspection of bars along the entire stretch of Walking Street to ensure that bars were closing at 2am and patrons were aged over 20 in accordance with the law.

He was happy that bars were complying with the Law and the current closure policy.

Bit tricky to find, this bar, it's tucked under the Polo Entertainment Centre and its entrance is permanently obstructed by the crowd of rubberneckers gawking up at the gyrating Natasha in the Galaxy Cabaret window.

Once you do manage to locate it you will find a bar that's deeper than it's wide with the front section set up as a standard go-go and the rear section fitted out with a jacuzzi and a sexy show table.

I've visited this bar a few times now and I think I'm getting the hang of it. I picked out a dancer that caught my eye on the way through and went back to check out the show. To my surprise the showgirl and my dancer seemed to hit it off and as there weren't too many other customers around we soon had a nice three way going.

When the show was over the showgirl leant over and whispered to me that she was really pleased I had brought that particular dancer over as she fancied her herself but hadn't had an excuse to get her hands on her before!

Lollipop is rapidly moving up my personal league table.

Three Baby Dolls have moved to this bar and I popped in to see how they were doing. I'd never been in here before and found it perfectly OK. However, I was being taken care of by girls I already knew, so on my second visit I tried to look at the bar more objectively.

The first thing I noticed was that most customers were sitting in groups chatting to each other and I started to get a TQ2 vibe. The girls confirmed to me that there was little hands-on going on because the customers didn't want it, not because the girls didn't, and that lady drinks were hard to come by.

The mother of all jacuzzis is a also bit of a disappointment, being set low in the floor right at the back of the bar, and as the doormen will inevitably show you to a stool at the front you could visit the bar several times and not realise it was there.

The stage is unusually large, having eleven poles in 3-2-4-2 formation. I found myself thinking of them as defenders, midfield, front line and wingers. On several occasions the poles were not all occupied. There is a glass floor above the stage and occasionally a couple of girls would go up there and lark about.

The girls are a pretty ordinary bunch, a few outstanding but mostly pretty average. On my first visit three or four girls were dancing naked, on my second they were all bikinied up. I heard a rumour in the previous bar I visited that the police were on the prowl and maybe that was why, but on neither visit did the bar look remotely like the photo on the web site.

With its average girls, mostly voyeuristic customers and superfluous "security", Club Boesche is what a Walking Street go-go would look like if you transplanted it to the US.

In the many opportunities for contemplation offered by bars where the girls seem to regard me as The Wrong Sort Of Customer, I have formed my own view of what makes a great bar. It's fairly simple really: lots of attractive, uninhibited girls wearing as little as possible in a space big enough to hold lots of them but small enough to keep them in close proximity to the customers.

This is just such a bar. Sure, there are experiments with the usual gimmicks, the jacuzzi show, the corner coyote dancers, but nobody pays much attention to them and I doubt they add a single baht to the bottom line. For all practical purposes a bar is the girls, and you won't find a friendlier, sexier bunch than this anywhere.

New Living Dolls One implements a winning formula perfectly. Long may it prosper.

2am closing seems set to be coming to Pattaya.

There is a meeting on Monday the 10th March at Alkazar, to introduce/discuss/inform all of the new enforcement policy regards places of entertainment and their closing times!

Also to discuss different licenses and music licenses and how they intend to deal with the drug issue and the bar owners responsibility.

Pattaya police joined the fray seeking an early shutdown of bars. Last night the police raided clubs and discos to enforce a 3am closure.

Y.U? Club in Jomtien has locked its doors. It had seemed to be struggling for a long time. It is always tough trying to run a small gogo bar. Not big enough when there is an influx of customers and goes desperately short of dancers after a couple of barfines.

Maybe advertising karaoke is not a good way to get farangs in either.

The bar opened in June 2006 as a bar/disco but converted to gogo in Jan 2007.

There are now 81 girl gogos currently operating.

I dropped by this bar a couple of weeks ago to see if anything had changed and found it had been taken over by a group of young English lads who were monopolising all the girls not on stage.

Feeling old and unloved I drunk up and left.

As I believed the owner was a relatively young English guy? I thought this was a typical night. Obviously not.

Phuket bar, discotheque and pub owners will be given a 90-day grace period before police begin to strictly enforce a 2 am closing time at all nightlife venues on the island, authorities have announced.

Nightlife venue owners will be given 90 days, from February 28, before police will begin arresting bar owners who fail to comply, Col Grissak told the Gazette a few days later.

The new initiative follows an order by newly-installed Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobumrung.

Noting that pubs and nightclubs were supposedly used by youths as a place to experiment with and trade in narcotics, he said better compliance with existing closing times would be a key part of his campaign against drug abuse.

Minister Chalerm threatened to punish police officers, district chiefs and other officials who failed to strictly enforce anti-drug measures at entertainment venues, Phuket Governor Niran Kalyanamit said at the monthly meeting of provincial government officers, which he chaired at Phuket Provincial Hall on the morning of February 27.

The strict enforcement of closing times had slackened considerably while the country was under post-coup martial law and remained slack after the National Legislative Assembly was appointed as the interim government.

While there were reports of some unlicensed beer bars being closed down in Kathu after Minister Chalerm’s order, Kathu District Chief Khantee denied that either officials or police had been distributing yellow warning cards to venues found in violation, as reported by one Thai language newspaper.

Now we are forcing all bars to send their guests home at 2 am, but we are not charging them. We also found some venues employing girls under 18 and closed them down, Chief Khantee told the Gazette.

The 2 am closing time would cost local businesses money, but both the laws and goals of the anti-drug campaign need to be respected, he said: I believe that if nightlife venues close up at 2 am, tourists will begin their night out on the town earlier. This is also a good opportunity to let tourists know about the anti-drug campaign .

Sompetch Moosophon, President of the Patong Entertainment Business Association (PEBA), said he plans to meet Chief Khantee soon and push for Patong to be exempted from the 2 am closing time, which he sees as incongruous with the needs of most visiting tourists: In my opinion, the 2 am closing time is not appropriate because many tourists who visit Patong like to stay out drinking and partying all night long…This is the special appeal of Soi Bangla as far as tourists are concerned.

The PEBA has already begun distributing an English-language questionnaire to visiting tourists to see how they feel about enforcement of the 2 am closing time. The results will be presented to both Chief Khantee and Gov Niran, he said.

A closing time of 3 am, extended to 4 am or 5 am during the high season, would be appropriate, he said.

After showing recent danger signs of getting lady boys in, Pook Bar has closed on Soi 6.

There is a notice redirecting customers to Pook Bar on Soi Buakhao (swan House).

Betty Boup always seems to have a fair few customers so it must be doing something right.

The bar is basically a short time bar. But the method of selecting a girl is far superior to the Soi 6 norm of momentary glance as you walk past. At Betty Boup you can relax a little before making up your mind. You can have a drink and a look around with out committing. And even watch the dancing.

The girls are generally fun on your lap, but of course are pretty quick to suggest retiring upstairs.

There's a wide range of girls in the bar, both in looks and outlook.

I've had a very mixed bag of good times and not so good in the bar but it is always worth a return visit.

Maybe I hit that bar at a bad time but it was not a fun place to be. In fact it was very much like the rather dour Hooty's of a year ago.

There were plenty of girls in the bar huddled on one side without making much effort at mingling with the customers. The gogo dancing was fully bikini clad and even the show girl got no further than taking her top off.

There were no girls dancing at the small podiums amongst the audience.

There were a fair few customers giving the bar the once over though. Perhaps it was just me that considers this bar as poor value for its overpriced beer.

X Zone seems to have had a revival of fortune and has attracted a room full of pretty girls. The customers seem to have appeared from nowhere.

From a couple of enquiries, the improvement is down to the recruitment of a mamasang from Windmill who had a following of pretty girls. And of course the girls are well trained in providing some good naughty shows which are now performed at various points around the bar.

Certainly worth a follow up visit.