Baronbonk.com; Tiger plaza gogos to the top on Bangla Road on Patong Beach

Animals R Bangla
It is almost two years to the day since I was last in Patong so I went in search of what is new and what is good. Of course not all changes are tsunami inspired. In fact far from it. Inevitably smaller new businesses have moved away from the mega costs of the beach front. Rat-u-Tit road and some of the new sois off it are beginning to happen. And the biggest danger they have faced this year is not a wall of water, but an empty town.
One new soi that caught my attention was the interestingly named Sukhumvit Road off Rat-U-Tit to the north of Bangla (left!). It looks like sooner or later it will hook up with Soi Bangla. It has several bars and the kind of unified sound system that seems to have (thankfully) replaced the older single bar system that often results in a gruesome cacophony of conflicting sound. This is a new bar soi and a massive construction is going on at the top end - another big disco perhaps? But it goes to prove that still one of the best crops if you own land in a beach resort is bars. Thailand is changing they keep telling me. No more bars! Yeah well tell the land owners and the police or who ever licenses them!
The place that really caught my attention was the Tiger Bar complex near the top (as opposed to beach end) of Soi Bangla. It was in its infancy two years ago but now it is the prime bar soi. The format here is the usual packed bar soi again with a unified music system. But the difference was that many bars employ what are effectively gogo dancers to dance on the bar, and in the bar. The girls wore less clothes than the girls in gogos. Here was another great Thailand conundrum: gogo bars we are told must go in Patong beach: bad for the image. But suddenly there are gogo dancers in normal bars as opposed to behind closed doors! This soi had a great atmosphere as well as many very alluring dancers. Of course the only bar with several dancers was the Cocktail and Dreams bar featuring modified boys whose strange dreams have already been converted to reality! The Crazy Horse was a popular bar early in the soi with some good dancers, but the nearest to gogo attire was the Hot Rock Bar featuring little girls wearing remarkably little, but with a mouth full of metal. One proudly displayed the two studs in her tongue, providing a graphic demonstration as to the use and possible applications of the two studs, giving new meaning to the description ‘metal head’!
A new soi to me was Soi Lion and it is basically just another bar soi with one of two of the former Sea Pearl bars turning up here. This must be a better location than Sea Pearl, even before the tsunami got involved. I had a couple of drinks and again there were a few girls dancing, but without the enthusiasm apparent at the Tiger complex.
Further down Soi Sea Dragon is undergoing changes as the gogos are simply going. The night I did try out these gogos, Playskool was closed at midnight due to lack of staff, and the two gogos at the far end opposite each other should have been closed because the only animals on display were overfed soi dogs. Apparently the regulatory pressure on the gogos is such that they will soon be extinct, well certainly at ground floor level. The result is Sea Dragon seems to have lost its way. It is a hotch potch of different bars in the shop houses most of which seem to have little if any direction. George still presides at the Rooster Bar and any direction he may have had disappeared as soon as the final whistle went at the Millennium stadium! The bars in the middle were the same as ever with a few name changes including a G Spot and Susie Wongs. Clearly these new bar owners visit Bangkok for inspiration!
Further down I looked into Soi Eric, which as ever was not exciting, and avoided the modified boys in Soi Crocodile, had a few games of cross 4 in Soi Gonzo, which has changed little in the fifteen plus years that I have known it. The same old bars with almost PC bar names such as Tahiti, Black Cat and Duck Tonight (I always wonder how that name came about!). Interesting to look at those names against the new breed of names in Tiger complex which included those mentioned as well as Wet Dreams and Jagger Bar. Bar owners were a bit more subtle back in those days. Maybe Patong will end up with a reputation-saving committee like Pattaya.
And still there is one more bar soi before the Beach Road - Soi Easy. A bit of a misnomer because business here has never been easy and it did not look any easier this trip.
Scruffy Murphy’s has just reopened after repairs following the tsunami. Friendly boss Ken told me his tsunami story and it seems they were very lucky that they lost nobody either here, or at Molly Malones. A trifle traumatized was the admission. Scruffy’s should be back up to full speed within a week or two and getting kitchen spares seems to be hampering progress. MM has yet to be sorted and that will take a month or two.
Elsewhere on Bangle Road I wandered into Rock Hard which seems to be about the only real gogo left in Patong. They do actually have a large number of pretty dancers and look like they are a gogo. They are now separated from the ground floor Café Rio which appeared to be doing okay with a kind of Hard Rock Café operation.
In Rat-u-Tit Road I revisited the Two Black Sheep run by Bill, an alcohol-challenged Kiwi. This bar has become a real locals’ hang out and is normally busy. It was packed for the Grand Prix and I had an excellent breakfast in a desperate attempt to mop up the previous days consumption!
The Tai Pan at the top of Soi Sunset is still going strong into the night. I tried partying with the rest but I fear that after about 3 am my constitution began to fail: all those enforced early nights in Bangkok! There are two other bars of similar ilk next to the Tai Pan. The Bayer Beach seemed to be doing better than VIP Asia but both were packed, as was the Tai Pan at 3 am.
I was only in Patong for three nights and I really needed longer to get round. However I did pop into Fawlty Towers now relocated next to the Ex-Pat Hotel. As well as a major hash pub, they are now doing food and have an excellent Thai chef who spent a long time in Europe and knows European food very well. Slight draw back is that he spent his time in Germany, and speaks good German, which is confusing for one ex-pat owner Scud, whose language skills are confined to those words in OED!
One thing that must be clear from this article is that there are more bars than ever in Patong. Seven major bar sois alone in Bangla Road with new sois waiting in the wings. Thailand’s tourism of the future is supposed to be directed at couples and nice people, not filthy sex tourists. Well if that is so, why has Bangla Road become bigger and better and more fun for a sex tourist than it was. Despite all those declarations and claims of the moral high ground, Patong this week end looked as much like Sin City as Pattaya. Or did I miss something!

Final note: I did have one excellent meal at the Rockfish n Kamala Beach. See write up on sister site Sam Worthington