'Social Order' Takes the Life Out of Night Life
By JENNIFER GAMPELL
A long wooden table obstructs the entrance
to Silom Soi 2, a narrow pedestrian alley lined with gay bars a few blocks from
Bangkok's once-infamous red light district, Patpong. I'm going to D.J. Station,
a local club where gays and straights alike gyrate to earsplitting rhythms on
the cramped dance floor. Four burly men in jeans and T-shirts slouching at one
end of the table point to a prominent sign written in Thai and ungrammatical
English. No one under 20 can enter the soi (street) and everyone must present
valid ID, which for non-Thais constitutes an original passport (no photocopies)
or a driver's license.
Obviously over 20, I'm excluded from the ID formalities. "Have fun Auntie," one
of the bouncers mutters in Thai as he waves me through the barricade, probably
not realizing I understand him. A politer version of the ID checking process is
repeated outside D.J.'s, where once again I'm whisked through. However, my
20-year-old Thai-English companion's valid British driver's license receives
lengthy scrutiny before he is allowed inside.
Increasingly, going out on the town in Bangkok has become more of a hassle than
checking in for an international flight. At least after clearing airport
security and passport control, passengers can look forward to a smooth trip. But
once inside the dwindling number of international-standard Bangkok night spots,
patrons still face a potentially bumpy ride.
In early 2001 the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra began a
"social order" campaign to clean up the country's risqué image and also to halt
the supposed moral decay of its youth. (Mr. Thaksin dissolved Parliament on Feb.
24 and is acting as caretaker prime minister until new elections on April 2.)
The two local English-language publications — The Nation and The Bangkok Post —
periodically posit that the crackdown was inspired by unnamed prominent
politicians who couldn't control their own pampered offspring. Long-ignored 1981
legislation outlining entertainment licensing categories was resuscitated, and
contrary to the normally laissez-faire Thai attitude toward lawfulness, the
regulations began to be enforced.
To change Bangkok's decades-old reputation as a 24-hour party center, in 2002
the Thaksin government created three "entertainment zones" in which drinking and
dancing were allowed until 2 a.m. (According to one club owner, four years later
nobody knows the precise boundaries because the zoning law was never made
official.) Outside these zones, dancing was illegal and closing times were 1
a.m.
Of the trio of late-night zones, only Patpong would be familiar to visitors.
Significantly cleaned up over the last five years, the strip is naughty only in
so far as sanitized parodies of sex shows and hordes of stall vendors selling
overpriced tourist schlock could be considered salacious. Apart from the
long-running bar Tapas (Silom Soi 4) and D.J. Station, nothing in the Patpong
area qualifies as a trendy dance club.
The second zone is Royal City Avenue, known as R.C.A., a strip of youth-oriented
venues in central Bangkok catering primarily to Thais. Recently clubs like the
huge concrete Astra have started to attract a crowd of expatriates in their 20's
by importing hip D.J.'s (Amnesia Ibiza, Goldie and others). Even so, one night
at the 15-year-old Zouk bar in Singapore provides more real action and
excitement than you'd find in an entire week on R.C.A. The third zone,
Ratchadapisek, is a four-lane suburban road popular with Thai businessmen
seeking the kind of entertainment available at lavish multistoried massage
parlors with names like Love Boat and Colonze.
At first, club owners and customers didn't take the new laws seriously. After
all, this was Bangkok, where the police hung out drinking with foreigners until
dawn and a few hundred surreptitious baht resolved most official problems.
Besides, why would authorities undermine the urbane club scene developing in the
Sukhumvit area? That scene was catalyzed by the 1999 opening of Q Bar, a "New
York-style" lounge on Soi 11, followed by the raucous Ministry of Sound (Soi
12), the ultrachic Bed Supperclub (Soi 11) and the luxuriant Mystique (Soi 31).
Elsewhere, new hotel bars like 87 (at the Conrad), Tantra (Pan Pacific) and Met
Bar (Metropolitan) offered additional cosmopolitan choices.
But nothing deflates a thriving club scene like repeated unheralded visits by a
local constabulary intent on upholding "social order." And that is exactly what
has been happening over the last four years. Sometimes the raiding police are
accompanied by local TV crews. Exits are barred, music grinds to sudden silence,
lights flash on. Confused and scared patrons who a moment before were partying
down are suddenly confronted by brown-uniformed police officers who demand to
see their ID's, frisk them or occasionally force them to urinate in a cup to
test for drug use. The raids often last far beyond the 1 or 2 a.m. closing
hours. They have rarely netted any violators.
But these attempts to regulate Thai teenagers' behavior have severely limited
the nocturnal activities of over-20 clubbers and have of course been devastating
for the clubs they frequent. Ministry of Sound, Tantra and Mystique have closed,
and 87 is dead. Only Q Bar and Bed Supperclub remain active, and David Jacobson,
co-owner of Q Bar, says that they survive partly because no new international
investors will risk coming onto such an unpredictable club scene to provide
competition. "Bangkok is a dead town," he said. "It was one of the most fun
places in Asia." In March Q Bar is opening a branch in Singapore where it can
stay open 24/7, though closing hour will be 4 a.m.
Even Kurt Wachtveitl, general manager of the Oriental Hotel for 38 years,
weighed in on local night life in a Jan. 13 interview in The Bangkok Post:
"Wealthy people like to spend their money on things they enjoy, and they spend a
lot of money. But they don't want to go to bed early! If Bangkok continues to be
the kind of city that begins to look sleepy after midnight, it will be wasting
all its advantages to the upscale foreign visitors. They'll go to Beijing,
Shanghai and now Singapore."
Far from cleaning up the city's image, the social order campaign has spawned a
sordid — and unregulated — after-hours scene that unfolds on steamy sidewalks
and dark alleys behind second-story black-curtained windows. "You can't suppress
people," David Jacobson said. "They want to have a good time. It's human
nature."
An hour at smoky and cacophonic D.J. Station satisfies my dancing urges. Not
ready to call it a night, however, I decamp to Rain Tree Pub & Restauant, a tiny
bar near Victory Monument where Thai folksingers croon 1970's melodies known as
"songs for life." I adore these rapidly vanishing examples of traditional Thai
life and am having a fabulous time. Nonetheless, promptly at 1 a.m. the lights
come on, the band packs up, and I'm out on the streets of Bangkok, all dressed
up with no place to go. - New York Times