night life

I would be doing you a disservice not to mention, at least in passing, the thriving night life there is in Bangkok.

Perhaps I should also warn any grandparents reading to look away now, else I am woken in the night by the sharp intake of breath and tutting sound from right across the world.

Only joking, nothing sinful in here. At least, nothing to do with me.

Like any large city in any country in the world, in Bangkok there is plenty to do after sundown. However, Thailand has its own special way of dealing with vice and sin. It pretty much ignores them. There are laws against underage drinking and drink driving; there are even laws against go-go bars and prostitution, but these all happen in great abundance in the busier areas of Bangkok.

A typical night for an expat (let's say a school teacher, for the sake of argument) might follow this pattern. You'd go out for a meal then, once it was late enough, you'd head to one of the club districts. There are quite a lot of these, some are very close to home, but there's always a taxi driver willing to take you there (sober) and back (near-death and certainly wishing you were past it) for 700% of the usual price.

Once in one of these dens of sin, you try and enjoy yourself, forget the idea of a pleasant conversation and hope people with full salaries will buy you a drink.

Once this place shuts (around 1/2/3 am in some cases, depends on the police bribe issued), you could do the sensible thing and go home. This is, I have to admit, my favored option most nights, once the night has turned into a morning and I'm tired.

However, if this is unacceptable to you, this is Bangkok. No barrier to drunkenness and debauchery is strong enough. In other words, there are loads and loads of illegal nightclubs scattered around the city which, for a reasonably small entrance fee, will stay open till gone 5 or 6 in the morning. In theory therefore, you could go out straight from school and go straight into school again without going home at all.

After you've been fleeced by a taxi driver on the way home, this all begins to seem like a normal trip out in England, it's just that they don't last so damn long.

Cheers,
Dom.