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Srinakarin Road nightlife
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Photo of the Memory Club, Srinakarin Road
If you are interested in nightlife away from the farang areas of Sukhumvit, Silom and Khao Sarn Road, you may want to have a look at the options in a different part of town; specifically near Srinakarin Road. On Saturday night I met my friend Kenny at Onnut BTS station, and we grabbed a taxi to Srinakarin Road. The cab ride took about 15 minutes.
This is absolutely, 100% a Thai area. Farang are not to be found.
The stretch of road we were on held a bunch of different types of nightlife venues: karaoke bars and lounges, restaurants, private member clubs and hostess clubs.
We had no particular destination in mind… it was a night to explore and see what the area had to offer. The one thing that we knew was that I was unlikely to see any other farang.
We told the taxi driver to stop in front of a club where I’d been before: the V-club. I’d had a couple of good nights there, but my last visit was lame. Since I knew exactly where it was located we went there. We walked into the V club at 10 p.m. and it was empty. Completely deserted.
Now, this isn’t that unusual at Thai venues, where the action often doesn’t get going until 11 or midnight, so we decided to order a drink and see what eventuated. But the service was slow, there were no girls in sight, they didn’t have the drink we wanted to order and the menu prices seemed expensive. We decided to just get out of the club.
We had passed a few dozen clubs on the way, so we decided to u-turn and go back the way we came. We ended up going about 300 meters to the large intersection where we saw a large club with a brightly lit sign. The sign was in Thai, and it only had two characters in the name, so it should have been easy to read. But they were using an unusual font and I couldn’t figure out one of the characters so I don’t know the name. It may have been เๆ or เฯ or เฤ or possibly even เฦ or เฏ. After the Thai word it had the word ’srinakarin’ in English on the sign.
In any event, whatever the name was, the door was locked and had a sign in front saying that it was a private club. We decided we to try to go inside but the entrance appeared impenetrable, so we spun around and caught the cab before it took off. We clambered inside and gave the driver specific directions to a club we had noticed earlier called Memory Club, which we had noticed looked particularly busy.
Front Entrance of the Memory Club
This turned out to be a great choice , because the club was full (it was standing room only just 25 minutes after we came in).
We had just gotten into our seats about 3 meters from the stage, when the song finished, the bass player came to the front of the stage, looked directly at me and called out “Andew Big!”.
I smiled and waved. He then asked me the question I hear so often: “Do you know Andew Big?”
“Yes” I called out, he’s my good friend.
He didn’t understand me, so I repeated it. He didn’t understand the second time so the drummer translated it to Thai for him. This turned out to be the regular pattern… this guy could speak English, but couldn’t listen well. It appeared that the drummer had good listening skills but couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English.
The bass player with the microphone asked me where I came from. I answered “Australia” three times, but he couldn’t understand. The drummer repeated it and the bass player said in Thai, “Ah… I thought he said Si Tammarat!” (Nakorn Si Tammarat is one of the southern provinces of Thailand).
Then he said in Thai, “Ngong” which means ‘confused’.
He looked at me again and said that I was too far away, and invited me up onto the stage (they don’t see many farangs in th is part of the world), and I agreed.
(Have a look at the girls in the photo below. These are Thai ‘good girls’ out for a night of fun at a local restaurant and club. Aren’t they beautiful!?)
I was a full head taller than the Thai guy with the microphone, so the first thing he did was grab a stool and climb up on it to become a head taller than me. The audience of perhaps 200 people started laughing.
There were a couple of funny exchanges. Up to this point I’d given no indication that I understood any Thai at all, or that I was anything but a tourist who had wandered away from the normal tour.
Then he asked me in English what my name was. I answered him honestly and clearly, but again he didn’t understand me. He spoke in Thai, “Arai na!?” which a way of asking you to repeat. So I repeated my name and spelled it rapidly in Thai. He damn near fell off the stool laughing and the audience went wild.
He decided to do a poke-fun-at-the-farang party trick that I’ve seen before. There are a number of toungue twisters in Thai, which are innocuous if you say them correctly, but if you make a mistake on the tone or word order the meaning is naughty and funny. Think of the English language tongue twister you probably learned when you were around 12 years old:
“I am a sheet slitter I slit sheets”
But if you try to repeat it rapidly several times it will normally come out of your mouth as:
“I am a sleet shitter I shit sleets”
This is the sort of tongue twister I’m talking about, but often the play on words involves making mistakes with the tones.
The guy with the mike had me repeating behind him. I didn’t understand a word of it — I was simply following him phonetically — and I must have made every mistake exactly on cue because every time I would speak the audience would howl with laughter. This went on for 5 minutes or so.
Then he decided that I needed to sing a song. It’s a documented fact that I don’t sing well. But I agreed to try. I know the words to thousands of songs by heart, so I can normally sing along with almost any popular tune they pull out. This time however, they chose one that’s easy but that I don’t know well — “It’s my Life” by Bon Jovi. I like the song, and I know a lot of the words, but I was blanking out on stage. Also, I can only come close to singing in a fairly low range, and this song makes demands that I’m not capable of. It was tragic.
Fortunately the band figured that out to and didn’t insist on going to the end. After limping through about 45 seconds of the song they ended it. The audience wasn’t laughing or applauding any more.
We went back to the humor. He asked if I had a girlfriend, and instead of answering I asked if he was interested in me. He was quick witted enough to work that for about 10 quick jokes and we managed to finish the little comedy routine on a high note.
I returned to my seat and took a deep pull on the Heineken they had delivered while I was onstage.
The band fired up again, and they were pretty good, though the microphone volumes were set a bit high. They had high energy and popular tunes. Great for a party atmosphere.
We had walked in a little before 10:30, and the band took a break around 11:15. It was a good club, but we wanted to move on and see what else Srinakarin Road had to offer.
We paid our bill (380 baht for three drinks) and went out to grab a cab.
We told the driver to just drive along until we said to stop. On the way in we had seen a club that had a half dozen girls in bikini tops sitting out front, and we were looking for that club again.
We finally spotted it, and the driver dropped us off. As we walked up we saw a number of obvious bar girls in skimpy tops with tattoos and too much makeup. We walked into an empty room. It was a karaoke club.
I have seen three types of karaoke clubs in Thailand. The first type has several small private rooms. You and your friends rent the room for an hour or two, buy some drinks, and you go inside and sing to yourselves.
The second type is a big open area with a single low stage, and rows of tables and chairs. One person sings at a time. Customers are welcome to sing, but if they aren’t singing, then the girls who work in the club will take turns going onstage and singing. If you admire them then you can usually buy a rose or a colorful plastic garland to hang around her neck, and you can give it to her while she is singing on stage. (I don’t know if these are simply a way to compliment or if they can be exchanged for tips later… I should ask sometime).
The third type has booths with upholstered seats and high backs… appropriate for cuddling in. Here, you choose your song, and the server brings the microphone to your table, and you have a choice of standing up or sitting, but you sing where you are. There is no stage. This venue is appropriate for couples or very small groups, but it’s also common for men to come in pairs, and hire the working girls to sit with them.
I don’t know what the case is exactly but here’s what I think. The first type of karaoke bar is designed for small groups of friends who want to go out for fun.
The second type can accommodate individuals or any sized group. The girls in these clubs (in my experience) don’t go with customers as part of their job. They simply sit with customer, sing and provide ‘atmosphere’.
The third type seems to be for couples, or for single guys who are looking for some cuddling and petting. I think that these girls often leave the premises with customers for tips.
I’ll stress again that I’m not really sure about the girls and their extra activities, these are simply my guesses. I’m happy to be corrected.
The place we had just walked into was the third type.
Kenny didn’t like the look of the club or the girls, and we did a 180 and left.
We saw a large and brightly lit down the street and decided to go see what it was.
On the way we passed a couple of smaller karaoke bars with just a few tables and chairs and a small number of hostesses. There was a hostess sitting in front of the second one in a white dress. She looked hot, and I was ready to stop and check it out. But Kenny doesn’t like empty bars and just kept walking. Oh well.
We got to the brightly lit place, and it turned out to have the unusual name of FAMILY. It was four businesses in one… a fitness center, a massage shop, a seafood restaurant, and a karaoke bar.
The karaoke bar was the second type, with the open seating, and it was the nicest, highest quality karaoke bar of this style that I’d ever seen. It actually had white tablecloths on many of the tables.
Prizes being awarded at the end of the singing contest
It was a special night. There was a singing contest, with about twenty people competing. The club was about 80% full so Kenny and I decided to stay.
We stayed until nearly 1:30. We had four plates of delicious seafood from the seafood restaurant. One of the girls working in the club (Bee) was celebrating her birthday, so there was a festive atmosphere. There were three or four servers who ranged from very cute to very pretty.
One of them let us take this snapshot of her:
She was very sweet and talked to us for some time. She told us her name but I’ve forgotten now. I think it was Oi, but I’m not sure.
When the singing contest was over and the prizes awarded the crowd started leaving quickly.
When there was only one table full of people remaining, I indulged myself by singing two Eagles songs… Tequila Sunrise and Hotel California. With the words on the screen, less demanding vocals and an empty room, it was more comfortable than my earlier painful attempt at the Bon Jovi song.
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