Bangkok nightlife pivots to local customers

Slow recovery: Two months after Thailand allowed bars and clubs to reopen, Bangkok’s nightlife is coming back from dead. — The Straits Times/ANN

IT’S 10.30pm on a Tuesday night and the bar tables at Bangkok’s Sugar Club are filling up. As the deejay turns up the volume and laser beams quiver overhead, two women in bikinis and face shields stride on stage. Strangers flirt.

Step onto the street outside in Sukhumvit Soi 11, however, and the party fizzles out. Empty bars blast music into the darkened thoroughfare that teemed with tourists before the pandemic.