31 December · the countdown at Bali Hai · the late set after
The busiest night of the Pattaya year: the town's countdown and fireworks at Bali Hai pier at the Walking Street end, Beach Road closed to cars and open to everybody, and every bar full from nine. Where to stand at midnight, how to get away afterwards, and why a seat before one in the morning can be three metres from a band in a cold hall ten minutes north.
Photo to come
Saturday at eleven: the whole back of the hall on its feet
Saturday, 11 PM
What the town does
The town's official countdown and fireworks are at the pier at the south end of Walking Street, over the bay, at midnight. Beach Road is closed to traffic and fills from about nine. Stand anywhere on the beach with a view south and you see them.
Every baht bus in the town is full at ten past twelve. Walk north along Beach Road to Soi 13, ten minutes, and the Second Road buses are moving again by the time you reach them. Or stay by the sea for an hour and let it clear.
The most crowded place in Thailand for the ten minutes either side of twelve. Go in at eleven if you want the strip; come out by half past to the beach for the fireworks.
The hotel rooftops and the beachfront restaurants ticket their New Year's Eve dinners and sell out in December. Ours does not ticket anything; it cannot, by law, and would not anyway.
What the bar does
The same band, the same hours, the same cold. What changes is when the tables go and who is at them.
The band plays from nine as usual, and on New Year's Eve the set that matters is the one after the fireworks: the hall fills again from half past twelve with people back from the beach, and the band finishes at 1 AM. The counter stays open until 3 AM.
Plan A: the stage-side table from seven, the band, and a walk to Beach Road at half past eleven for the fireworks, back for the late set. Plan B: the beach at midnight, then a walk up Soi 13 to us for the last two hours. Most regulars do B.
Not seven. Six. Groups message the bar early in December and we hold what we can until eight; after that it is the counter, and the counter on New Year's Eve is a good place to be.
There is nothing to buy in advance and nothing we are allowed to advertise. Walk in, as on any night. The only difference is the time you need to arrive.
The move
Beach Road at eleven, the fireworks at midnight over the bay, a walk up Soi 13 while the buses are stuck, and the end of the late set at ours before 1 AM, with the counter open until 3 AM. Then Soi Diana, which will be the quietest street in the town.
The week, unchanged
New Year's Eve is the one night a year the hall's shape becomes a problem. Everybody wants to be inside at midnight and everybody wants to see the fireworks, and the fireworks are over the bay, two kilometres away, on the other side of a steel roof. So the hall does what it does every year: it empties towards the beach from about half past eleven, and it fills back up from about half past twelve, and the band, who have seen this, play the second set to a full room and the third to a fuller one.
The counter sees the tide go out and come back. At eleven there is nowhere to stand. At ten to midnight the stools are free and Save is doing the countdown with the four people who decided a band beats a firework. At one the hall is louder than it has been all year, because the people coming back from the beach have had their midnight and now want their night, and the late set on New Year's Eve runs past two.
We do not do a ticket, a package, a set menu or a minimum on the night, because the law does not allow us to advertise one and because we would not anyway. The bar opens at six, the band is on at nine, and the seat is yours if you are in it. That is the same deal as any Tuesday. The only difference is that on any Tuesday there would be seats.
The first is the beach. Walking Street and Beach Road are one crowd from about ten, the countdown is at Bali Hai pier at the south end, and the fireworks go up over the bay from there. It is a good spectacle and a bad walk home: a hundred thousand people leaving the same strip at ten past midnight, no baht bus willing to stop, and the road north jammed to Central until two. If you do this, walk. Soi Diana is about twenty-five minutes from the pier on foot, and the walk is the only part of the night with any air in it.
The second is to stay. Take a stage-side table at seven, eat, watch the room fill and then thin, and be at the counter at midnight with the band counting down instead of a pier. You will not see the fireworks, though on a still night you can hear them through the roof. What you get instead is the hour after, which on New Year's Eve is the best hour of the year in the hall and the one nobody who went to the beach is back in time for.
We would do the second, and most of the regulars do. If you want both, the trick is a table held by a group message earlier in the week, the beach at eleven, and a walk back that has you at the gate by one. May will have kept your table if you told her. She has kept tables through midnight on this night for people who did not come back, and she remembers who they were.
Asked
Written 9 September 2026. Dates that belong to the calendar are the calendar's and the moving ones say so; what the town does is common knowledge here and what the bar does is the counter's account. Thai law since November 2025 forbids bars from advertising offers, so there are none on this page and will not be. The complex's own site has its own guide to the same night, written from the front of the hall.
How to find us
One way in, one way out. Nine bars stand between the gate and us, and each will invite you in. Keep walking.
The big Las Vegas Beer Garden sign, two minutes from LK Metro. Free entry, no ticket, no dress code.
Past Pocket Kings, Palace, the V Bar, Full House, Viva, Aces High, MGN and Black Jack. The music gets louder with every step.
A black disc ringed with bulbs, a gold crown over the K. That's the door. The toilets are just past it, which is why everyone walks by at least once.
KQ has its own pin on Google Maps, separate from the complex. Tap it and the blue dot ends at our bar, not the front gate.
Open KQ Bar in Maps