Pattaya nightlife for couples: the table for two by the stage, and the night around it.

What a couple actually wants from Pattaya at night, and where it is

The first thing is a room where being two is normal. That rules out more of the city than a visitor expects: the go-go strips are built for one, the hostess bars are built for one, and a good half of the beer bars on Soi Buakhao are arranged around a man on a stool and a conversation he is paying for. A couple sitting down at one of those is not unwelcome, exactly. It is just not what the furniture is for, and both of you feel it in about a minute.

The rooms that are for two are the rooms with a table between the chairs and something to look at that is not each other: a sunset, a band, a view, a kitchen. The eight on this page are those rooms. Sunset on the beach, facing west, is the first because it costs nothing and is the best thing the city does before eight. A cocktail on our soi at Gatsby is the second because it is the one lounge in Central Pattaya that has bothered. The table for two by the stage steps at our tables is the third, and it is on this list because the band is in front of it and not because we own it, though we do.

The thing couples say afterwards is that the night did not need a plan. In a resort built for the evening everything is close, so a sunset at half past six, a cocktail at half past seven, a band from nine and a walk along the beach at midnight are four things a kilometre apart, and there is no taxi in any of them. That is the argument for this city over Bangkok, made for two.

Three nights, for three kinds of couple

The first night. You have just arrived and want to see it without committing to it. Sunset from a chair on the beach at Soi 7. Walk up Second Road to Soi Buakhao and into Tree Town for a plate and the noise of it. Walk LK Metro for the sixty seconds it takes, past the doorways, to the Las Vegas sign. A table one row back from the stage, the band from nine, and a walk back at eleven. You have seen the beach, the market, the lane and the hall, and it took no decisions.

The long-married night. You have been here before and you want the version without the crowd. A Monday: the DJ has the stage, the row of tables along the stage edge is empty at eight, and the one nearest the steps seats two with a plate each from across the soi. Save has time to talk about the pour. The hall is at a third and the lights still move. Regulars in their sixties who have done a hundred Fridays here come on Mondays for exactly this.

The night out that is a night out. Dinner over the water at the pier, dressed for it, before eight. A baht bus up Second Road and off at Soi 13, which is the one journey of the night. The stage-side tables will have gone, so take the counter, which on a Saturday at eleven has the best view in the building, the tap at one elbow and the whole hall in front. When the room stands up in the third song of the late set, stand up. The walk home along the beach is the last item on the list at the top of this page, and it is the one to end on.

Three honest warnings for two people

The first is the front bars. In any complex and along most of Soi Buakhao the bars nearest the street are staffed by people whose job is to get you to sit, and a couple gets the same greeting a single man does, with a beat of confusion after it. It is friendly and it is a sale. Walk past to the bars at the back, where the regulars are, and the greeting is a nod.

The second is volume. The tables along the stage edge in the hall are three metres from a drum kit, and a couple who wants to talk should take the row behind, where the mix is balanced and a conversation is possible without leaning in. The seat map draws it. One reviewer wrote that you can chat without shouting; he was one row back.

The third is the walk home, which is safe and lit in Central Pattaya at one in the morning and is the best part of the night in the cool months, and which in April is thirty degrees at midnight. In April take the baht bus. It runs all night and costs a coin, and it is the only thing in the city that is the same for one person as for two.

The table for two, and how to get it

The one nearest the stage steps seats two comfortably, four in a pinch, and on a Monday the three tables either side of it are free until ten. Order two plates from across the soi and you have a dinner with a light show that nobody planned as one. On a Friday it is gone by half past seven, and the honest advice is to be at the gate at seven, watch the band set up, and have the coldest and quietest half hour of the week to yourselves before the hall fills. Groups can have it held by message. Couples come early. That is the rule and it is the same for the regulars.