Pattaya vs Bangkok: eight rounds, scored from our counter.

The same Friday, in each city

In Bangkok, a Friday starts with a decision, because the city is too big to drift. Thonglor for cocktails and a crowd that dressed for it, Khao San for backpackers and buckets, Sukhumvit Soi 11 for the rooftops and the clubs, RCA for the Thai clubs, Silom for the gay strip and the go-gos of Patpong, and a rooftop bar sixty floors up for a drink that costs what a night costs here. Each is forty minutes from the next by taxi in traffic that does not move, so you pick one and you commit. The range is enormous. The evening is one part of it.

In Pattaya, a Friday starts with a walk. The triangle of Soi Buakhao, LK Metro and Soi Diana holds the beer bars, the rock rooms, the reggae bar, the sports bars, the pool tables and the ten-bar hall with the band, and all of it is within five minutes on foot. Walking Street is ten minutes south by baht bus if you want it. The rooftops are along the beach. There is no traffic decision, no taxi, and no committing to one neighbourhood, because the whole city's nightlife fits in the space Bangkok gives to one soi.

The rooms are different too. Bangkok's best bars are designed: a concept, an interior, a menu with a story, a door policy. Pattaya's best bars are accumulated: an owner who has been there since 2009, a band that has played the same stage for years, a set of regulars who have a table. The Bangkok room impresses you on the first visit. The Pattaya room is better on the fifth, when Min knows what you drink.

And the music. Bangkok has a live scene, mostly Thai and mostly in the Thai districts, with jazz in a few rooms and covers bands in the hotel bars. Pattaya has covers bands in every third bar and a house band in the hall from 9 PM to 1 AM six nights a week, three metres from a table you can sit at without a ticket. It is not a better scene. It is a closer one.

Who should go where, honestly

Bangkok if you have four nights, want four different nights, and do not mind a taxi between each. Bangkok if you want a cocktail made by somebody who has competed. Bangkok if the rooftop is the point, because ours are eight floors and theirs are sixty. Bangkok if you want to be in a city rather than a resort, and to be honest about it, if you want nightlife that is not mostly for visitors.

Pattaya if you have two nights and want to walk them. Pattaya if a band matters more than a menu. Pattaya if you are over fifty and want a room where that is normal, or if you are with a partner and want a night that does not need a plan. Pattaya if the sea and the hills and the golf are the day, and the night should be ten minutes from the hotel. And Pattaya if you have found, as most people who come back have, that a city built entirely for the evening does the evening better than a city that also has to be a capital.

The honest verdict, from a bar in one of them: Bangkok has the range and Pattaya has the density, and the second is what makes a night rather than a list. A Pattaya Friday that starts at Tree Town at seven, stops at Trench Town for a reggae singer, and ends at a stage-side table in a cold hall with a band until 1 AM has visited three of the six kinds of night in the city and walked between them. The same Friday in Bangkok has seen one, and was in a taxi for an hour of it.

Do both. It is two hours down the motorway, the bus from Ekkamai runs every half hour, and the right order is Bangkok first, because Pattaya is easier to arrive in late. The referee's bar is at the back of the hall on Soi Diana, and the referee will hold your table if you message the day before.

The practical differences, which decide more nights than the rooms do

Getting between places. Bangkok is a taxi or the Skytrain, and after midnight it is a taxi in traffic, and a night that visits three districts has spent an hour in a car. Pattaya is a walk or a baht bus, which runs along Second Road and Beach Road all night for a coin, and a night that visits three streets has spent ten minutes on the bus. This one fact shapes everything: Bangkok nights are planned and Pattaya nights are drifted.

Closing time. Both cities close most bars at two by law, with zones that go later. Bangkok's late zones are Sukhumvit, Silom and RCA, and they are strict about it in a way that varies with the month. Pattaya's whole tourist area is a zone in practice, and the bars that open past two are listed on the late-opening page on this site with their Google hours. The hall we are in closes at three, and the band stops before.

Dress. Bangkok's rooftops and cocktail rooms have a door and a code, and trainers and shorts will be turned away at the good ones. Pattaya's have a door and a code at the hotel roofs, and nowhere else; the hall's dress code is a shirt. A person who packed for Bangkok is overdressed for every bar in Pattaya except two.

Company. Bangkok's nightlife is mostly for Bangkok, and a visitor is a visitor. Pattaya's is entirely for visitors and for the people who came as visitors and stayed, and the regulars at a bar are a mixed room of British, Australian, Scandinavian, Russian, Indian and Thai who all did that. It is easier to talk to a stranger in Pattaya than in any city in the country.

What we would say to a friend with one week

Four nights in Bangkok, three in Pattaya, in that order. Bangkok for the cocktail bars in Thonglor, one rooftop sixty floors up, a jazz room, and a night in the Thai districts that no guidebook has. Then the bus from Ekkamai, two hours, and Pattaya for a sunset from a chair on the beach, a walk through Tree Town and LK Metro to the hall, a band three metres from a table, and a day on Koh Larn to recover.

If it is three days, Pattaya, because three Pattaya nights are three different nights within a kilometre and three Bangkok nights are three taxis. If it is a weekend and you are already in Bangkok, the bus down on Friday afternoon and back on Sunday night, with Saturday at a stage-side table from half past seven.

The referee runs a bar in one of the two cities and has said so at the top of the page. The scores in the rounds above are the referee's, the numbers in the entries are Google's, and the walk from the gate to the counter, if the verdict brings you to it, is at the bottom.