A rooftop at sunset, and what to know before the lift
The sun goes into the bay behind Koh Larn at about half past six every day of the year, give or take twenty minutes, and it is the best thing the city does. A rooftop facing west with a drink in front of you is the best place to watch it, and the roofs on this list are ranked by Google, with the west-facing ones doing better because of exactly this. Be in the lift by six. The best tables on any roof face the sea, they are gone by a quarter past, and the roof that is empty at six is full at seven.
Moon Whale and the Horizon at the Hilton are the two that the city agrees on: one a proper rooftop bar with a view over the whole bay, one a hotel roof with a cocktail list and a dress code. ZAMA is the Jomtien one, on the other side of the headland, with the sunset over Jomtien beach instead. The Beer Hubb roofs, on Beach Road and Soi Buakhao, are the honest ones: a beer list on a roof, no dress code, no lift attendant, and a view that is mostly the street, which for a lot of people is the point. Sky32 and Sola Luna are restaurants with a roof; go for the dinner and the view will come.
What to know: the roofs are open to the sky, so from March to May they are hot until the sun goes and from June to October they close when it rains, which is at about seven. There is a lift and a dress code at the hotel roofs and a staircase and none at the beer ones. Most have a minimum spend at the best tables, which the law does not allow us to describe and which the roof will tell you at the door. And the wind at eight floors is the only wind in Pattaya.
The band under a roof, after the roof
We are the opposite of this page: a bar at the back of a hall with a steel roof, ninety metres from the nearest window, at twenty degrees, with a band from nine. That is the argument for doing the roof first and us second, and it is how most of our regulars do a night with a sunset in it. A roof on Beach Road at six, the sun into the bay at half past, a walk up to Second Road and a baht bus north, off at the Soi 13 turning, and the Las Vegas sign three minutes on foot. The band is on by the time you have found a table.
The order matters because the roofs are for an hour and the hall is for a night. A rooftop after dark is a view of lights and a chill, and the roofs empty out by nine to the restaurants below them. The hall fills from eight and does not empty until two. Doing them the other way round means a sunset you missed and a band you left early.
Every roof on this list is at its distance from our door in the entry, and the map at the top draws them. The nearest is the Beer Hubb on Soi Buakhao, a five-minute walk, which is the one to do if you want a roof and the band in the same hour and are not fussy about the view being the street.
