The two sois at four, at seven, and at ten
At four the two sois are at their best and almost nobody knows it. The bars are open-fronted both sides, a counter every ten metres, the staff on stools out front, the sea a hundred metres away at the Beach Road end and visible from most of them. The crowd is the people who live here, a beer in front of them, a newspaper or a phone, and a conversation with the bar that has gone on for years. It is the closest thing Pattaya has to a village pub, and the village is British, mostly, and over sixty.
At seven the sunset crowd comes up from the beach and the sois fill. Rolli Polli, Sailor and Lovely Corner are the bars with the regulars and the pool tables. Kamikaze is the seafood restaurant that a lot of the sois' evenings are built around. Lisa on the Beach is the beach bar at the end, on the sand. Horizon, on the roof of the Hilton across Beach Road, is the one at the top of the list and the only one with a lift. The music is speakers, a different song from every counter, and a singer at one or two.
At ten the crowd the sois are built for has gone to dinner or to bed, and the second crowd, which is younger and looser, has the stools. The bars are open until one or two. Most people who started here at four have moved on by now, and where they have moved to is the point of the section below.
Where the sois' crowd goes after ten
East. A baht bus along Second Road, ten minutes, off at the Soi 13 turning, and the Las Vegas sign three minutes on foot. The two sois are the afternoon and the early evening; the hall on Soi Diana is the night, with a band from nine, a cold room, and the stage-side tables that go by half past seven on a Friday and are still there at nine on a Wednesday. The regulars from Soi 7 and 8 are a recognisable part of our Thursday table, and they have the same stools there that they have here.
Or south, to Walking Street, which is the other direction and the other kind of night. The sois are ten minutes from both, and the choice at ten is the choice between a strip and a stage.
The ranking above is Google's rating weighted by review count, the rule stated so you can argue with it, and every entry has its distance from our counter, which for the two sois is about a kilometre and a half and always a bus. The map at the top draws them. We are at the back of the hall, beside the stage, and we send people to Soi 7 for the afternoon every day and see them again at nine.
