13 to 19 April · the water fight · the band still plays
Thai New Year is three days everywhere else and a week in Pattaya, where the water fight on Beach Road and Second Road runs on to Wan Lai on the 19th. Nobody stays dry outdoors between noon and dusk. Inside a steel hall with the air-conditioning on, everybody does, and the band plays from nine as usual. Here is the week, from the wettest street to the driest seat.
Photo to come
Saturday at eleven: the whole back of the hall on its feet
Saturday, 11 PM
What the town does
From late morning to dusk on the 13th, 14th, 15th and again on the 19th, the two main roads are closed to sense and open to buckets, pickup trucks with barrels in the back, and water guns that would not pass airport security. Central Pattaya, where we are, is the middle of it.
The 19th is the town's own festival day, and the biggest of the lot on Beach Road. If you are here for one day of it, that is the day.
A dry bag around the neck, sandals, a change of shirt somewhere dry. The powder paste on the face is part of it. Everyone is fair game and everyone is smiling; the ones who are not smiling are the ones who thought they could walk to the shops.
Songkran is the worst week of the year on Thai roads. Walk, or take a baht bus, and do not get on a motorbike wet.
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.
Las Vegas Beer Garden opens at six as usual and the roof keeps the water out; the gate on Soi Diana is the only wet part. Inside it is twenty degrees and nobody has a bucket.
Songkran is not a Buddhist holiday, so bars serve and the band plays from nine on its usual nights. Check the date against the Buddhist calendar in the year you read this; the alcohol-free days move and if one lands in the week, the stage is dark that night.
Everyone arrives wet. The air-conditioning does the rest, and a wet shirt in a cold hall is a mistake you make once. There is no cloakroom; there is a chair for the bag.
Songkran week is high season's last gasp and the hall fills early. Half past seven for a stage-side table, every night of the week, not just Friday.
The move
Fight on Beach Road from noon, retreat at four, shower, dry shirt, and be at the stage-side table by half past seven with a plate from across the road. The band from nine. Out at one to a soi that is, finally, dry.
The week, unchanged
The first sign of Songkran at the bar is not water. It is the sound. Around the eleventh the pickups start going up and down Second Road with a barrel in the back and a speaker on the cab, and from behind the counter at six in the evening you can hear them through the wall of the hall, which is a wall that keeps most of Pattaya out. By the thirteenth the gate on Soi Diana has a puddle in front of it that does not dry until the twentieth.
People arrive wet and cold. The hall runs at about twenty degrees on a normal night and Songkran does not change the thermostat, so a shirt that was soaked on Beach Road at five is a problem at seven. The regulars know this and come with a dry one in a bag. The first-timers know it by the second night. May keeps a stack of bar towels under the counter that week for the tables rather than the glasses, and by the fifteenth they have all gone home in somebody's pocket.
The band plays. This is the thing people ask most and the answer is yes, on its usual nights, unless the Buddhist calendar puts an alcohol-free day in the week, in which case the stage is dark and so is every other bar in Thailand. The crowd is younger than the rest of the year and more Thai, because Thai families come down from Bangkok for the water, and the late set on the fifteenth is the one night of the year the tables nearest the stage sing the Thai songs louder than the band.
Do the water once, properly. Beach Road on the thirteenth or the nineteenth, from about two, with a bag round your neck and nothing in your pockets you would mind losing. Give it three hours. Walk back up Soi Diana rather than getting on anything with wheels, because the roads in Songkran week are the most dangerous of the year and every taxi driver is as wet as you are. The gate of the hall is the first dry ground since the beach.
Then come in, sit at the counter, and dry out in the cold. The pour takes two minutes and the shirt takes about twenty. By eight the band is on and you are in the one room in Central Pattaya where nobody is holding a bucket, and the noise from the street, which you can still hear if you listen for it, makes the hall feel like the inside of something.
The other days, avoid the two main roads between noon and dusk and you can have a normal evening. Soi Buakhao gets wet but not soaked. LK Metro is a lane and stays mostly dry. Our soi is quiet, because the water goes where the crowds are and the crowds are at the beach. The bar opens at six on all seven days of the week. The tables along the stage edge go by half past seven every night, which for a week in April makes it feel like a week of Fridays.
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