The band, from the seats that can see it.

What to expect

From Tuesday to Sunday the band plays in sets from nine until 1 AM, with short breaks. On Monday the complex's DJ takes the main stage instead, and the seats beside it are the easiest of the week to get. Volume at KQ is loud enough to feel and quiet enough to talk over, which is a trick of sitting to the side of the speakers rather than in front of them. One reviewer put it as "next to the live music but not overly loud, you can still chat without shouting", and that is about right.

There is no cover charge and no minimum. Stage-side tables are first come, and on Fridays and Saturdays they go before eight. If you are a group and want them held, message the bar earlier in the day.

When the band takes a break, the screens behind the counter carry the football and the fights, sound off. Nobody stares at an empty stage.

Each night, on its own page

• Monday: the front row, uncontested. Any time.
• Tuesday: the first band night of the week. Arrive before 9 PM if you want to be seated for the first song.
• Wednesday: the wednesday count-in. By half past seven you will have the table you want.
• Thursday: the regulars' table. Come by half past seven for the row along the stage edge.
• Friday: the 7:30 rule. Half past seven for the stage edge.
• Saturday: eleven o'clock, on your feet. Seven for the stage edge.
• Sunday: the sunday request. Eight is fine for the stage-side row on most Sundays.

The seat map draws the three places to sit and the time each goes; the band's page has the three sets and how a request works; groups can have the tables held.

The three sets, and which one to come for

The band plays three sets on a band night, each about forty minutes, with fifteen-minute breaks in which the screens behind the counter carry the football with the sound off. The first set, from nine, is the warm-up: songs everybody in a hall of British, Australian, Scandinavian and Thai regulars can sing, played to turn a room that is talking into a room that is facing the stage. The second, around ten, is the one to come for if you can only come for one. It is the loudest and the tightest, it is where the guitar solos live, and it is played to a full hall. The third, after midnight, is played to the people who stayed. It is looser, the requests get honoured, and the room sings.

On a Sunday the order is different: the late set is the one, because the Sunday crowd is the one that stays and the band knows it. On a Wednesday the first set is played to a hall still filling and the second is played to a hall that has filled, so the change between them is the sharpest of the week.

The DJ nights, honestly

Monday the complex's DJ takes the stage the band has just left. The music is the music of a Pattaya beer hall on a quiet night: nineties and two-thousands pop, some Thai, some house late on, at a volume the tables by the stage can talk over without leaning in. It is not the band. It is also the night of the week when the row of tables along the stage edge is yours whenever you arrive, when Save has time to talk about the pour, and when the couple at the next table is a couple rather than a stag group. Some regulars come only on Mondays for exactly that reason.

How to tell what tonight is from outside

Stand at the gate on Soi Diana at a quarter to nine. If the stage at the far end is lit purple and there is a drum kit under the Las Vegas sign, it is a band night. If the stage is lit but there is a table with a laptop on it where the kit would be, it is Monday. If it is dark, you are early, and the counter is the coldest and quietest seat in the city for the next fifteen minutes.

The week below is set from the bar's calendar, and the pill in the header says whether we are open now. The band does not take holidays it has not told us about, but this is Thailand, and twice a year the stage is dark on a night it should not be: on the eve of a Buddhist holy day when the whole hall closes, and on the night of the King's birthday. The seven night pages say what each night is like in enough detail to choose one.

What to do in the breaks

Order, because the counter is quiet for fifteen minutes and then it is not. Ask for a song, because the singer walks past the front tables to the counter and this is the moment. Go outside, because the smoking area is the pavement on Soi Diana and the walk past nine bars is the only exercise the evening offers. Do not move seats. A table left in a break on a Friday is a table somebody else is sitting at when you get back, and May will not have been able to stop them.