These are security formalities. Now is different from the past. It is
troublesome and it has become a hassle problem.


"none" wrote in message
oups.com...

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/0...kokletter.html

A long wooden table obstructs the entrance to Silom Soi 2, a narrow
pedestrian alley lined with gay bars a few blocks from Bangkok's
once-infamous red light district, Patpong. I'm going to D.J. Station, a
local club where gays and straights alike gyrate to earsplitting
rhythms on the cramped dance floor. Four burly men in jeans and
T-shirts slouching at one end of the table point to a prominent sign
written in Thai and ungrammatical English. No one under 20 can enter
the soi (street) and everyone must present valid ID, which for
non-Thais constitutes an original passport (no photocopies) or a
driver's license.

Obviously over 20, I'm excluded from the ID formalities. "Have fun
Auntie," one of the bouncers mutters in Thai as he waves me through the
barricade, probably not realizing I understand him. A politer version
of the ID checking process is repeated outside D.J.'s, where once again
I'm whisked through. However, my 20-year-old Thai-English companion's
valid British driver's license receives lengthy scrutiny before he is
allowed inside.

Increasingly, going out on the town in Bangkok has become more of a
hassle than checking in for an international flight. At least after
clearing airport security and passport control, passengers can look
forward to a smooth trip. But once inside the dwindling number of
international-standard Bangkok night spots, patrons still face a
potentially bumpy ride.

In early 2001 the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra began
a "social order" campaign to clean up the country's risqué image and
also to halt the supposed moral decay of its youth. (Mr. Thaksin
dissolved Parliament on Feb. 24 and is acting as caretaker prime
minister until new elections on April 2.) The two local
English-language publications - The Nation and The Bangkok Post -
periodically posit that the crackdown was inspired by unnamed prominent
politicians who couldn't control their own pampered offspring.
Long-ignored 1981 legislation outlining entertainment licensing
categories was resuscitated, and contrary to the normally laissez-faire
Thai attitude toward lawfulness, the regulations began to be enforced.

To change Bangkok's decades-old reputation as a 24-hour party center,
in 2002 the Thaksin government created three "entertainment zones" in
which drinking and dancing were allowed until 2 a.m. (According to one
club owner, four years later nobody knows the precise boundaries
because the zoning law was never made official.) Outside these zones,
dancing was illegal and closing times were 1 a.m.

Of the trio of late-night zones, only Patpong would be familiar to
visitors. Significantly cleaned up over the last five years, the strip
is naughty only in so far as sanitized parodies of sex shows and hordes
of stall vendors selling overpriced tourist schlock could be considered
salacious. Apart from the long-running bar Tapas (Silom Soi 4) and D.J.
Station, nothing in the Patpong area qualifies as a trendy dance club.

The second zone is Royal City Avenue, known as R.C.A., a strip of
youth-oriented venues in central Bangkok catering primarily to Thais.
Recently clubs like the huge concrete Astra have started to attract a
crowd of expatriates in their 20's by importing hip D.J.'s (Amnesia
Ibiza, Goldie and others). Even so, one night at the 15-year-old Zouk
bar in Singapore provides more real action and excitement than you'd
find in an entire week on R.C.A. The third zone, Ratchadapisek, is a
four-lane suburban road popular with Thai businessmen seeking the kind
of entertainment available at lavish multistoried massage parlors with
names like Love Boat and Colonze.

At first, club owners and customers didn't take the new laws seriously.
After all, this was Bangkok, where the police hung out drinking with
foreigners until dawn and a few hundred surreptitious baht resolved
most official problems. Besides, why would authorities undermine the
urbane club scene developing in the Sukhumvit area? That scene was
catalyzed by the 1999 opening of Q Bar, a "New York-style" lounge on
Soi 11, followed by the raucous Ministry of Sound (Soi 12), the
ultrachic Bed Supperclub (Soi 11) and the luxuriant Mystique (Soi 31).
Elsewhere, new hotel bars like 87 (at the Conrad), Tantra (Pan Pacific)
and Met Bar (Metropolitan) offered additional cosmopolitan choices.

But nothing deflates a thriving club scene like repeated unheralded
visits by a local constabulary intent on upholding "social order." And
that is exactly what has been happening over the last four years.
Sometimes the raiding police are accompanied by local TV crews. Exits
are barred, music grinds to sudden silence, lights flash on. Confused
and scared patrons who a moment before were partying down are suddenly
confronted by brown-uniformed police officers who demand to see their
ID's, frisk them or occasionally force them to urinate in a cup to test
for drug use. The raids often last far beyond the 1 or 2 a.m. closing
hours. They have rarely netted any violators.

But these attempts to regulate Thai teenagers' behavior have severely
limited the nocturnal activities of over-20 clubbers and have of course
been devastating for the clubs they frequent. Ministry of Sound, Tantra
and Mystique have closed, and 87 is dead. Only Q Bar and Bed Supperclub
remain active, and David Jacobson, co-owner of Q Bar, says that they
survive partly because no new international investors will risk coming
onto such an unpredictable club scene to provide competition. "Bangkok
is a dead town," he said. "It was one of the most fun places in Asia."
In March Q Bar is opening a branch in Singapore where it can stay open
24/7, though closing hour will be 4 a.m.

Even Kurt Wachtveitl, general manager of the Oriental Hotel for 38
years, weighed in on local night life in a Jan. 13 interview in The
Bangkok Post: "Wealthy people like to spend their money on things they
enjoy, and they spend a lot of money. But they don't want to go to bed
early! If Bangkok continues to be the kind of city that begins to look
sleepy after midnight, it will be wasting all its advantages to the
upscale foreign visitors. They'll go to Beijing, Shanghai and now
Singapore."

Far from cleaning up the city's image, the social order campaign has
spawned a sordid - and unregulated - after-hours scene that unfolds
on steamy sidewalks and dark alleys behind second-story black-curtained
windows. "You can't suppress people," David Jacobson said. "They want
to have a good time. It's human nature."

An hour at smoky and cacophonic D.J. Station satisfies my dancing
urges. Not ready to call it a night, however, I decamp to Rain Tree Pub
& Restauant, a tiny bar near Victory Monument where Thai folksingers
croon 1970's melodies known as "songs for life." I adore these rapidly
vanishing examples of traditional Thai life and am having a fabulous
time. Nonetheless, promptly at 1 a.m. the lights come on, the band
packs up, and I'm out on the streets of Bangkok, all dressed up with no
place to go.