Suthisan Road Gogo Bars, Bangkok
by Suk Psycho ~ March 17th, 2009. Filed under: Go-Go Bars.I read about the Suthisan (or Sutthisan) Road Gogo Bars on TFS2M and WW and wanted to give it a try. Bangkok is all about trying new places while they last, right? Last saturday I decided to go and check it out.
It’s a long way from Sukhumvit to Saphan Kwai BTS Station. Then the next challenge is to find the Big C. Once this is done, the rest is easy.
Walking alone on the main road, with no Farang on sight, I was wondering how I would be welcomed there. Would they be happy to see another Farang out of the beaten tracks or would they ask me to go to hell and leave them alone.
As soon as I saw the first gogo bars neon signs I had my answer: as every where else, they need customers and Farangs are welcome. As soon as they saw me, the touts sitting outside of T DED 99 gogo bar, which seems to be the largest one, started to call me and asked me to come in.
I started with this gogo bar and was rather pleased by the welcome, the inside and the girls. I thought I had found another soi Cowboy hidden in this part of the city. But then I checked the other places and realised that T DED 99 was from far the best place around and probably the only one really worth a visit.
Harlem Nights is ok. The others (RCA gogo, RCA2 gogo, For U gogo) were almost empty (both on customer and girl side) and not appealing at all. Music VDO was packed, but the crowd was not exactly the kind I would be comfortable to sit with.
It was saturday evening, around 11pm, and the least I can say is that most places were dead empty. Now it’s true that even soi Cowboy and Nana are doing slowly these days.
Back to T DED 99: this is the first one you see when arriving on the spot. This gogo bar is huge. Probably the largest gogo bar I’ve ever seen on a single floor. Most of the space is for seating though, and only 2 small stages share the central part of the bar.
Suthisan gogo bars are to gogo bars what Thai clubs are to Farang clubs: Thai and Asian customers order a bottle of Whisky and spend the night in the place. Some of them even eat there. They come in numbers, invite a few girls to join their table and organise their own party at their table.
Few girls are on the stage. Most of them are waiting for their turn, sitting on a couch. What is very different from the other gogo bars is that in Suthisan most gogo bars have also a selection of girls waiting at the entrance of the bar (also sitting on a couch), like sideliners in a Massage Parlor. From what I understood they are also available for a drink or for a ST/LT, but they don’t dance.
As you probably read before somewhere else, the good thing with Suthisan gogo bars is the price. A large bottle of Singha costs only 110 baht! Note that you will have to pay for the ice and for the wet towel, but this makes a mere 150 baht and the waitress makes sure that your glass is always full.
A Lady Drink costs 100 baht for 30 minutes. Which means that if the girl stays 60 minutes, even on the same drink, you will pay 200 baht. And then the prices for ST and LT : 1500 and 2500, including the BF!
Considering that some of the girls are as pretty as your average girl from Nana or Cowboy, this can be a very good deal.
There are however a few drawbacks:
- first, it’s really far,
- most bars have few girls and few customers,
- a lot of papasan and mamasan keep on asking you if you want a lady. At T DED 99 they kept on coming every 5 minutes,
- the girls don’t speak English. If you don’t know any word of Thai, it’s going to be tough!
Suthisan is definitely not the hidden gem I thought I found when first entering T DED 99, but it may be worth the trip if you want to change for a while from the Farang gogo bars.
More info about sutthisan gogo bars on the Other Areas gogo bar page.
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March 18th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Hey Suk,
I checked out Suthisarn my last time in BKK as well.
It’s cheaper there…but also more run down as well. The furnishings, booths, tables, bathrooms, are all ratty and beat up. The crowd is 90+% Thai. Looking around at the guys in there, they look like either the taxi driver/motosai/tuk-tuk type or retired Muay Thai fighters.
And the girls are pretty much on par with the better ones from Cowboy or Nana but the selection is a lot less. I’m not positive about this but I think if you choose a dancer, she will stay with you the entire time until you leave or pay bar. The only time they leave is to go up and dance again. (and they dance for real…not the 2 step Isaan shuffle)
English is really limited there so you do need to speak Thai and the male touts outside try really hard to get you to go in. farang, thai, whatever, doesn’t matter.
Funny, the stick wrote about suthisarn in his latest weekly as well. Did you guys go together?? LOL
Overall, it’s a nice change of scenery from the norm and to be able to see how the Thai style gogos operate but I wouldn’t hang out there regularly. It’s too run down and shady looking for me.
June 6th, 2009 at 7:32 am
This can be a nice try to see these places but what put me off is that i will be little bit scare to go there alone.
Most of the customers are Thai men,far away from the regular spot.
Not implying that you can’t find trouble with farang but this is their turf.