Soi Gonzo Off Bangla Road in Patong Beach

Soi Gonzo is one of the streets situated on Bangla Road in Patong Beach. You can’t miss its entrance as it is framed by the huge and long-established Aussie Bar. Once past the Aussie Bar you find a corridor-like lane flanked by seven beer bars on each side. Soi Gonzo is a dead-end street with the smallest discotheque in Patong Beach, The White Room, at its end.
Basically, Aussie Bar and the White Room are the two places of interest in Soi Gonzo, no offense meant, but Soi Gonzo’s beer bars do not display more outstanding attraction than the 100 or so similar watering holes in the other sois off Bangla Road with the same beers and girls you wouldn’t take home to mother.

‘Gonzo’ means ‘foolish’ in Italian and the term was used to define the journalistic-style of Hunter S. Thompson in the 1970s, thus popularizing the word. Soi Gonzo is not crazier than its competing neighbouring sois, but it has its share of interesting joints. The Aussie Bar marks the entrance of the soi and it first opened in 2000. This large bar and restaurant (approximately 200sqm on two floors) is paradoxically a ‘family-friendly’ raft in the middle of a veritable ocean of lust and temptation – isn’t this gonzo? Pool tables, sport events broadcasting, Western and Thai food, and no bar-girls make the Aussie Bar a cool place for a stopover with friends and family while discovering Bangla’s urban jungle.
Soi Gonzo’s central part is made up of an alley with 14 beers bars: Luck Bar, Magic Bar, Sweet Bar, Night Relax Bar, Blade Bars 1 and 2, Duck Tonight Bar, Tahiti Bar, Off Side Bar, Boom Boom Bar, Paris Folies Bar, Lisa Bar, Hansa Bar, plus one closed bar with no name at the moment (August 2013). The nightscene of Bangla Road follows the same Buddhist principles as the rest of the world: ‘nothing’s permanent’; so bar names and owners may change in a matter of weeks. Nevertheless, what’s on offer here won’t change so soon: affordable beers/spirits (80 baht for 33cl beer bottle) and good company (for rates, you’ll have to discuss on site by yourself if it’s your call).