It'd been a while since I'd been to Patpong. In fact, the last time was during the Red Shirt protests and the place was surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers. This time, that side of lower Silom and the sois were packed out with western tourists and vendors selling the usual counterfeit and souvenir ware. From my latest, rather brief, survey I'm left with these four observations.

1. As I said, in mid evening the streets and sois were absolutely jammed with people and vendors, more so than Siam Square.

2. Apparently from this seemingly brisk business, there appears to be little incentive to upgrade or really even maintain the area. What I remember from last time either is still there looking even more shabby and decayed, or perhaps has had a name change in the form of a new sigh slapped over it and pretty much nothing else done.

3. There are now many fewer upstairs bars, less than half a dozen. This kind of business may be gone entirely in a few years.

4. What upstairs bars remain are even more a shadow of past times, to the point you wonder why they even bother. Certainly the crowds are staying outside.

After taking a disappointed peak inside all of them (no great task), I finally circled back to Super Pussy, at least by name, a mainstay upstairs bar of Patpong for some decades now. Because of that, I mistakenly, and I guess naively, thought it was still an honest bar, and let my guard down. I sat at the bar that surrounds the stage. The place had maybe a dozen other customers, making it vastly more popular than the others. No sooner had I been seated and ordered a Chang, two 'girls' (at least one was definitely a ladyboy) were sitting on either side of me. I made clear my disinterest and soon they were gone. Instead, a few moments later one of the staff appeared with a laminated A4 sized card stating that the first drink was 300 baht and telling me to pay up now or it'll cost more later. I refused and said I'd finish my beer first, which I did, though rather quickly, to her great protest. I then paid the 300 to the cashier, rather than have more trouble, and left, the card girl calling back to me that I still owed some, unspecified, additional amount. Just for comparison, two years ago I went to Queens Castle 1, which appears to be now gone, and was paying 85 or 90 baht a beer, and though, as you would expect, hustled for drinks by the girls, everything was on the up and up.

Oh, well. I guess I'll check things out again in another couple of years, at most.

I guess I don;t know the term upstairs bar and what it means ?

10 years here and never heard of it

^It's a bar on the first floor of the building which you have to reach by going up stairs.

^It's a bar on the first floor of the building which you have to reach by going up stairs.

Or possibly the second floor if it is well established. Good tip, bring a maglite with you and hide most of your money!

Cheers for the update. I haven't been down there in years but I remember a visit to Queens Castle 2 fondly....