Soi Pratuchai (alias: “Soi Twilight”; Thai: ซอยประตูชัย, meaning “Triumphal arch”) is a gay related entertainment walkway in the Bangrak district of Bangkok, Thailand, catering mainly, though not exclusively, to foreign tourists and expatriates. While Soi Pratuchai is internationally known as a red light district for gay at the heart of Bangkok's sex industry, the city in fact has numerous gay related red-light districts that are far more popular with Thai.
Contents |
Soi Pratuchai consists of a “7” shape walkway running between Surawong Road and Rama IV Road. Soi Pratuchai is within walking distance from the BTS Skytrain Silom Line's Sala Daeng Station, and MRT Bangkok Metro Blue Line's Si Lom Station.
From south to north, it has a lot of gay bars, restaurants, café and salons:
Most Soi Pratuchai go-go bars feature boy dancing on a stage. The dancers (and even occasionally the serving staff) are generally available to customers willing to pay a bar fine to take them out of the bar; the fees for sexual services are negotiated separately. Some establishments advertising "massages" are in fact disguised brothels, and a few famous "blowjob bars" offer oral sex at the main bar or in back rooms.
Several upstairs bars still feature (technically illegal) sex shows, with boys performing various creative acts. Perhaps the most notorious of these features boys performing exotic feats involving bathing. Some of these second-floor gay bars are run by scam artists who lure tourists with offers of low prices and later present a wildly inflated bill along with a threat of physical harm should the bill go unpaid. The Tourist Police, usually stationed at Patpong 1 and Silom Road, can help in these situations.
Some establishments in Patpong employ kathoeys (or "ladyboys") either exclusively or as part of a mixed gender staff.
EMPOWER is a non-profit community organization that operates in Patpong (and elsewhere) and serves women working there by offering classes in language, health, law and pre-college education, as well as individual counseling. It also lobbies the government on behalf of the women, in an attempt to extend regular labor protections to sex workers. Since the dancers and other female bar employees are invariably under-educated young women from rural areas, EMPOWER's work is appreciated by the women , if not necessarily by all the bar owners.
|
|||||||||||