Police knock bars back to midnight-closing

[Karona]

Are the bar's still closing at 24? I'll be next week in HH so prepearing to start drink earlier if can't stay in karaoke until 6am

[littlebird]

Still closing at midnight on the dot - continuing for the foreseeable future

[usual suspect]

Police relaxed the pressure of closing bang-on midnight a bit..now the bars have scraped-back half hour of
'drinking-up' time.
The bars/Sois are now as busy with customers as they were over New Yr & Xmas..a message needs
somehow sending to the Ampher that HH's real money from tourism is coming in here, and stop trying to
pretend it's not.

[Super Joe]

Still closing at midnight on the dot - continuing for the foreseeable future

Have you been down there lately? it's been 'relaxed' until 1am for the last 4 days or so, with lights and music down at midnight. But music is still well on, you can still hear it from another bar for example.

Then last night the owner of the bar I mostly drink in said they now have to nod to run on past 1am a little, if shutters are half-down/check bins have been settled etc, ie: drinking up sort of thing. Finally closed about 01:20am, around or just after an old bill truck drove down Bintabaht.

The karaoke area has been open until 6am since January.

He'd also had a chat to his landowner in last day or so, owns land of 3no. bars, and it's absolutely nothing to do with any bar relocation/redevelopment from the owners point of view. Seems to be some 'authorities' driven thing, but no specific reason given.


SJ

[Super Joe]

The bars/Sois are now as busy with customers as they were over New Yr & Xmas..a message needs somehow sending to the Ampher that HH's real money from tourism is coming in here, and stop trying to pretend it's not.

Yes, very busy which is great to see. The karaoke area was as rocking as I've ever seen it too. And loads of mysteriously h***y birds about as well, maybe Barry can shed some light on that re: Pattaya ferry

But I really don't get why you think local government officials should care less about whether farang businesses (principally), and bar workers etc are losing out on money!? The bars don't care about the girls earning money, otherwise they would pay them salaries instead of using them as slave labour, so why should the amphur care less. Maybe this is driven by the labour official responsible for enforcing the labour department and the new minimum wage structure. Only kidding

The bar area is not diminishing over the years, despite owner turnover, so it's not percevied that anyone's going out of business over closing times. Not that I'd expect they'd much anyway. And I don't suppose anyone really believes tourists are gonna go to Pattaya (and get mugged), or Phuket/Samui/Krabi (and spend 20% more) next year, just to get that hours extra drinking time. And again they won't care less if a few percent of tourists go elsewhere.

They care about their own finances only imo.

SJ

[barrys]

The bars/Sois are now as busy with customers as they were over New Yr & Xmas..a message needs somehow sending to the Ampher that HH's real money from tourism is coming in here, and stop trying to pretend it's not.

Yes, very busy which is great to see. The karaoke area was as rocking as I've ever seen it too. And loads of mysteriously h***y birds about as well, maybe Barry can shed some light on that re: Pattaya ferry


Nothing to do with me, just came back from Pats on the ferry yesterday.....
Not a bad idea though, come to think of it ....

[Gus]

I did not follow up reading this thread and have only just realised that the bars are back on early closing.
I hope that the BIB get a dip in their commissions relative to the hours of trading lost.
It looks like I was fortunate when I visited because i missed all of this including macha Buddha day as well.
I suppose Thailand being Thailand we should not be surprised at whatever happens, but I suspect that when I return in November there will not be any drastic changes to the bars.
If I owned a bar that had to close early I would be very disappointed when other bars close a lot later, I suppose if you start asking officials questions then your card becomes marked as a troublemaker and you will suffer even more.
I was told that the desks on the 3rd floor of the BIB HQ are covered with dough for the staff to divvy up.
It is not just the bars that suffer it is all the other traders as well, I know that I have posted this before, but everyone has to adjust their body clocks by 2 hours to allow for the earlier closure, go out at 7 or 8 instead of 9 or 10, early to bed early to rise.

[Khundon1975]

So in effect the area will be closed down for the duration of the construction and then the rest of the land owners will fall in line. The younger generation of Thais understand this; it’s the older ones who are holding out for the moment, but time is not on their side.

Seems to me that the younger generation of Thais are fools then.

Whatever happened to the 'authoritive' promenade plan in any case?

Caller, if I remember correctly, the pier restaurants are, in most cases illegal and were built without permission.
The local council have been threatening to have them pulled down for 15 years or so and replace them with a promenade or similar.

Personally, I think that someday, some rich Thai with clout will suddenly appear and "claim ownership of the land" and with help from the BIB and others, will get them pulled down and replaced with a high rise hotel or condominium block together with shops and restaurants etc.

Pity really, as I liked to eat out on those pier eateries.

[hhfarang]

...pulled down and replaced with a high rise hotel or condominium block together with shops and restaurants etc.

They won't be replaced by high rises. There has been a law here for many years now that restricts the height of buildings depending on their distance from the beach. That's why any new condos or hotels you've seen constructed in the last several years have been low bungalows near the beach with the high part of the building being several hundred meters back and building heights being stair-stepped in between depending on the distance from the beach. Prices of condos in the existing high rise buildings on the beach doubled overnight (supply and demand, no others would ever be built) when that law was passed.

[Super Joe]

Haven't been in town for about a week, so don't know when this started, but tonight bars were open until 2am again

SJ

[BaaBaa.]

Haven't been in town for about a week, so don't know when this started, but tonight bars were open until 2am again

SJ

Have you literally just got home?

[dtaai-maai]

...loads of mysteriously hairy birds about as well, maybe Barry can shed some light on that

Yes, come on Barry, do tell!

[notlongnow]

Any new news on this? Coming over in a few weeks so wondering whether we will need to start nights a bit earlier!

[notlongnow]

Oh, and would really rather not end up in a karaoke bar if at all possible!

[Korkenzieher]

There's other bars in the Bazarre area, also known as the Karaoke (area). Some of them quite reasonable. With a favourable wind, there is usually something open until daylight but as the thread title suggests, there are occasions when the powers that be enforce earlier closing. That also happens sometimes in the Bazarre area. When you get here, the easiest way to find it is to follow the trail of underemployed girls after the main Bintabaht area bars close - or look on this websites nightlife map.