The photo below is of Walking Street, Pattaya, Thailand, on a Saturday night in January 2021. It’s Pattaya’s most famous nightlife zone, silent, in darkness, in a state of shutdown.
These photos (below) are from shortly before Pattaya bars and nightlife venues were closed for the first time on March 18, 2020. And in January 2021, during the second forced shutdown of Pattaya bars, nightlife, and other non-essential businesses and services due to Covid-19 control measures in Pattaya.
It’s a sad sight, and until things return to normal, there is no way to tell just how badly the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has affected Pattaya nightlife and bars.
There is hardly a tourist in Pattaya right now (January 2021), and even when bars and other nightlife venues are allowed to open, it’s simply not worth it, so they don’t.
But the sad truth is, along with many other businesses in Pattaya, many of these bars and nightlife venues will never open again, at least not under the same ownership.
UPATE: Bars and nightlife venues in Pattaya re-opened 1 February, 2021. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see how it was.
Pattaya, March 7, 2020
By now, business was already slow for most bars in Pattaya. On March 18, bars and nightlife venues in Pattaya were ordered closed. Initially for two weeks, but the lockdown remained in place until July 1st.
Pattaya, 14 to 16 January 2021
On December 30, after a spike in Covid-19 cases in Thailand, bars and nightlife venues in Pattaya were once again ordered to close.
January 18, 2021
Pattaya Nightlife Re-opened After Second Lockdown Due to Covid-19, 5 February 2021
Pattaya bars and nightlife venues were allowed to once again on February 1, 2021. Most places remained shut until Friday February 5, which was the first weekend after re-opening.
Most of Walking Street remained in darkness, but a handful gogo bars, beer bars and nightclubs including Lucifer, 808, Insomnia, Windmill, Dollhouse, Tantra, and Le Pub were open.
On Soi 6, about 50 percent of the bars were open, and most had at least a customer two.
On Soi 7, once one of the most popular nightlife streets in Pattaya, there was about 3 bars open, sharing, at the time, a single customer.
On Soi 8, just the Sailor bar and one more bar were open.
Elsewhere around Pattaya—Tree Town on Soi Buakhao was reasonably busy in the afternoon, under the circumstances. Several bars on Soi Made in Thailand were open, and the popular bars on the corners of Sois 6, 7 and 8 and Pattaya Beach Road were among the busiest I saw.