Below are some photos of Pattaya nightlife as you’ve never seen it before, during its darkest days during the Covid-19 pandemic when many prophesized it would never be the same again.
Pattaya Bars & Nightlife Lockdown Periods:
- 1st lockdown: March 18 to July 1, 2020
- 2nd lockdown: December 30, 2020, to February 5, 2022
- 3rd lockdown: April 9, 2021, to January 2022
Due to bars and nightlife venues being the first businesses to close and last to re-open during lockdowns, bar owners, Pattaya bar girls, and other staff employed at bars and nightlife venues were among the worst affected by Covid-19 restrictions in Pattaya.
Many bars in Pattaya turned to online “Pattaya girls live streams” to generate income for the remaining girls. Girls who lost their jobs sought alternative employment or returned to their family homes to live more cheaply until things got better.
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The photo below is Walking Street, Pattaya, Thailand, on a Saturday night in January 2021. Pattaya’s most famous nightlife zone. Ghostly, dark, silent, in lockdown.
Pattaya Nightlife, March 7, 2020
Shortly before the first Pattaya nightlife lockdown.
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
During the second Pattaya nightlife lockdown.
On December 30, after a spike in Covid-19 cases in Thailand, Pattaya bars and nightlife venues were again ordered to close.
Pattaya Nightlife January 18, 2021
Pattaya Nightlife Re-opening After Second Lockdown 5 February 2021
Pattaya bars and nightlife venues were allowed to open 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 few 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 were about 3 bars open, sharing, at the time, a single customer.
Pattaya Bars and Nightlife Reopening 2022
The recovery of nightlife in Pattaya in 2022 was well documented on Youtube. Countless videos of Pattaya nightlife showed the current state of popular nightlife zones such as Soi LK Metro, Sois 7 and 8, Soi 6, Soi Buakhao, and Walking Street on a weekly basis.
Photos of Pattaya Nightlife August 2022
Here are some photos of how it was at some popular nightlife spots around Soi Buakhao and in Soi 7, Pattaya, on Sunday, August 14, 2022.
Nightlife on Walking Street and Soi 6 in Pattaya September 2022
It was a busy weekend in Pattaya due to the GLOW festival, but regardless of that, month on month, there was an increasing number of tourists returning to Pattaya. Most bars in Pattaya’s popular nightlife zones were getting a least a steady flow of customers, mainly thanks to a large influx of Indian (predominantly single male) tourists in Pattaya.
Since July 1, 2022, when the Thailand Pass and other restrictions imposed due to Covid were relaxed, Pattaya’s nightlife has slowly returned to normal.
Many bars closed permanently, but some took the opportunity to revamp and modernize. New bars opened too, including plush new beer bars and state-of-the-art nightclubs. Some say that Pattaya’s nightlife was due for a reset and that the pandemic has ushered in Pattaya nightlife version 2.0.