There’s a huge range of nightlife options in Bangkok, and downtown Bangkok at night can become a frenetic, pulsating, lively place. There are many western-style expat pubs, go-go bars, hostess bars, cocktail lounges, huge super-clubs, street-side cheap and cheerful places and many more options. There are also lots of gay and lesbian bars, with whole areas dedicated to gay or mixed crowds.

here are many areas in which you can bar-hop between many close-by pubs, or you can take a taxi to a stand-alone club which will typically feature live music and lots of whisky. Most places in Bangkok close at 1am or 2am at the latest, leaving you to either go home (the sensible option!) or continue on to find an illegal “after-hours” pub which often involves quickly ducking under a half closed shutter and tip-toeing upstairs into a packed and sweaty room filled with other like-minded party-goers. Some after hours places don’t actually open until 3:30am or even 4am, meaning that the many pavement bars on Sukhumvit Road may be your only option.

There are various clusters of bars in which tourists inevitably find themselves. Khao San Road has probably the highest density of bars per square metre, and they play a large variety of musical styles including hip hop, drum and bass, house, trance, chart music, rock and Thai music. Bars here are lively, cheap and draw a predominantly foreign crowd, although in recent years it has become a popular destination for more cosmopolitan Thais. Also, Silom Soi 4 is worth a look as it has a sophisticated mix of both gay and straight bars. Just nearby is the Langsuan area in which the bars have mainly Thai clientele and most also feature live music.

For the expat scene, head to Sukhumvit Road, along which you can do a pub crawl of the many British, Irish, German and American style pubs. These are a bit more pricey and there’s rarely a Thai customer to be found. Also in this area are many larger clubs, which have large dance floors and often very talented DJs spinning the tunes.

But if big, banging clubs are your thing then look no further than RCA – six huge clubs next to each other, all playing hip hop, R&B or drum and bass. These swanky places pull in moneyed Thais and a few of the more hip expats. Be sure to take a photocopy of your passport here though as absolutely everyone is checked on the door.

Of course you can hardly talk about Bangkok nightlife without mentioning the go-go bar scene – it’s the much loved and much loathed phenomenon that Bangkok’s been famous for for a long time. There are three main areas in which the go-go bars are concentrated: the Nana Entertainment Plaza, Soi Cowboy and the infamous Patpong. Although they’re tamer these days than they were in the more hedonistic 80’s and 90’s, they’re still pretty full-on and probably unlike anything you’ve seen back home. Although these bars are plentiful, they’re segregated enough from the ‘normal’ bars so that if this scene is not to your taste it won’t encroach on your evening’s enjoyment.