Like so much in Pattaya during 2020, Soi 6 has become a shell of its former self.
The North Pattaya street, once known as Soi Yodsak before the privately-owned soi was sold to the city, gained infamy for its cheap brothels, inexpensive booze and anything-goes antics.
It’s a place proper Thais would not be caught dead in and family tourists who stumbled on it on the way to the beach quickly shuffled children through while covering their eyes. More than one Soi 6 Songkran brought scandal down upon the city.
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Heavy investment by a major bar-owning consortium a decade ago began changing the face of Soi 6, however. The number of beer bars, complete with short-time rooms upstairs, exploded on the street. A more corporate mentality turned off many longtime fans.
British-expat Phillip is one of them. Now 65, he began visiting Pattaya 20 years ago and made Soi 6 his single man’s stop to meet British friends, drink and carouse.
Now married and suffering the health effects of long-term living in Pattaya, he doesn’t party like he used to. Soi 6 isn’t the same as it was and 2020 has only made it worse, he said. He’ll still pop in for two or three beers, but then goes home.
That explosion of bars has fallen to ash in 2020. The bar signs are still there, but half the venues are closed. Many of the bargirls working on Soi 6 in 2019 have left, unable to make any money. Screams and catcalls go out when a stray foreigner wanders by, but many girls simply look bored and play with their phones.
With its cheap, tawdry offerings, Soi 6 has managed to survive better than the now bar graveyards of Soi 7 and Soi 8. But a soi perennially under the threat of redevelopment now faces the real prospect of drastic and permanent change.
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