The great tradition of beer gardens
in Bangkok began when local beer producers
Kloster and Singha began to pitch up their
carousels and marquees in urban city, open-air
car parks of an evening, well before high-rise
car parks came onstream.
The
tradition began to target tourists and to
celebrate the end of the rainy season. Truth
be told, there were few beer gardens beyond
Siam Square and other central locations,
but now they are everywhere with Beer Wars
in full swing. Gardens even dominate nightlife
action in the provinces, once the rains
depart.
But
while Kloster has virtually abandoned the
fray, today Singha dominates the gardens,
but they are not by any means alone. They
have been joined by the likes of Heineken,
Leo, Chang and Tiger Beers, all anxious
to be best sellers in this beer thirsty
marketplace.
The quality of the beer on offer can be
judged most successfully by the price of
a pitcher, I reckons.
The
downtown daddy of all beer gardens though
is the interlocking open air stubens outside
the recently renamed World Trade Center
which is now known as the Central World
Plaza.
November
welcomes the beer giants to the fray outside
the center and soundstages are built and
lit at the three or four gardens, with seating,
fairy lights and huge digital TV screens
all installed to entertain easily more than
a thousand punters on a busy but cool winter’s
evening.
Don’t
expect comfortable sofas, cushioned seats
or any other of life’s seating pleasures.
You are here to drink beer, enjoy the music
and whatever food happens to be on offer.
Trawling
through the well-populated gardens, we plumped
for the Leo beer garden where the band sounded
fine and there were seats to spare.
Leo
offers a pitcher holding 1.5 litres for
160 baht or a 3-litre gravity beer pump
giving you your own beer on tap for just
360 baht. And that’s quite a good deal serving
a table of eight – with ice – for about
45 minutes at a time.
Of
course, it’s a good deal if you like Leo
beer, which is not a bad beer but you may
have certainly tasted better.
We
settled and got our seats and were drinking
very quickly because the service in the
Leo garden is very efficient and a lot of
beer gets shipped because the service here
is so good and the staff take the trouble
to keep it coming and to follow up on calls
for food.
We
started off the nosh with skewered barbecued
pork with sticky rice, spicy Pappaya salad
and the barbecued chicken-on-a-stick, all
of which was very tasty and of course in
true Thai style, perfectly complimented
the ice-chilled beer.
As
the evening progressed, we managed some
fine Tom Yum Talay, pork and chicken satay,
a very tasty grilled freshwater fish with
salt, even some spit-roasted suckling pig.
The misses insisted on her Yam Loh Mett
or (vermicelli) noodles with seafood.
There
were a few foreign tourists in the crowd,
but the immediate appeal of beer gardens
nowadays is more to young, aspiring middle
class Thais who want somewhere sanuk and
not too expensive to hang out and talk about
life’s delicious details in a no-frills,
Pals-R-Us ambience.
Tin
tables, tin seats and thin beer! Ann all
paid for by going Dutch as we say, or American-style
as the Thais say. We Brits simple all chip
in.
The
bands that ply the stages of this extended
beer garden complex are all Thai and all
prefer to feature Thai pop and rock with
just a smattering of Western favourites.
You better be familiar with Big Ass, Silly
Fools and AB Normal if you want to be with
the local in-crowd, but the bands are very
good and any good live music is fine by
me – two pitchers later!
At
the Leo site, the band RungThai played some
great Thai covers and this talented six-piece
band featuring great vocal harmonies would
have had little or no trouble covering MTV
favorites if they really wanted, so the
music policy is obviously to please the
majority in the audience and it was 90 percent
Thai.
It’s
a good place to drop by for a pitcher or
two on your way to something more challenging,
but you would need patience by the bucketful
rather than beer to spend a whole evening
here.
Cheers!
