Another Brick In The Mall
And very nice it is too!
It has been on our lips
now for some months and finally we have
succumbed to the hype and circumstance
and found the time to get our asses over
to Khao San Road and mingle with the colourful
international flotsam and jetsam that
calls itself the youth of today. Our target
is the Brick Bar.
In the narrow pedestrian
street, an off-duty Romanian train driver
here on holiday trips over a massive mid-west
matron with blue-rinsed hair looking hard
for a prostitute to scowl at; sockless
Soviet pimps on vacation ask for directions
from already-confused, pot-smoking Arabs
busy ogling sexy Jewish chicks on R&R
from National Service on the Gaza Strip;
smelly Iranian postmen hunt for tailor-made,
hemp postbags and trip over Irish fiddlers
and their Thai chicks all looking for
short gigs and long, free beers; fat New
York tax accountants blow their fees on
carved Red Indian icons while they queue
in the heat for Limp Bizkit look-a-like
tattoos on their flaccid white biceps;
Greek dudes escape the beach and get their
sun-bleached hair pleated and beaded like
Swedish girl scouts and scope out the
retired Texan coke dealers getting to
know the ladyboy hookers ready to take
it in any orifice anywhere in town for
‘a mere 1000 dollars’, bringing a smile
to the blow monkeys’ faces and giving
the giddy transvestites accidental hard-ons,
turned on as they are by the appeal of
dumb Yanks and the smell of warm greenbacks.
A colourful part of
town indeed!.
The low budget traveller’s
dream come true, it is a busy area most
days of the year with punters from every
other nation thrown in to populate this
churning 21st century ghetto where more
than a few sweaty hippies pound the pavements
looking for cheap rooms, a cheap smoke,
and if the truth be told, a cheap duck
too.
The Brick Bar is welded
into the back of the Buddy Hotel shopping
mall mezzanine, a posh hotel by traveler
standards and at the right end of Khao
Sahn Road, meaning at the opposite end
from the police station. And this is one
busy bar, thanks mainly to the fact that
it is literally at the heart of the Thai
tourist industry by default.
The Brick Bar has been
featuring live music since its first opened,
and the music menu is fairly eclectic
in as much as the bar features blues,
reggae, pop and ska on different evenings
and the bands are a mix of local Thai
outfits with just a few farang bands chucked
in. The Soi Dog Blues Band play here to
a full house Mondays fronted by genial
Dane Jeff Thomsen and the night we were
there – Tuesday – we heard a mixture of
pop, blues and ska in the company of young
Thais, retired UK civil servants, a table
full of Bratislavan sledge designers and
a variety of visitors from parts of the
world I have never heard of.
But the bar is really
a truly impressive red brick baronial
hall of splendid proportions with a massive
ground floor, huge wooden tables and matching
benches, cushioned nukes and crannies,
a very long bar, a pool table, fussball
and room to happily accommodate 400 punters.
Upstairs is reached by two staircases
and it is huge up here too with room for
200 more, with another pool table, two
pinball machines, its own toilets and
its own bar. Very impressive and beautifully
constructed with cool woods and great
art. And you know someone has looked at
Saxophone Bar and others like it to plan
and design this great bar – potentially
one of the world’s best.
There is an extensive
Thai and western menu on offer with everything
you might want to try if here for the
first time. But we enjoyed the Buffalo
wings, deep fried pork chitlings and Moslem
curry beef on rice, all washed down with
pints of Singha and Heineken. There is
a full drinks selection including Kloster
beers and all the Asian favourites, and
we absorbed a few cold ones as we watched
the bands deliver some very classy music.
Top and Luknam took
the early evening slot presenting their
choice of recent hits and classic ballads
from years gone by. Top sings and Luk
plays piano – a proper grand. They were
passable, but the incoming Million Blues
Band of course blew them away. The place
lit up with some very classy blues guitar
playing and cool vocals from front man
Ben who took us through the blues real
book with a great selection of songs by
the likes of BB King, Freddie King, Muddy
Waters and Robert Cray. Very accomplished
and one of the best blues bands in Asia
for sure. I know because the growing outlander
audience loved them too, including the
freaky violin solos from the keyboard
player, who doubled on the fiddle.
The sound in the spacious
room is good if care is taken with the
modest backline equipment, and the bands
we heard that Tuesday night mastered that
requirement easily providing a very musical
evening. Granted a 60-oot ceiling does
not help but the room was designed to
accommodate hundreds of guests and when
that happens, the sound will be perfect,
absorbed by the fleshy hordes!
The Teddy Ska Band arrived
to do the final set and they were nicely
agitated playing tasty reggae and ska
music which filled the busy bar as we
got pleasantly pissed.
A very nice night out
and of course you have the whole interesting
street and environs to choose from if
you want to make a day of it shopping,
cruising and people watching.
BRICK BAR
Open 11:00 am to 2:00am
265 Khao San Rd.,
Taladyod, Phranakorn,
Bangkok 10200
Tel.0-2629-4477
http://www.brickbarkhaosan.com/
