9 Best Nightlife Experiences in Patong Beach

Bangla Road really comes to life once the sun sets. The road is closed to vehicle traffic and becomes a 400 meter festival of neon lights, loud music and cheap beer. Jammed most nights of the year, it's quite a friendly and lively place to walk around as bars and clubs compete with each other for customers. If you’re looking for a fun night out in Phuket, Bangla Road should be your first (and, often, only) stop.

It sometimes seems like anything goes along Bangla Road, with an incredible variety of things to see and do. Alongside international-standard nightclubs are hundreds of beer bars and dozens of go-go bars, as well as street performances, vendors, lounge bars, games, live music and more. Taken with the right attitude, it's a barrel of laughs.

Simon Cabaret is all about clever choreography and fabulous costumes, rapid set changes and superb background sets. The transgender and transvestite entertainers are remarkably skilled and easily half of the fun at Simon is to glance around at the audience's entranced faces as they take the spectacle in.

You simply can’t miss Tiger Disco: the imposing complex covers some 5,000 sq m on 3 floors. The building is fitted out with cement decor with large concrete tigers overlooking the street from the 2nd floor. The ground floor is entirely beer bars while the upper floors are home to the nightclub.

Tiger Disco is a well-thought-out entertainment complex for those who want to party in a safe environment. You can spend an entire evening there: dinner and pool game at Tiger Pool Club, a few drinks at one of the 1st floor’s bars, then dancing the night away on the 2nd floor.

Patong, being the center of nightlife on the island, and indeed the south of Thailand, is the place to go for live music. For a town of this size, there are a surprising amount of choices when it comes to live music. Folk, heavy rock, house or hip-hop are all available on a nightly basis. Top choices include Monsoon, Redhot, and Hard Rock Café.

Soi Sea Dragon is the main place in Phuket to find go-go bars. The most notorious of these is Suzy Wong which, despite being the furthest from the Bangla Road, is still the most popular by a significant margin. Other notable names on the street include Harem, Club Lover and Devil’s Playground. These are definitely not family-friendly venues are can be pretty shocking if you don't have a very robust sense of adventure. Note that drinks prices are higher in these venues than in the beer bars, putting them on a similar scale as Bangla Road's nightclubs.

Paradise Beach Club Phuket is a large, well-developed party spot located on Paradise Beach – an isolated bay a short distance from Patong Beach. Featuring shops, restaurants, activities and fantastic beach parties, it has an air of exclusivity without being prohibitively expensive.

Special beach raves take place 3 times a month on Paradise Beach, on the evening of the full moon, half-moon and new moon. They feature EDM tunes, neon paints and a carefree vibe. Paradise Beach Club practically unique among the beach clubs on Phuket in the way that it celebrates the phases of the moon.

Bangla Boxing Stadium is a Muay Thai arena in Patong. Originally built on Bangla Road on a smaller scale, the stadium kept its name after moving to its new location opposite Banzaan Market on Sai Kor Road, the large thoroughfare passing behind Jungceylon Shopping Center.

The stadium is difficult to miss: it’s a large 2-storey building with a first floor made of beige stone-like sculpted cement shaped like tigers. The second floor is an amphitheater surrounding the ring. At the front of the building, you can see large statues representing Thai boxers.

Most of the businesses in the Royal Paradise Complex in Patong are run by, or are catering to, gay people. The atmosphere in the Complex during the day is sleepy, but at night the atmosphere is friendly and flamboyant, with cabaret shows sometimes right out on the street.

Illuzion Show & Discotheque should be on the bucket list of every reveller visiting Patong Beach for the quality of the entertainment they provide and for the high-standing style of the venue. Featuring 2 main areas – dance-floor, VIP lounge, and a large balcony – the club is built around a central T-shaped stage back-dropped with a 100-sq-m LED wall screen projecting colorful videos and graphic images, adding to the futuristic design of the venue. With great EDM and hip-hop music played on a first-class sound system, it is one of the most popular nightclubs in Phuket.