The Low Road: The R&R Run

Bangkok · 5 stops · every stop verified in live map data · ends near a bed

Between 1962 and 1975 Bangkok was where the American forces in Vietnam were sent for five days of rest and recuperation, and an entire nightlife was built to receive them. Most of it has gone: Washington Square is a Marriott now. These five are what is left, walked in the only order their opening hours allow, and the last one does not start until midnight.

1. 1 · The Cold Open
   Madrid Bar
   On Patpong 1 since 1969, which puts it in the middle of the thing rather than after it. It opened for American servicemen on R&R and it was drinking steadily before Patpong had a single go-go bar in it. Later it collected a reputation as the room where Air America pilots sat, and where a certain amount of business got discussed that was not strictly anybody's business. It is small, wooden, unbothered and still there. Start early and start here, because the street outside is a shadow of itself and this room is not. The pin is the street, not the door.
   est. 1969, and it predates the go-go bars · from early evening · pin is the lane, not the door
2. 2 · The Anchor
   Malaysia Hotel
   Fifty-four Soi Ngam Duphli, and this is the R&R hotel: unrenovated, unrepentant, and still taking guests. When they made Good Morning, Vietnam in 1987 they did not build a set, they gutted a second floor room here and turned it into the radio studio Robin Williams broadcasts from. The whole picture was shot in Thailand. Eat in the twenty-four hour coffee shop downstairs, which never shuts and in which a substantial proportion of the expatriate novels set in this city were either written or thoroughly deserved. The pin is the soi.
   the R&R hotel, and the film's radio studio · kitchen never closes · pin is the lane, not the door
3. 3 · The Detour
   Wong's Place
   Two streets over on Soi Si Bamphen, about three hundred metres and a different decade. It opens when the family decides it is opening and closes when the last story has finished, which can be at an hour with no honest name. The walls are album sleeves. Nobody is running it as a business exactly, and that is precisely why it has outlived every bar that was. Do not arrive early. Do not arrive with a plan.
   a dive with no fixed hours · late, then later · verified Aug 2026
4. 4 · The Wildcard
   Miami Hotel
   North to Sukhumvit Soi 13 and a hotel that opened in the sixties for exactly the same trade and then declined to update a single thing: a working switchboard, a jukebox, and a swimming pool the colour of 1965 sitting in a courtyard the city has built four storeys around. Take a cold beer out to the water. It costs almost nothing and it is the single most peculiar half hour available in central Bangkok.
   est. 1960s, and the pool is original · sundown · verified Aug 2026
5. 5 · The Last Call
   Thermae
   A hundred and fifty metres from the Miami, down a flight of stairs, and no daylight has ever reached it. Thermae has been running since the R&R years and it does not properly begin until after midnight, which is why it is last and not because anybody arranged it that way. You end here with whoever else is still upright. Then walk the hundred and fifty metres back to the Miami and go to bed, which is the only sensible arrangement this road offers.
   the cantina, since the R&R years · after midnight · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Miami Hotel Bangkok

Fly in via BKK. The live map shows every pub, bar and restaurant around the route, compiled from OpenStreetMap and Google with live ratings.