In the UK it’s fair to say that Cabaret is dead.
Live entertainment, such as it is, seems to consist mainly of singers with karaoke backing tracks, duos 0f overweight, sequin-clad couples with a guitar and a tamborine or workingmens’ club acts struggling to be heard over the bingo and the fighting.
Here in Thailand cabaret is king.
Thais love their live entertainment: singers, dancers, bands and ‘funny’ shows, no Thai-style entertainment venue is complete without one or all of them and they can be the hinge on which places succeed or fail.
Tawandaeng, Bangkok, is justly famous for its shows which rival anything staged in the West End of London, Tawandaeng, Pattaya (no relation) falls short but does its best.
Brazenly taking the name of one of Bangkok’s best venues, Tawandaeng (Red Sun) is situated on Third Road between Pattaya Klang and Pattaya Nua, directly opposite the Third Road Fishing Park. Like a lot of Thai-style clubs it’s an attractive barn of a place with plenty of seating.
Taking its inspiration from such popular Thai venues as Kampan and Khapoa Daeng it offers great bands and a funny show playing mainly Thai music with an emphasis on Luk Thung and Morlam. The female singer particularly is worth watching especially when she sings bawdy Issarn songs in English with lyrics aimed at ridiculing the foreign audience. A nice touch I’d not seen before. I’m not too sure of the decision to replace the podium dancers with bicycles, though.
Tawandaeng has only been open for a few months but is already well established amongst Pattaya’s moneyed Thais and mia falling plus there are normally a few Westeners sprinkled throughout the audience. It’s good to go with some Thai friends for the full experience. I went with a couple of Sabbai Dee girls and a Thai instructor from one of the Muay Thai Gyms who unfortunately got extremely drunk and belligerent within an hour, fought with his girlfriend and had to escorted off the premises due to him trying to fight any man under forty who had the temerity to be sitting within 50 meters of him.
Nice chap, though.
The food, as you can expect from a venue aimed primarily at Thais is excellent with a few gimmicky signature dishes to keep them interested. Dishes range from 60 baht for grilled pork to 250 baht for elaborate fish dishes.
I recommend the volcano chicken at 120 baht: a steaming mass of beow-wan gai served sizzling in a tinfoil chicken.
I sh#t you not.
Drink prices are reasonable with three litre towers of draught Leo at 385 baht and 100 Pipers at 325. Mixers are 40 baht each.
The place kicks off around midnight when it fills up and, like all the best Thai places, the drunken crowd starts dancing. There is no dance floor as such but dancing around your table is not that much different from dancing ‘round ya handbag and since morlam is the best drinking music since Dixieland jazz I dare you not to be infected by the joy of it.
Tawandaeng, Bangkok it isn’t but it does provide a great evening of beer, food, music and dancing at a fraction of the cost of Kampan.
Try it out; it’ll do until the real Tawandaeng gets here.