How to Act at a Gentlemen's Club in Bangkok

Nobody wants a lecture on manners before a stag night.

But twelve men walking into a Bangkok gentlemen's club for the first time make the same four mistakes, and all four are settled before anyone leaves the hotel.

None of it is about being polite for its own sake. It is about not losing a room you have paid for at one in the morning.

What to Wear

There is no dress code worth the name. There is a door policy.

A collared shirt or a clean t-shirt, long shorts or trousers, closed shoes. That gets a group of any size through any door we send them to.

What gets a group stopped: vests, bare chests, football shirts, flip-flops, and one man already unable to walk in a straight line. A doorman counting fourteen men is not looking at your clothes. He is looking for the one who is going to become his problem.

What Happens in the First Ten Minutes

You are met, you are counted, and you are walked to whatever has been held in your name.

If a room has been booked, someone takes you to it. If a table has been booked, someone takes you to that. A group that arrives without either stands on the floor and waits, which is how a night starts badly.

The host assigned to your group is the person you talk to for the rest of the night. Not the waiter, not the manager, not the woman who brought the ice. One person, one conversation, one bill.

The Phone

This is the rule that matters more than any other.

No photographs of the floor, no photographs of staff, no photographs of other guests. Inside a private room you have taken, ask your host before anyone films anything.

Everyone in the building is somebody's colleague, somebody's neighbour, or somebody who would rather not appear on your friend's feed. A raised phone on the floor is the single fastest way to end a night early, and no amount of money already spent changes that.

Staff, and the Line

The women working the floor and the rooms are staff.

They sit with a group when they are asked and paid to. They are not there to be touched, followed, photographed or argued with, and a group that behaves as though otherwise is out on the street inside five minutes.

The version of this that groups get wrong is not malice. It is one man who has had eight drinks and thinks he is being friendly. Which is exactly why somebody sober in the group needs to be watching, and why we put a host on a night of that size.

Money, Handled Properly

The bill is not a negotiation.

State a ceiling when you arrive and your host holds it. Ask for the tab itemised whenever you want to see it, not at four in the morning when the room is closing. Pay it in one go, one man, one card or one pile of cash.

At The PIMP the figures are the venue's own: private rooms from ฿3,500 to ฿15,000 for the night, a ฿3,000 per person minimum spend on food and drink for non-members, a liquor package at ฿20,000, bottles from ฿6,000, and models or hosts from ฿2,000 for the first hour.

Knowing those numbers before you walk in is what stops the argument that never needed to happen.

Tipping

It is normal, it is not fixed, and it is not a percentage.

Three people are worth remembering at the end of the night: the waiter who has been in and out of your room for four hours, the host who held your ceiling, and whoever has been looking after the room itself. Cash, at the end, handed to your host to distribute.

Groups who do this get looked after the second night. It is not a coincidence.

Getting There, and Getting Out

The arrival is the part groups never plan, and it decides the first twenty minutes.

Twelve men in four separate taxis arrive as four separate groups, twenty minutes apart, and the first three stand at a door explaining a booking they cannot describe. One van, one address given to one driver, one arrival.

Getting out matters just as much. Agree before you leave the hotel who calls the cars and what time they are wanted, and have the venue's own host do it rather than twelve men on twelve phones on a pavement.

If the group is already moving between a rooftop and a club earlier in the evening, it is worth reading how we handle the driving between venues for a group this size.

When One of the Group Has Had Too Much

Every stag night of twelve or more has one, and it is almost never the groom.

The rule we give a group is simple: the man who is struggling leaves with one sober friend, not with the whole group, and not alone in a taxi he cannot give an address to. Send him back to the hotel with somebody who has the room number.

Doormen and hosts are not unkind about it. What they will not accept is a group that keeps a man on the floor after being asked twice. That is the point where a night ends for everybody instead of for one person.

Put the hotel name and room number in everybody's phone before you go out. It costs nothing and it has saved more nights than any other thing on this page.

What to Agree Before You Leave the Hotel

Six things, and none of them take longer than a drink to settle.

Who is paying and how, what the ceiling on the night is, what time the cars are wanted, where the group is going before the club, what the hotel is called, and who is watching the groom. Write it in the group chat so nobody has to remember it at one in the morning.

A group that has done this walks in, sits down and starts the night. A group that has not spends its first hour on a pavement doing it badly, in the dark, with the meter running.

What the Staff Actually Want From You

Ask any host what makes a group easy and you get the same answer: tell us what the night is, and tell us early.

A group that says "there are fourteen of us, it is a stag, the groom is the one in the white shirt, we want the room until two and we do not want surprises on the bill" gets a better night than a group that says nothing and then complains at the end. The venue is not trying to read your mind; it is trying to fill a room.

Say it once, to the one host looking after you, in the first ten minutes. Everything after that is somebody else's job.

The Thing Nobody Tells You

The group that has the best night is the group that decided nothing after midnight.

Where you are going, what room you have, who is paying, what the ceiling is and what time the van is outside — all of it agreed in daylight. The night then just happens.

The group that turns up with a plan made an hour earlier spends the evening in a corridor on the phone, and one of them ends up carrying the bill home.

Tell us the dates and the numbers and we will hold the room, the host and the ceiling before you land.

If you want the whole city in one place first, read Bangkok nightlife, area by area — the areas, the order a night runs in, and where a VIP table and a private room sit in it.