Rainbow Nana Shocks Bangkok Bar World with First-Ever Go-Go Bar on Soi 4

The Rainbow group is preparing to open the first-ever go-go bar on Soi 4, a move certain to raise eyebrows … and questions.

Located in the spot that, until early September, was the Golden Beer Bar, just a few doors up from Hooters, Rainbow Nana is a daring move to establish the first-ever go-go bar on Sukhumvit Soi 4, where, for decades, Nana Plaza has been the only spot for chrome pole palaces. Soi 4, by contrast, has been home to beer bars, pubs and restaurants.

While no official opening date has been announced, it’s believed Rainbow Nana will open by the beginning of December.

First-Ever Go-Go Bar on Soi 4

While Nana Plaza is not one of Bangkok’s three official Entertainment Zones – Patpong, RCA and the soapy massages of Rachadapisek are the legal party zones – it has long (as in decades) been taken as gospel that authorities would only allow go-go bars inside Nana Plaza, which has operated at least some girly bars since the 1980s.

The Rainbow Group, which has five venues inside the plaza and one on Soi Cowboy, is making an aggressive bet that its groundbreaking gambit to open the first-ever go-go bar on Soi 4 will pay off.

Go-go bars require licenses, and the long-standing belief is that no new go-go licenses are available: New go-gos that have opened in Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy and Patpong have all used the licenses for the previous tenant, often with not even a name change on the paperwork.

So what license is being used? Have the folks at the Rainbow group somehow pulled a rabbit out of their hats?

First-Ever Go-Go Bar on Soi 4 Raises Questions

The other question concerns something that is a bright red flag for all red-light bars in Bangkok, Pattaya or anywhere else: Short-time rooms. Rainbow Nana has rooms upstairs, which has people gossiping. Other than Soi 6 and some out-of-the-way gents clubs in Pattaya, no bar in in the tourist areas of Thailand in 2024 offer both girls and a place to take them on the same property.

Even Soi 6, where arrangements with police have existed for decades, those rooms get shut down for days, weeks or month when too many prying eyes notice what’s going on upstairs.

Nana Plaza’s owners officially shut down all of its short-time hotels in April 2023 – although they had been closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic – saying the risks to the plaza’s future outweighed any benefits. The primary concern, despite Nana’s superior security, was the fear an underage girl might sneak in and get found there by police. If that happened, Nana could lose its entertainment license.

Since then, guys have had to make a “walk of shame” up Soi 4 to rooms not as posh or convenient as Nana’s own hotels. Then the Nana Hotel blocked off a section of rooms for short-time liaisons.

So what to make of rooms upstairs from Rainbow? There are a couple possibilities. One, the rooms won’t be used by customers. The Rainbow group will do as the folks behind the new Shark Pattaya did with their upper floors: Turn them into offices, storage, dressing and employee sleeping rooms.

If they aren’t, people are asking, how would that be possible under today’s legal constraints?

At Shark Pattaya, even though the rooms were clearly offices, management eliminated any doubt by putting in a separate, external set of stairs and closed off internal access.

Reactions to the First-Ever Go-Go Bar on Soi 4

The appearance of the first-ever go-go bar on Soi 4 caught Nana Plaza management by surprise. When informed about it Friday, Nana’s owners said they weren’t aware of it but planned to investigate.

Nana’s management had no official comment or position on the first-ever go-go bar on Soi 4 yet, and said that, normally, they pay little concern to what happens on the soi outside the plaza’s gates. This development, however, was “interesting information”.

Inside Nana, tenants had mixed opinions about the opening of Rainbow Nana.

One go-go manager said he thought its groundbreaking opening would “open the floodgates” to more go-go bars on Soi 4, with the potential to turn the street into Bangkok’s version of Pattaya’s Soi LK Metro, which began life as a street for beer bars, pubs and restaurants and now has nearly as many go-go bars as Walking Street.

Another Nana Plaza bar owner said the opening of the first-ever go-go bar on Soi 4 could be disastrous for the plaza’s owners, with owners – still complaining about this year’s large increases in rent, key money and deposits – to relocate outside to the street where rents are still high, but not as stratospheric as inside Nana.

Watch What Happens Next

Now that Nana Plaza ownership is aware of the first-ever go-go bar on Soi 4, it will be interesting to see what happens next. Will Rainbow Nana’s owners suddenly encounter unexpected legal roadblocks? Will pressure be applied to the Rainbow group, despite its “major tenant” status?

Watch this space.