Thursday 2 April 2015

THC Roof Top Bar

The THC Roof Top Bar just outside Tapae Gate has gone from cool obscurity to backpacker fame. For this reason many people come to the bar and feel disappointed as THC was billed as something amazing.

It isn’t really. But it is a great bar with club atmosphere. It is a great location on top of a tall building. You go up several flights of rickety stairs. The walls are decorated in glow art and weird decorations. You immerge to a large roof top bar. All the seating is on mats on the floor with low tables.

It is open top with girders above. The feel of the bar is quite unique, and very much enhanced with lovingly strange décor. It is partly acid party and partly reggae bar in Haad Rin. Indeed there is a Koh Phangan feel to the place. That feeling comes from the loud music. For many it feels like a jarring contradiction – a chilled roof top bar with a name that references weed with Bob Marley pictures but playing loud house music. It might be a perfect place for a reggae bar but the problem is that Chiang Mai isn’t a remote beach in Koh Phangan where they smoke weed. Reggae would be soporific in the urban context of Chiang Mai. Much more ‘Saturday night’ is a banging house soundtrack to the night.

Another Koh Phangan echo is the house music. The DJs are often really good at THC Roof Top Bar. They mix with care and verve and come up with plenty of surprising tunes. This reminds you of Koh Phangan were the quality of DJing is very high.

THC is one of those bars where on occasion people get in the mood and dance a bit. The views are great and it makes a good spot for a couple of drinks on a big night out. The only downer is that the drinks are a little pricey. For the same price you could go to a bigger club, but then you would lose the intimate and funky atmosphere.

Beware

If you aren’t keen on sitting on the floor where cockroaches and rats might be scurrying then this probably isn’t the bar for you. You just can’t stop nature in Thailand.