UPI article about Thermae closure, 12 July 1996

A late-night Bangkok expatriate institution for 35 years, the Thermae Coffee Shop, will close its doors for the last time Sunday. During the Vietnam War it vied for the prize of "favorite G.I. bar" with such legendary late-night haunts as the Thai Yanok and the Grace Hotel.
Only the Thermae survived Bangkok's frenzied modernization and building boom basically unchanged-until Sunday when a wrecking crew is due to begin carting away the tacky chairs and tables that supported the Thermae's distinctly Thai floating world.
Seven nights a week, barring coups and Buddhist holidays, the Thermae was packed with mainly Western men and mainly Northeastern Thai women from midnight through the wee hours. Their intercultural interaction varied from a "short-time" to a lifetime. There are no statistics on how many marriages began with a furtive glance-or grope-at the Thermae. But there can be no doubt that the crowded, subterranean coffeeshop in the heart of Bangkok's Sukhumvit Road tourist belt was a prime breeding ground for a vast number of Thai-foreigner romantic liaisons. "The first time I dropped down to the Thermae was in 1967 and most of the customers were G.I.s," recalled Norman Smith, 54, a long-time American resident of Thailand. "In those days there was a lot of rivalry between the services, mostly between the Marines and the Army, so there were lots of fights." He said intense rivalry also existed between the American servicemen on "rest and recreation" visits from Vietnam and the more than 50,000 G.I.s based in Thailand, referred to derisively by the combat veterans as "Bangkok warriors." "After the bars closed the Thermae would fill up with G.I.s and a few civilians," Smith said. "The juke box played the song 'San Francisco' over and over. The girls from the massage parlor upstairs drifted down in their pink hot pants. It was great."
The name Thermae is of Greek origin, a kind of bath house where Romans gathered to discuss the issues of the day. Bangkok's Thermae reputedly sold more beer-mainly the potent local favorite, Singha-than any other outlet in Thailand. High volume and, it was whispered, first-rate police connections, made the Thermae resistant, but not immune, to periodic vice crackdowns and coups. Post-coup curfews would generally push the Thermae's prime time back a few hours. Then, as the midnight hour approached, a mating frenzy would sweep the coffee shop. Those who managed to pair up in time would then have to deal with the taxi drivers whose greed knew no bounds in the countdown to curfew. The Thermae has survived by bending with the prevailing political and economic winds. When the G.I.s pulled out in 1976 the breech was filled by a surge of European "sex tourists," and waves of youthful back-packers. The Thermae partied on. Bangkok-based Canadian novelist Christopher Moore found inspiration in the Thermae for a series of novels. In "A Killing Smile," the thinly disguised Thermae is called "Headquarters." Like many of the Thermae's "old hands," Moore mourned the closing of "HQ" as the end of an era. "The Thermae was the perfect crossroads where people of all nationalities dropped into the underworld, the nightworld," Moore said. "No one was excluded. Old hands. New hands. People with no hands. The Thermae was the ultimate party, a celebration of conversation, local gossip, travelers information and of course, there were the women." The Thermae women have, in general, accepted the nightspot's imminent destruction more philosophically than the men. "Mai pen rai" (Never mind), is, after all, Thailand's unofficial national motto. "We only came here because the coffee was cheaper than at the Grace, the Nana and the Thai Yanok," shrugged one distaff Thermae 25-year veteran. "There will always be another place."
Indeed, a "new Thermae," located in a basement a couple of doors up Sukhumvit Road is scheduled to open Tuesday. "I'm sorry we have to close," lamented a Thermae waiter. "But what can I do? They want to build a condo or something. Come to the new place. It will be just the same."
But old Thermae hands already have started complaining it's just not the same.