Some history

Let's start with the end: Thermae Coffee Shop closed on July 13, 1996. A new Thermae Coffee House opened two days after, two blocks ahead.



Thermae Coffee Shop, or better, the Coffeeshop of Thermae, was a bar settled on the basement of Thermae massage parlour, located on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok, between Soi 13 and Soi 15. Thermae massage parlour was a massage parlour like many others in Bangkok, organized as a day-use hotel where the girl(s) were provided together with the room. One entered the lobby, chose the girl through a windows and go upstairs, in a room, for a massage or anything similar. Like all the places of this kind, Thermae had a Coffee Shop, that become more famous than the massage parlour and is the object of this web site.

Thermae Massage Parlour



Thermae opened in 1965, and the coffee shop soon become an institution between Bangkok "farangs" (=foreigners, mainly westerns). In the beginning main customers used to be US soldiers, using Bangkok as main cross-roads between US and the troubled surroundings of Siam.



Probably in the beginning Thermae became famous for low prices of drinks (especially beers: Singha and Koster among the most requested) and being a good place to stop after or before a full-service treatment in the upstairs Thermae massage parlour. Rumors about Thermae closure begun early 1995. Thermae massage parlour shut down beginning ’96.



Even if Thermae Coffee Shop was a stand-alone bar, maybe thanks to the fact that it was officially considered as the coffee shop of the Thermae massage parlour, it was not subject to the official bar working time, allowed to stay open all night long. Others say that the unrestricted working time was due to the protection of the police, whose high officer was the landlord of the place. Usual working time of Thermae was 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 am (but someone reports that Thermae Coffeeshop used to open also in the afternoon, in the old times). This was another reason to attract people after 2:00 am, that is the official closing time of almost all the Bangkok bars. Thanks to the high presence of lonely males, soon Thermae become a hangout place and riots of farangs and Thai woman used to converge to the place, especially after 2:00 am.



Thermae has never been a go-go bar, neither a place where prostitution was openly organized. No bar fine, no dancers with numbers, no shows, no cover charges, no organization at all, but in the same time an intriguing place, a place pervaded with magnetic attraction, underground, wild, where man and woman were both hunters and preys, turning the place as probably the biggest hang-out and pick-up location in the world. At certain hours the place used to be so crowded that it was not possible to handle the flow of people through the main entrance: it was necessary to move the entrance in the back yard, accessible through a dark and smelly alley. Passed a door on the right, past the unisex toilets, down the stairs and through the narrow hallway. Many people going in and out, waiters carrying trays of steaming food, your five senses solicited with smells, heat, bumps, noise and, in the confusion, view of different people and wonderful girls.


Thermae Coffe Shop entrance from the backyard: "Stairways to Heaven"



Some people compare Thermae Coffee Shop with the Star Wars bar, where Luke went to look for a space vessel driver, finding Hans Solo. This impression is for sure given mainly from the heterogeneous crowd of people used to be found at Thermae: old and young, male, female, transgenders, every kind. ?