New Thermae opened on July 16, 1996, about fifty meters up Sukhumvit, a little closer to Soi 15, on the basement of the Ruamchitt Plaza & Hotel. Management is the same, and the staff as well. The intention seems to preserve that special feeling that made Thermae famous, but a strong brush has been given to the old-times patina that featured the old Thermae. This doesn't mean that the place now looks "modern", just say twenty years younger.
The place itself is quite wider than the old one, and in particular there are much more seats. Is this a plus? I don't know. For sure that huge crowd that gave you a sense of being at the entrance of the hell has gone. Also, that network of glances, that sense to dominate the scene from your position, the hunting for a living space is too much diluted in the new Thermae and this, even if it means no problems to seat, also means that the place is less "unique" than it used to be.
Another bad stroke to the "exclusiveness" of the place has been given by the clean, shining entrance under the Ruam Chitt Plaza building: that dark, smelly alley of the old time gave the sensation to enter in a very unusual, restricted, mysterious "club", preparing to the possibility of finding anything round the corner. Now the first sensation is just to be in a normal place, you need to know that you are in the Thermae, and only after this the magic begins.

Forniture seem to be picked from different bars belonging to one's past experiences and put together just to let you feel younger. Have a seat on the couch from that "American Bar" outside London when you used to seat with your first girlfriend twenty years ago, and give a look around. And then, drop me an e-mail like this one, from C.D. (I only added a few details, just to use this e-mail as a description of the place):

... at 00:15 I am at the (New) Thermae Coffee House, that is located under the Ruamchitt Plaza & Hotel, two buildings after the old Thermae, 199 Sukhumvit Rd. The old, glorious Thermae are now only heaps of debris, after demolition. Food stalls still exhale clouds of steam, and lots of people, mainly Thais, eat and drink on the road, or just seat and talk, starting from the Food Plaza zone, the Seven-Eleven, passed the old Thermae, up to the new Thermae location. Looking at the front of the Ruam Chitt Plaza, the main entrance to the Thermae Coffee House is after a descending flight of stairs, on the right.
A luminous sign, bordered with intermittent colored lamps, tells "Thermae Coffee House". A small picture on the right of the inscription shows a half-full goblet with a girl taking a bath inside it: is it a promise? Let's go in, I say to myself with the hope to find again the old Thermae hidden beyond the door with dark glasses at the bottom of the staircase.

"Push" the door and enter in a very basic environment: a wide room floored with white tiles and random black spots here and there, left from some previous plants (a pattern similar to a huge Swiss cow), poor light, loud music coming out from a modern CD juke box. The cash desk is on the left, where is also located a red public telephone, under a small television tuned on a Thai channel, and back on the left you find the drink counter, a banch holding a fake half-demolished brick wall, whose wide breaks allow the input/output of the bottles: a metaphor to remember the old Thermae? A touch of cellar stile? A sense of undergroundness? I would like to set up an open discussion on this.

The left wall goes on with a row of couches covered with black imitation leather, arranged perpendicular to the wall, in front each other with tables in between. The row is interrupted by the new laser juke box, featuring CD music. The centre of the room is occupied by a big "S" shaped wooden banch, with stools on both sides, where people seat to drink and chat. The side opposite to the entrance is a little darker, offering assorted tables with chairs, a part in black imitation leather and metal, a part in a farmhouse wooden stile. On the right we have a line of colored light bulbs, and here couches are more "private", separated by a white banch, also with stools. In short, now to have a set at the Thermae is no longer a problem.

That is the new Thermae stage. Nothing special, unless you think you're in the Thermae, the hangout place of Bangkok. At first glance it seems that there are only few people, but probably it is same as before, the place resulting less packed due to the increased room.

There are more women than men, and both are of any kind. Between women, plenty of "Thai standard": pretty, small build, very attractive. Some "special": old, very old, chubby, transvestite, transgender. Some superstar. Between men, usually white farangs, you see mainly three groups: residents, business, tourists. Usually tourists are dripping with sweat, and wear short trousers. Businessmen are like tourists, but with long trousers, often alone, while residents look like they feel at home, often in groups of three or four.

Some girls are singing, jumping, making fun. Many are already in company. Others are ready to enter the fray, other look like dummies, sat in silence, a few are sleeping. Close to the jukebox, usually some deaf-mute girls are communicating with hands. Some men are talking and drinking with friends, other with girls, other clearly hunting, other trying to offer some drinks to reluctant dolls. Some are drinking alone, their eyes like lost, waiting maybe for a friend, or for the right girl to enter, or for the Bangkok municipality to build a subway that, one day, will take them outside.

After half an hour I enter a loop of dissatisfaction: the place is not as it was before, and I feel like being in the wrong place. I try to look for the toilets, but without success: follow the signs and go up the stairs on the opposite side of the room related to the entrance, and find yourself being in the RuamChitt lobby. I give-up, go down again and have another Singha. Look around again, population is increasing after one o'clock. This second Singha starts working in my blood, and after a while I feel a little more in the mood. I see a very nice girl some meters away, but in a nanosecond she is picked-up by a faster competitor. There are other characters I like, but I feel unable to take a decision: will she be a sweetie? That one looks like a pain in the neck. Maybe that one is looking only for money. That other seems to be too much demanding. So I decide to go away, postponing my new acquaintances to another time. I drop my third Singha on the banch and leave the place using the back stairs, following the toilette signs, through the RuamChitt lobby. On my way to the exit I have a flash. A pretty girl, with a nice, cool face without make-up, simply dressed with a pink Lacoste and jeans, crosses my way, on the opposite direction. "Hello!", she says, smiling, while I stop, turn and gaze at her. I can't believe my eyes: she looks like one of those countryside girls that you see on the movies, like a young shepherdess just back to the village, her face made darker by the sun, her body in full bloom, her eyes proud but open, her smile full of promises.

I am again down at the Thermae, toasting with my Singha to her cola, trying to decipher her gestures and understand if the last word was a Thai dialect or a kind of English. She doesn't know where is Europe and cannot tell if her town, 5 hours from Bangkok by train, is North, South or East of Bangkok. Wonderful, for a moment I live outside this world, the Thermae being again a self contained world itself, the words an unusable tools, replaced by an undefined, universal language.

Suddenly she starts repeating two words, the sound like "Go-peee". Tuned on the "universal language" of sounds, gestures and expressions I am quite far from the English roots. I try to explain my interpretation, offering several choices of concepts, following a kind of "branch approximation method" towards understanding... she laughs and, in a friendly manner, takes my hand and drags me upstairs, in the lobby, then, through a door, down three steps finally I see the... Thermae toilets!

The place is located in the back entrance of the RuamChitt Plaza, a small hall flood lighted with fluorescent lamps. There are two WC in two booths, a kind of open air urinal on the left, view on the hotel kitchen, a small stall selling candies, toilet paper and other items. A car is parked on the right. The girl just wanted to "Go pee", that was the reason why we met. In front of the WC there are three wooden benches, looking like a kind of terraces. Two transgenders putting on their make-up occupy the front row. I take seat on the third row and wait for her to come out.

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