Backpacker streets in Southeast Asia

You walk in (no cover), sit down, and a waitress takes your drink order while dancers rotate on stage. If you like someone, ask the waitress or mamasan to invite her over and buy her a ladies’ drink; that buys conversation. You are never obliged to buy anything beyond your own drink. Pay when you leave.

Open-fronted bars with a counter, stools and hostesses who sit and chat if you buy them a drink. Cheaper and quieter than go-go bars, no stage, no cover, and the easiest place for a first-timer to understand the system in an hour. Soi 6 and Soi Buakhao in Pattaya and Perimeter Road in Angeles are the classics.

A drink you buy for a hostess or dancer so she can sit with you; it costs more than your beer and the mark-up is her commission. Typically $4–8 as of August 2026 — ฿150–250 in Pattaya, ₱250–600 in Angeles, $3.50–5 in Phnom Penh. Buy one if you want her company, and do not feel obliged to keep buying.

Go-go bars and beer bars almost never do — your drink is the entry fee. Nightclubs sometimes do: usually free in Pattaya, ฿300–600 with a drink or two on Bangkok’s Soi 11, ₱300–1,000 consumable at Manila clubs on weekends. Pool parties in Angeles charge a few hundred pesos, often consumable.