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From the AtoZ Guide
Washington Square. Located in the heart of the “Farang [“Foreigner”] Ghetto” along Sukhumvit Road, this square is popular with long-term expats, especially retired military personnel, oilfield workers, etc. It isn’t obvious – one of the creators of this web site changed buses in front of it for six months before realizing there was anything inside – but worth finding. It has a number of bars and restaurants, as well as two massage parlors, several offices, and a katoey [“transsexual”] cabaret.

The Square isn’t really a square such as one might find in many American towns. It is a fairly large area bounded by low-rise buildings, with 3 almost-abutting buildings
occupying most of it’s center. The majority of the bars and restaurants are located in the interior perimeter, though a few are in the block of buildings in the center. A
single street loops around the central block of buildings. There are two gates, one on the Sukhumvit Road side, on the north side of the Square, the other on the
Sukhumvit Road Soi 22 side, on the west side of the Square, giving access into the southwest corner of the Square.
Not nearly as well known, even locally, as the (in)famous Patpong, Nana Plaza, or even Soi Cowboy [see individual listings elsewhere here for further information on
each], Washington Square is an excellent place to go for inexpensive American food and alcohol. There are also two Japanese restaurants in the Square, but they
might as well be on another planet; our focus isn’t the Japanese market – at least not yet – so we don’t cover those. Of particular note are the Cajun food available
at Bourbon Street Restaurant; the Mexican food at Bourbon Street Restaurant, Silver Dollar Bar, and Texas Lone Star Bar and Restaurant; and steaks available at those same three eateries.
Few tourists make it into Washington Square, except the odd few who wander in by accident from one of the hotels along Sukhumvit Soi 22. Most of the patrons
tend to be local expats, with a few Western-oriented Thais mixed in with them. For them, Washington Square is very much a tiny enclave, with an atmosphere akin to
an American Western frontier town. Except for Bourbon Street Restaurant, which is family-oriented, and Mambo Cabaret, which draws almost exclusively Japanese
tourists, the places can be boisterous, at times, but sedate – even very quiet – at other times. Local humor writer Roger Beaumont once wrote an article about the
denizens of the square in which he referred to them as “men with thousand-yard stares” – an apt description. They’re plenty rough around the edges, maybe, but
hard-working and honest. And very much worth getting to know, even if only briefly. (By the way, there is virtually no violence anywhere in the Square – which
is more than can be said for certain other places in the city.)
Square patrons tend to be extremely helpful, and not only to each other. Untold lost tourists have been put right by “Squaronians” – as they are called – even getting |