The bars lining Ruamchit Road are mostly extensions of the seafood restaurants — plastic tables on the pavement, bottles of Singha and Chang in ice buckets, and a view of the beach through the casuarina trees. None of them are sophisticated, and that is the point. You drink cold beer, eat grilled prawns, and watch the sun go down over the Gulf.
Weekend evenings bring a bit more energy, with Thai karaoke bars mixing in among the restaurants and the occasional group of office workers on team-building outings working through a crate of Chang. The atmosphere is cheerful rather than hedonistic. Cha-am is not Pattaya — if you want that, you are in the wrong town.