Rawai Nightlife Guide

Bora Bora Bar

Bora Bora Lounge Bar is a modern lounge bar with large seating space. Well known for their live DJ’s, crazy cocktails and sexy staff.

Candy Bar

A small but friendly venue, Candy Bar is a perfect place to start off your night out in Rawai Beach. It also offers a pool table.

Freedom Bar

On the right-hand side of the road is a large, orange-fronted indoor/outdoor watering hole. This is Freedom Bar – a sometimes raucous sports bar with two pool tables, occasional live music, live televised football and more tattooed gentlemen than Hamburg Harbour. Charlie, the owner, is a real card and loves to keep the place animated with his earthy humour. Big, loud, basic – 'urbane and sophisticated’ Freedom is most definitely not.

Moby Dick’s

A friendly bar runs by a local group of expats (and open to everyone) who prefer a place that they can enjoy conversation and pay reasonable prices for drinks and such. The result is that it is hard to beat their beer and liquor prices.  If you want to enjoy quiz nights and meet with the international local community, you’ll find the bar on the back road to Phromthep Cape, not far from the local Or Bor Tor office. Check out their ‘all-you-can-eat’ Sunday BBQ for about 100 baht per person. Now, that’s hard to beat.

Nikita's

If you follow Viset Road round the bend to the right at the sea, immediately to the left of the road is Rawai Beach. Rounding the corner at the bottom of the drag, you'll notice two bars diagonally opposite each other, but each with a diametrically different clientele. On the left (the only bar smack on the beach at Rawai) is Nikita's. Yachties, professionals, and people of a certain vintage make up this atmospheric joint's clientele. Nikita's is somewhat of a Rawai establishment and it's not for nothing that it's usually busy. It features discreet lighting and a delicious right-on-the-water feel. 

Sunshine Bar

The most consistently packed bar in Rawai is the Sunshine Bar – also on the Beach Road. The owners are a great laugh and they're always encouraging patrons to join them behind the bar for their impromptu cabarets. The stiff shots they pour ensure that a few people are usually willing to take them up on that offer.

Bars outside Evason Phuket Resort

Where to go on a night out in Rawai? It's simple: start roughly outside the Evason Phuket and head south, following the road swinging west at the bottom (no choice really; if you go straight you'll be in the sea).

Just outside the Evason's entrance (opposite the Shell Museum) there is a gaggle of bars, some girly, some not. And it's not difficult to distinguish between the two, what with monikers like 'Nookie Bar' and 'Good Time' representing the fleshier side of things. Expect expert pool players in tight jeans and skimpy T-shirts and if you join in a game you'd better not bet any money or you'll be sorry...

For some mysterious reason, most of the bars are located on the left-hand side of the road as you head south so that makes it even easier to scout out the land. Further down, there is a Bavarian beer house and assorted cheap eateries.

Friendship Beach Bungalow

Rawai officially begins at Chalong circle and halfway between Rawai and the circle, on a soileading down to the sea, is Friendship Beach. A long-established location for live music, Friendship underwent a radical transformation some years back when it morphed from a rundown hippy gathering place to a pleasant bungalow complex with a more-than-competent restaurant, a swimming pool and a snug and friendly open-sided bar with a view out across Chalong Bay. 

Laguna Bar

A couple of years ago, the popular Laguna Bar moved from its original spot in Nai Harn to next to the SCB bank on Viset Road. This is the local after-hours joint and before 02:00 this bar is quite dead but once the bar staff at the other nightspots finish work they head here to blow off steam.  Also known as 'The Last Resort' by locals, this is where you go when it's late, you're looking for 'company' and you've had enough beer that you're not feeling too picky.