Sukhumvit Under Siege: A Bar, a Coup, and a Very Bad Idea – Bangkok, 1992

The very first installment of Andrew's Memoirs

Note 20/11/2025: I have corrected the dates since first publishing earlier this week, these events took place during the violent crackdown by General Suchinda between May 17 and May 20, 1992, resulting in an estimated 52-100 deaths, not the relatively peaceful coup a year earlier on February 23, 1991.

Sukhumvit Under Siege: A Bar, a Coup, and a Very Bad Idea – Bangkok, 1992

I arrived in Bangkok in 1989, young enough to think I understood the world and old enough to be humbled by Thailand within a month. The city back then was not the glass-and-steel metropolis you see today. It was low-slung, boiling, unpredictable – alive in a way that felt almost lawless. Every day smelled like diesel exhaust, frying chili, damp concrete, and whatever the khlongs decided to cough up. I loved it immediately.

By 1992, I was working for an international advertising agency, one of several that had begun staking claims in Bangkok as the economy boomed. Advertising then wasn’t the slick, digital game it is now. It was cigarette smoke curling around creative briefings, client meetings lubricated by whisky sodas, and layouts printed on A3 boards that you lugged across town on the back of motorcycle taxis, as that was the only way to reach meetings on time… well, Thai-time, at least.

My closest friend Robbie was in the same industry, working for a rival agency. Somehow that never made us competitors – just two farangs trying to swim through the chaos of Bangkok during its “anything goes” years. We shared a small rented house in the Din Daeng area of the city, off of “Soi China Embassy”, where geckos lived rent-free and the Ga-wào birds were your alarm clock.

Andrew & Robbie

But the true center of our lives was a tiny cluster of bars near Sukhumvit Soi Zero called Buckskin Joe Village.

Buckskin Joe Village: Bangkok’s Accidental Wild West

Buckskin Joe Village was an oddity even by Bangkok standards. An imitation Old West ramshackle settlement dropped into prime real estate between Ploenchit and Sukhumvit main thoroughfares. It had saloon doors, wagon wheel décor, wooden walkways, and absolutely no historical relationship to Thailand, the Wild West, or anything else in the vicinity. It was built along the train tracks on unused State Railway of Thailand property, so close to the tracks that the bottles on the bar shelves would rattle every time a train went by.

It was glorious.

Our bar of choice was the Cedar Bar, a narrow shack with a flickering neon sign, rickety stools, and a mama-san who’d seen it all. Robbie and I showed up so reliably that we became part of the furniture. After a few months of this routine, one night she tossed the keys onto the bar with a dramatic clatter and declared:

“The bar is yours! You run it!”

Only in Bangkok in 1992 could someone hand you a business in the middle of your beer.

We picked up the keys like two cowboys accepting the deed to the saloon.

The original Cedar Bar, circa 1991.

Another Bar: The Two-Farang Experiment

We renamed it Another Bar – part joke, part shrug, part Bangkok nihilism. It worked beautifully.
Need a drink?
Try Another Bar.
Not this bar?
Another Bar.
Where’s Robbie?
Another Bar.

PHOTO: Bangkok Eyes

The place became our after-hours project. We carried our massive TV (24” x 24” x 22”!) and sound system from Din Daeng in a tuk-tuk and set them up behind the bar. We blasted Tragically Hip, Guns N’ Roses, and whatever else we could find at lower Sukhumvit’s pirate CD and tape cassette vendors. Farangs wandered in because it reminded them of home. Thais wandered in because they were curious to see these two crazy farang bar-keepers.

We didn’t make much money, but we never expected to. The bar stayed afloat mainly because Robbie and I paid full price for our own drinks and because we kept the official accounting as flexible as Thai politics.

And speaking of politics—

Bangkok on Edge: Black May 1992

Thailand in the early ’90s had a political rhythm: calm, tension, rumors, tanks. You learned not to be surprised by anything. But the uprising and violent crackdown between 17-20 May, 1992, by General Suchinda who had reneged on his promise not to become prime minister after the 23 February 1991 coup, hit fast.

That Sunday morning, the first whispers came through the grapevine:
The military was moving. Government House sealed. Troops deployed.

Phones buzzed. Friends canceled lunch. The neighborhood went quiet.

The streets felt different. Vendors were pulling down tarps. Shop shutters rattled closed. The sky dimmed in that way Bangkok skies do when something is about to happen – like the air itself is bracing.

Robbie and I were home in Din Daeng. We turned on the radio. TV stations had gone quiet, replaced by the usual coup-era programming: military marches, a solemn narrator explaining “national stability,” and instructions for the public to remain indoors.

A curfew was announced.

Then came the first sharp crack of gunfire somewhere in the distance.

Not near us. Not dangerous.
Just a reminder of how close politics could get.

The Worst Idea We Ever Had

As the sun slipped away, the radio crackled with a worrying report:

Looters were taking advantage of the curfew.
They were moving along Sukhumvit Road.
They were hitting small shops.
And they were heading in the direction of Buckskin Joe Village.

Robbie and I looked at each other.

Our TV – our enormous, precious, second-hand TV – was still in the bar. So was our sound system. Our one luxury at home. Our pride and joy at Another Bar.

In the logic of two young foreigners who’d inhaled too much Bangkok air and not enough common sense, there was only one possible solution:

We had to rescue them.
Immediately.
During a military crackdown.
In a city under curfew.

Brilliant.

The 1,000-Baht Gamble

We stepped out into the darkened soi – quiet, humid, tense. No traffic. No chatter. Just the rare, distant rattle of a gunshot and the hum of Bangkok holding its breath.

By some miracle, a lone taxi sat parked near our house, the driver inside smoking like this was just another Sunday.

“Pi, can take us Sukhumvit? Urgent.”

He looked at us as though we’d asked him to drive to Laos.

But then we held up a fan of 100 Baht notes.

In 1992, 1,000 Baht was a statement.
His eyes widened.

“Okay. But quick.”

We climbed in.

The Road to Buckskin Joe’s

The streets were empty in that eerie, cinematic way that only happens during political upheaval. Bangkok without traffic is like Khao San Road without backpackers – you hardly recognize it.

We bypassed a couple of checkpoints where soldiers waved us through, more confused than suspicious. What kind of idiots were driving toward trouble?

Buckskin Joe Village was deserted.
Another Bar was intact.

We didn’t waste time. We unplugged the TV and dragged it out to the taxi. The sound system followed. The taxi driver watched us with the horrified fascination of a man witnessing two foreigners making the worst decision of their lives.

We somehow wedged the TV into the trunk, half of it sticking out, tied down with a frayed piece of rope.

The High-Speed Escape

The drive back was something out of a fever dream.

Ninety kilometers an hour.
Down an empty Sukhumvit Road and then up Asoke.
During a military crackdown.
With a huge TV protruding from the taxi’s trunk like a loot trophy.

If anyone had stopped us, we would’ve looked exactly like what we feared: looters.

Every time we passed a checkpoint, we held our breath.
Most were unmanned.
The few with soldiers barely glanced up.
Who expects criminals to be this stupidly obvious?

We reached Din Daeng in record time. To this day that was the quickest drive from Sukhumvit to Din Daeng, ever.

Dragging the TV inside felt like winning a war. We handed the taxi driver his thousand Baht; he said a short prayer and drove away at light speed, probably relieved he had survived us.

We sat on the floor of our house, sweating, listening to the distant echoes of the crackdown unfold, staring at the rescued TV like it was a newborn child.

Bangkok Teaches You

Looking back now – thirty-three years later – I can’t believe we did something so utterly reckless.
But that was Bangkok then.
It was wild.
It was impulsive.
It rewired your sense of normal.

You learned to take risks you’d never take back home.
You learned that common sense was flexible.
You learned that everyone – locals and farangs alike – simply adapted to whatever madness unfolded that week.

And sometimes, you learned that two young Canadians would race through a military crackdown to save a television.

We weren’t heroes.
We weren’t rebels.
We were just two farang in early ’90s Bangkok, trying to make a life in a city that never gave you the same day twice.

And if I’m honest…

I miss that Bangkok.

The unpredictable one.
The dangerous one.
The one that made you feel alive in a way no modern skyline ever could.