SATHORN – Bangkok’s newest high-end nightlife and entertainment complex, Ku De Ta, announced yesterday that it was giving up on Bangkok completely after three months of ridiculous circumstances.
Despite spending an estimated 430 million baht building, designing, and aggressively marketing the two-level, three-nightclub, four restaurant complex on top of Sathorn Tower, the Singaporean parent company decided to pull the plug on what it called “the worst clubbing environment in Asia outside of Bhutan.”
“We tried our best to bring a new level of international recreation to this city, but we can only put up with so much,” explained Danny O’Neil, Ku De Ta’s marketing manager.
Citing the death of the Supreme Patriarch one week before Ku De Ta’s grand opening as “just the beginning,” O’Neil listed a litany of bad luck that has plagued the crucial first quarter, including police curfews, Silom demonstrations worsening downtown traffic, and the loss of an entire tourist season due to political tensions.
“Do you know how hard it is to get people excited about an out-of-town visiting DJ when your entire target demographic is obsessed with overthrowing the government?” said Ku De Ta’s entertainment director Kenny Henderson.
“We tried to do a Hot Red Dress Code night and we got flooded with emails and tweets accusing us of being pro-Thaksin,” he said.
This week’s shutdown by the People’s Democratic Reform Council was, according to Henderson, the “final nail in the coffin.”
“Not only is the traffic stopped, but people are treating the protest venues like free parties,” he said. “We can’t compete with that, no matter how good we are.”
According to DJAYBOODDUH, one of Ku De Ta’s resident DJs, the People’s Democratic Reform Council had, without even trying, created the ultimate attraction for Bangkok’s young rich class.
“High-end nightlife is all about indulgence, and a sense of exclusiveness,” he explained. “And it that doesn’t describe the current protests, I don’t know what does.”
