Patpong Night Market

This guide to Patpong traces the street from a 1946 banana plantation bought by a Hainanese immigrant named Poon Pat, through his son Udom's decision to cut a road through the family land against their wishes and name it after himself. It follows the offices — Caltex, Shell, Air France, IBM — that made Patpong Bangkok's most glamorous business address by the early 1960s, then the arrival of the Vietnam War and the soldiers who changed the street's character. The Patpongpanich family name on the rent rolls has never changed.