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[title]Soi Nana has a way of slowing you down, even when Bangkok doesn’t. It’s not the sort of place you stumble into by accident anymore – though it used to be. Once upon a time, these shophouses dozed behind corrugated shutters, a red-light side street that didn’t expect to be reinvented. Now, there’s a different kind of glow. Neon from cocktail dens. Cigarette smoke curling around someone’s slow walk home. The hum of a neighbourhood that has decided, in its own stubborn way, that it will be all things at once: a little louche, a little cosmopolitan, and always vaguely improvised. Tonight, I am sitting inside one of them – G.O.D., which stands for Genius on Drugs – with the man who arguably started it all.
The room looks like it has been built to confuse: walls tiled in fractured mosaic, pillars like something salvaged from a ruined temple, and the low-lit, surreal intimacy of a chapel gone rogue. The cocktails, of course, are a different sort of scripture. Across the table sits Niks Anuman-Rajadhon, co-founder of this place and the string of bars that have made Soi Nana one of the capital’s most magnetic districts: Teens of Thailand, Asia Today, TAX, Independence. Bartenders across the world know him, but here on Nana he seems more like a local who never quite left the party.
“People talk about bar culture like it’s a thing you can plan, but most of this just started because I liked being here.”
A gin bar that rewrote a street
Teens of Thailand – the first gin‑focused bar in the country – opened in 2015. Now there are awards, top‑ten lists, cocktails on the cover of glossy magazines. At the time, though, there was none of that.
‘I didn’t open it to change the nightlife,’ he says, brushing away the suggestion with something like embarrassment. ‘I opened it because I wanted to open a bar.’
“I loved this neighbourhood the first time I walked through it. It felt different. You know when you just know? That was it.”
The street then was still in half‑sleep: faded red‑light past, shuttered shops, the occasional motorbike clattering by. It had space, and silence, which is rare in Bangkok. Into that stillness came a gin bar with bottles no one had seen before, a tiny room where the whole city suddenly seemed to gather.
An accidental empire
Ten years on, his little love affair with the street has turned into five bars. Each one is a world of its own. Asia Today with its stingless‑bee honey. TAX, an entire bar dedicated to fermentation, of all things. Independence, which feels like a secret you’re lucky to be told. And now, of course, G.O.D. – a name that customs officers apparently never stop asking him about.
‘How does it happen?’ he muses. ‘I talk to myself a lot. I do homework. I make plans. And then, at some point, I see it become real. That’s the part I like most – the journey. The first day you open the door and you think: oh, so it’s not just an idea anymore.’
Five bars in a single neighbourhood also makes the street feel stitched together, like a constellation you can walk.
“The idea is you can come to this one street and just keep going. Drink here, wander there, end up somewhere else. It’s like travelling without leaving.”
What no one tells you
People love to romanticise bars. There’s a fantasy to it: the low light, the glass catching the glow, the quiet theatre of mixing. I ask him about the part of the job that doesn’t make it to Instagram.
‘We talk about the ugly side all the time,’ he says. ‘It’s there. But when you jump in, you know that. You take the risk. It’s not easy. It’s hard work. But it’s fun. That’s why you do it.’
And yes, the drinks cost more than most people expect.
‘Price is subjective,’ he explains. ‘About 25 or 30 percent is just the cost of what’s in the glass. And then there are bartenders, rent, tax. Thailand’s still cheaper than a lot of our neighbours. People are starting to get that.’
Does he think Soi Nana has changed completely?
‘It hasn’t flipped,’ he says. ‘It’s still a red-light street. You can still feel it. The good bars came in, but the rest of it stayed the same. I like that. There’s a mix now – you can be sipping a yuzu highball here while someone’s rolling down their metal shutters next door.’
Travel, and the long way back home
He has travelled more for spirits than most people will for leisure: to Japanese distilleries, to Mexican agave farms, to anywhere that makes something worth drinking.
‘Every time you travel you see the world and you start thinking about your own country,’ he says.
“You begin to miss it. You miss the flavour, the ingredients, the charm. And you see what makes Thai drinks special.”
There’s a rhythm to his words – like a recipe that doesn’t change much but always tastes a little different depending on the day.
And what about the notorious impermanence of Bangkok bars? Does he worry that they flare up and die out too quickly?
‘It doesn’t take much to open a bar,’ he says. ‘But keeping it alive, that takes a lot. That’s what matters.’
Genius on Drugs
The name still raises eyebrows.
‘G.O.D. stands for Genius on Drugs,’ he says. ‘The drugs are cocktails. And in Thai, ‘god’ sounds like ‘hug’, so there’s that. I wanted something you don’t really see anywhere else. It makes people ask questions.’
If he had to open a bar with the worst idea possible?
He laughs. ‘Opening G.O.D. was already the worst idea and the best. But another one? Maybe a bar called Dicks. Everything shaped like dicks. Completely ridiculous.’
When he’s not drinking for work, he keeps it simple.
“Issan rum and coconut water. If I could only drink one thing forever, that would be it.”
He has a digital magazine in the works – Spiritual Drinks Mag – and in October, the Bangkok Bar Show returns at the Anantara Siam. ‘This year will be one of the biggest line-ups of cocktails and bartenders you’ve ever seen,’ he promises, eyes lighting up for the first time all evening.
By the time we leave, Soi Nana has changed again. The street is glowing with the kind of neon light that looks like it has been soaked in rain. People move past us, some heading into bars, some heading home. Inside G.O.D., the night goes on, one drink at a time. And perhaps that is the genius of it.