Bangkok Under Curfew

A two-hour walk from Sukhumvit Soi 2 to Soi 23 – which includes both the Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy red light districts – found Bangkok nearly deserted. Bars were dark, of course. but the extent of just how deserted the streets were, how empty the BTS was and how desolate the MRT stations were between 6 and 8 p.m. still proved hard to comprehend.
A single street vendor remains outside the closed Nana Plaza adult entertainment complex on Sukhumvit Soi 4 in Bangkok.
Sukhumvit Soi 11 in Bangkok is normally bustling with tourists and locals partying at several huge nightclubs, various pubs and restaurants and hotels. But amid the Covid-19 pandemic, it's all but deserted before 9 p.m.
The infamous Soi Cowboy red light district is all but deserted the night before Thailand ordered all bars, pubs, dance clubs and entertainment venues closed to stem the tide of infections from the Covid-19 coronavirus. The bars will remain shut through at least April 30.
Sukhumvit Soi 7/1, a street normally teeming with woman and transvestites offering "happy ending" massages, sex and oral pleasures is dark and deserted during the coronavirus pandemic.
Two security guard keep watch outside a closed Nana Plaza adult-entertainment complex on Bangkok's Sukhumvit Soi 4 on April 2.
A solitary tuk-tuk driver looks around the deserted streets of Bangkok's Nana red light district, hoping for a customer on April 2.
A parked taxi is the only car on the Sukhumvit Road near Soi 2 during evening rush hour on April 2. The coronavirus pandemic and Thai government curfew has left the streets deserted.
Before 8 p.m. on April 2 – a time when normally lines to board the Skytrain at Asok BTS station can stretch off the platform and down the steps – no one was waiting to board.
A lone bottle of hand sanitizer sits on an abandoned health-screening table inside the closed Terminal 21 shopping mall in Bangkok.
Masked passengers sit on a sparsely populated Skytrain BTS car during evening rush hour April 2.
Little Italy, a pizza parlor in the Soi Cowboy red light district that never closes, closed down in March as the government ratcheted up social restrictions to combat the coronavirus.
Soi Cowboy is nearly pitch dark. Closed March 18, it's uncertain when Bangkok's world-famous red light district will reopen.
A solitary motorcyclist rides on Asok Montri Road in Bangkok's business district before 9 p.m. on April 2, a night before a national curfew was imposed by the government.
Ticket lines at the Sukhumvit MRT subway station during evening rush hour can be 30 minutes long. But that was before Covid-19. At 8:45 p.m. April 2 there was not a single person in line.
A food vendor rides his sidecar motorbike home before a national curfew begins at 10 p.m. in Bangkok, Thailand aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus.
Soi Cowboy is nearly pitch dark. Closed March 18, it's uncertain when Bangkok's world-famous red light district will reopen.
Usually packed shoulder-to-shoulder until past 8 p.m., Bangkok's Skytrain runs nearly empty in the 7 o'clock hour April 2.