Chris Coles

Bangkok Noir at Check Inn 99 Chris Coles

The original Check Inn 99 on Lower Sukhumvit was born as a hostess bar/cabaret venue/brothel (complete with "Short Time" rooms upstairs) serving mainly the Vietnam War Expat Crowd (including celebrity visitors like Bob Hope) and then, after the Vietnam War wound down, the Scandanavian Sex Tourist Crowd (including most of the SAS pilots who flew in and out of Bangkok). The location was perfect, a block or two from Soi Nana, the Nana Hotel and Nana Plaza, the epicenter of the Bangkok Nights Expat Sex Tourism Scene. Then in the early 2000's, a new owner, Chris Catto-Smith, turned what was once an amiably seedy commercial sex nitespot, into a comfortable hangout kind of live music venue. The same old rattan furniture, the same old kitchen, bar and restrooms only instead of hostesses, now a Filipino Band called Music of the Heart. The lived-in casual ambiance, the House Band and Lower Sukhumvit location made Check Inn 99 a perfect spot for staging various cabaret and other events, among them gatherings of the Bangkok Expat authors, poets, artists and musicians known as the Bangkok Noir Movement who put on three Bangkok Noir evenings. One on April 17th, 2013. Another on January, 2014 and a third evening on January 8th, 2015. This book mainly covers my own participation as an Artist who has used (and uses) the abundance of Noir material to be found in the Bangkok Night as the setting and background for my paintings.