The Khao Sarn Road area continues to offer lots of nightlife options, serving a variety of tastes. Bars begin getting busy early in the evening, but it’s a bit tougher to find a live music venue in the area around that time of night.

Khao Sarn Road is pedestrian-only these days, which makes it much more pleasant than it used to be, and if you walk about halfway down, you’ll see a building called the Khao Sarn Center. Fairly ordinary beer bars can be found in the basement of this building, but upstairs you’ll find a real gem of a venue - an Irish pub called Shamrock.

Unlike some of the bars in the building’s basement, the atmosphere in the Shamrock is finely balanced – it's not too busy, but it's busy enough and friendly with it.

If you just wish to relax, sit back and chill, there are some comfortable sofas located along the wall. If you want to interact with the bands, you'd better opt for the tables in the middle of the room. A bar area surrounds the stage if you need to get closer still. For gentler acts, you might want to shoot some pool while enjoying the show.

During my recent visit to the venue, a multi-talented house band called Maria provided the music; moving from soft to hard rock, ballads and alternative, 70s to Brit pop. This band plays from 9.30 pm until late on Sundays, but there are acts on throughout the week from about 7 pm until late.

The band seemed very professional, each member demonstrating an impressive level of musicianship, and the ability to play expertly within several genres. This is actually quite a rare commodity these days.

The male and female lead singers manage to provide a perfect vocal blend, which suits the rock genre perfectly.

The keyboard player – Navin Sorajjaki - recently won a rock keyboard competition organized by Prart Music Group, one of the country’s leading music companies, which produces a monthly music magazine, television program, and is involved in concert promotion, including major international artists.