on any given post-midnight day, tiny bangkok bar wong's place will be filled with drunken partiers hell bent on making sure the night's not over yet. this hole-in-the-wall dive bar near sathorn and rama iv road is a bangkok institution, attracting everyone from the odd local celeb to curious backpackers looking for a late-night hangout.the bar's origins are the stuff of bangkok backpacker legend. before khaosan, sukumvit soi 11 and all the other tourist magnets, there was malaysia hotel, the center of the growing backpacking scene emerging in the 1980s. the only bar in the area was a tiny little hovel named wong's place. unlikely, improbably and through word of mouth alone, the wee backpacker's bar became a meetup hotspot of southeast asia.to escape the harshness of totalitarian rule in china, sam says his family emigrated to southeast asia when he was a young boy. after drifting for a few years, they eventually settled in the southern thai province of yala, which is where sam grew up.
