One night in Bangkok
and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
A little flesh, a little history
I can feel an angel sliding up to me

so goes Murray Head's: "One Night in Bangkok"

Thailand's government is daring to think the unthinkable and to stop "One Night In Bangkok" by proposing a midnight curfew on all the bars, go-go bars, massage parlors, discos and nightclubs, to re-brand Thailand as only a destination for beaches, temples and sunshine. But Thai and foreign critics warn that this "Cinderella rule" could cost a million jobs, devastate Thailand's tourism industry and "take the Bang out of Thailand."

There are fears that mainstream tourism, which attracts billions of US-dollars a year, will get very hard hit. Most Discos in beach and holiday resorts such as Phuket, Pattaya and Koh Samui often do not open until midnight and run until dawn.

Internet cafes, karaoke bars, restaurants, snooker halls and video game arcades are already feeling the hard Thai anti-vice backlash whose seeds were sown during the 1997 economic crisis and the rise of conservatives with hard-line ideas for recovery in Thailand.

Furious opposition from bar and club owners forced a temporary reprieve for the midnight closing earlier this month from Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra but the issue will be back on the agenda again this week.

Somyos Suthangkura, of the Entertainment Places Operators Association of Thailand, said: "We are already suffering hard by the 2am closing rule, if we have to close at midnight, we will be out of business and Thailand out of tourists".

The owners of 36,000 nighttime entertainment establishments in Thailand, ranging from small beer-bars to huge discotheques, are awaiting the government ruling, expected on 1 March 2004. They currently have a curfew of 2am and insist that anything earlier will send tourists and their money elsewhere on holiday. Some Bangkok clubs are already planning to relocate their business to rival party cities in Malaysia and Singapore.

A foreign co-owner of a fashionable go-go-bar said "We might have to shut down if this midnight-rule is applied, a midnight curfew would drive the nightlife entertainment underground in Bangkok where the government cannot control it. They're trying to attract a better class of tourists with better hotels and restaurants, but seem to forget that tourist also come for night-time entertainment"'

Tourism officials are in a difficult position. Suraphon Svetasreni, deputy governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), said: 'The government wants to change Thailand's image. It might have a knock-on effect but only on a certain type of tourist, not the mainstream that flock by the millions to Thailand. We (the TAT) have always promoted tourism to Thailand on the basis of beaches, sunshine, history, culture and entertainment.

Keen to keep up the pressure for a midnight curfew, the current Thai government claims that a poll of academics, housewives and Thai women's groups supports the midnight curfew proposition.