Wow, a Tuk Tuk Festival in Bangkok! If you ever told me that I would be attending a music festival in a tuk tuk while physically distanced from other party-goers, I would have thought you’ve gone mad.

Because of COVID-19, lots of things have changed. Events and festivals all over the world were canceled or postponed.

So when Bangkok announced its very own drive-in Tuk Tuk Festival, I was stoked.

But there was a catch. They weren’t selling any tickets for the event. Instead, they were only handing out complimentary tickets to press, media, sponsors, and giveaway contests. The Tuk Tuk Festival was a limited event with just 200 Tuks Tuks, each allowing only 3 passengers.

Since the event was co-organized between Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Woody World, and party organizer ZAAP, I decided to reach out to my contact at TAT.

“Hey, you know about this event? Could you get me a ticket? I’d really love to cover it”.

“Sure, let me find out. I’m not in charge of this event but let’s see”.

A day later my friend gets me a ticket and says, “enjoy!”

Entering the event

Since the Tuk Tuk Festival revolved around the concept of physically distancing, strict safety standards were put in place.

Before entering the outdoor event (held at Asiatique), the staff checked our temperature and asked us to apply hand sanitizers. Then we went through another screening and ID checks. We presented our guest pass ticket to the staff in exchange for wristbands.

The process was quite smooth and hardly took any time. The only issue was that it was raining a bit, which slowed us down a little bit. Luckily they provided raincoats. However, a little rain never hurt anybody.

After taking some photos at the entrance area (which was awesomely decorated and branded), we finally got through the last checkpoint.

Our Tuk-tuk was waiting to drive us to the concert area. We got on and away we went.

The Experience

The tuk-tuk took us to our spot and parked within a 16-square-meter spot marked with yellow-black tape. This was literally our spot. We aren’t allowed to get outside of it except for going to the toilet.

How about food or drink, you ask? Would you believe that we had our very own butlers? Yes. There were staff designated to each (or a number) of tuk-tuks to take and bring orders.

Our “butler” was a sweet girl named Nine who spoke perfect English. She was great!

In addition to not being able to move around or mingle with other attendees, we were also expected to wear our masks at all times. Obviously, we would take it off to eat, drink or take photos.

At times it felt a bit uneasy just being stuck in our square but it was also nice. It felt good not to be bumping into people or losing our spot, which happens a lot at concerts or music festivals.

You can easily imagine the pros and cons. It’s a great concept but I don’t know if it is sustainable. People go to concerts to mingle as well. But it’s still better than nothing. At least we were at a festival.

Music

The event featured some big-name local artists such as Three Man Down, Potato, Joey Boy, Taitosmith, and Palmy. I enjoyed Three Man Down but I think Taitosmith really stole the show. At least for us.

Surprisingly, the crowd did not enjoy them as much as we did. I guess this crowd likes more of the lovey-dovey, Korean-style artists.

Taitosmith is quite a diverse rock band in that they can play such an array of styles. Absolutely great performance.

How it can be improved

I know a lot of people were upset on the Facebook page since the event was not completely open to the public. My theory is that the organizers were testing the event with a smaller crowd. As they should.

While the Tuk Tuk Festival was amazing in terms of process, concept and execution, there are some things that need improvement.

Actually, just one. The food and drinks part. It took a long time to get our food. All we ordered was chicken popcorn and it took about 1 hour to come. The reasoning on their end was that there was only one chef making it.

Also, for some reason the beer was not sold till 6:30 pm. I didn’t understand why that was the case.

Lastly, I’d like to see some international bands and artists too. Or Thai artists that sing English songs. However, I still enjoyed the music.

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What do you think? Would you attend such a festival? Let me know in the comments section below.