Daytime Bangkok is an industrial opera—flashing tuks-tuks, hectic motorbikes, and dogged taxis whizz by the end of a side street, creating a soundtrack of car horns and engines, which then layer onto an Adele playlist blasting out of one of the many gay bars along Silom Soi 4 road. But hidden at the very end, where the noise of the traffic becomes a dull hum, is the Stranger Bar, its black facade bleeding into the other buildings on either side. Come nightfall, a quick metamorphosis begins—it’s nondescript no more as the crowds funnel in, waiting for the night’s five drag acts to dazzle inside the bar-cum-threater. Clad in catsuits and ball gowns, bodysuits, and bejeweled bikinis, anything goes here for the performers and 350-plus patrons. They gravitate toward the silver-curtained stage, where the MC, Miss M Stranger Fox (also known as Chakgai Jermkwan, a former Drag Race Thailand contestant), introduces each act. “Positivity always brings people in,” shares Jermkwan, who opened the bar 13 years ago with Irish husband Sean L’Estrange. The couple, who legally married in the United States, take a brief reprieve from setting up for the night’s show and, sinking into black leather armchairs, explain how Thailand has always been somewhat inclusive and appealing to LGBTQ+ locals and tourists for that reason. “If you dress like a drag queen walking around [the skytrain], it’s no problem,” says Jermkwan who, at 5 p.m., has yet to transform into Miss M.