Soi Green Mango Punch Machine
Tourists testing a boxing arcade machine on Chaweng's loudest street, all night on a live webcam.
About this view
Outside bars all over Thailand stands the punch machine: a padded arcade bag that scores how hard you hit it. This live webcam is trained on one of them, on Soi Green Mango in Chaweng, and it turns out to be the single most reliable piece of street theatre on Koh Samui.
The format never varies and never gets old. A group gathers, someone pays, someone else insists they can do better, and a number decides the argument. Between attempts the machine sits ignored while the street moves around it, which is its own kind of watching.
Nothing happens before dark. Thailand runs on UTC+7, and this street runs roughly 10pm to 2am local, landing in the European afternoon and the American morning. High season, from December, is when the queue for the machine is longest.
