Billboard

Last week's photo was taken inside the very nice Bangkok Betty bar on the ground floor of the Holiday Inn at the start
of Sukhumvit soi 22. The camera was pointed at the ceiling.

FROM STICK'S INBOX (These are emails from readers and what is written here was not written by Stick.) Preference may be given to emails which refer to the previous week's column.

EMAIL OF THE WEEK – Reinforcing the obvious.

Thai Immigration's attempt to persuade foreigners to divulge personal information upon arrival (their bank accounts, favourite bars, hotels, social media sites, etc.) might be better served by providing foreigners with an educational handout consisting of the following information intended to reduce the likelihood of getting attacked, maimed or killed by following their stupid farang instincts:

* Do NOT believe that Thais have the same values you may harbour.

* Do NOT act on any impulse to come to the aid of another person being attacked – for any reason.

* DO understand that your presence is tolerated ONLY because of the currency that accompanies you.

* DO acknowledge that your well-being depends upon your strict adherence to the above.

You've been warned, farang. Otherwise, enjoy your stay! Although all of this should, by now, be common knowledge to regular visitors and expats, it never hurts to reinforce the obvious. This was made even more obvious by the recent beating and knife attack on a Belgian male who came to the aid of a Thai woman being attacked in Satun by her husband. And no-one should be shocked that the husband first went to secure a knife and the help of his brother before launching his assault.

Ghastly Gary.

A story like that about Gary Salmon makes me very angry. There you have a young, good-looking
guy who has all the possibilities in life to meet fantastic girls, fall in love, have a family and good friends and he throws it all away! Other people try hard to be nice and are prepared to go to any length to find someone to love and be loved
by, but because they do not have the right clothes, speech, hair, idea of humour, age, car, condo, work, knowledge of music or film or whatever superficial values, they don't do so well. It is guys like Gary who poison the mind of
normally nice girls who are interested in "normal" guys. Thai girls want to meet a good guy, but are charmed and fall in love with bastards like him. I don't get angry easily but this story made me very angry!

Bargirls need to change with the market.

With regard to individual or small groups of Chinese going to the bars, I would counsel any bargirl not hooked in to the Japanese scene to learn a few words of Chinese. Any bar boss who misses this trend will go out of business. The individual Chinese traveller has money. Are the men looking for ladies? Well, remember the gender imbalance in China due to the one child policy means there are way more men than women in China. Have these men been isolated and somewhat repressed? Are their parents nagging them to find a good Chinese girl? Yes, but a holiday in Thailand is a time to cut loose a little before going back home to the grind of fighting the millions of other guys competing to find the right Chinese girl. Bargirls who turn their noses up at the Chinese will lose out. Can you say ni hao ma?

Swapping Pattaya for Phuket.

I met a young lady who said she had been in Phuket for 5 months after 7 months in Pattaya. I asked why she moved. In Pattaya, she said, men only want to drink and boom boom. Very boring. In Phuket we go the beach, we go dancing, we visit temples. Not boring.

Thais and homesickness.

None of us really wants to come back home from vacation. But you have to, we know that. The end of a big trip can be bittersweet. You know you have to go home, but boy would it be nice to stay just a little longer. A Thai gal who visited me in California (she also had other friends in Arizona) was the opposite. By the time she got to me at about day 7 of a 10-day trip, she was already homesick. Every meal we had to find Thai food. I teased her a little saying “Thais think it's strange when a farang in Thailand wants farang food, but you're here and refuse to eat any local food.” The joke went way over her head. “You think that place have som tam?” was all she could say. By the time I dropped her off at LAX, she was totally ready to be home. And her trip in total was only 10 days.

Lakorns.

I realise you have received a lot of mail regarding the Hua Hin incident, but I wanted to chime in too. I agree that it is not the frequency of these cowardly acts that is increasing, but thanks to social media etc they are now just more out there for all to see. Honestly, one of my biggest objections with Thailand is the national obsession with lakorns (soap operas), many of which include plot lines that have males hitting females. I can't accept that children are regularly watching these TV programs and see this as completely "normal", but if they show affection e.g. Western type kissing, that is completely horrifying! Maybe this lakorn obsession and the popularity (a while ago now) of Hong Kong fighting movies which popularised dog-pack style fighting may have contributed to the problem?

Thais and smartphones.

I travel to work in the morning on the MRT and it surprises me how most young Thais on the train are not looking at news stories but are on Facebook and Line. The first thing I want to look at is the BBC news to see what is happening in the world but the Thais just look at their friends to see what they ate last night or chat on Line and send childish stickers. It makes you wonder about the future of Thailand and the sort of people who will be running the country in years to come. And please don't get me started on Thai TV which is even more childish and pointless!

Real estate agents in Bangkok.

I guess you know this but, man, Bangkok real estate agents are an exercise in complete *frustration*. I think they just lie when they say they understand English. There can be no other explanation. They give you a whole lot of questions about your requirements which you respond to in detail. But I think they understand all that detail to mean "some condo somewhere in Bangkok" because based on what you get back it meets only that requirement. What is more, you get nice pictures – but no price for the condo – and one example that had a tenant – but no detail on what the tenant was paying, what the length of the tenancy was, or anything! Just pictures of the inside of a condo that I could have easily pulled off the internet myself. The specific follow-up requests are ignored, and more useless photos of completely unrelated and totally unsuitable condos continue to flow in to the inbox. At least I have not got any of places in Pattaya or Hua Hin yet. But would not be surprised.

Another Bangkok bar and restaurant neighbourhood has an appointment with the grim reaper and looks set to be consigned to Bangkok bar history. A chunk of Sukhumvit soi 11 which includes a few long-running / character venues has been sold to developers who plan to turn it in to – yes, you guessed it – another condominium building. The stretch of Sukhumvit soi 11 that runs from Cheap Charlie's up to the Soi 11 guesthouse and restaurant, encompassing all of the properties on soi 11 itself as well all of the properties in the sub soi behind which features such popular restaurants as Charley Brown's – Bangkok's longest running Mexican restaurant – and Snapper (which some say has the best fish and chips in all of Bangkok), have received letters by registered post informing them that their lease will not be renewed beyond March, 2017. Some venues have already begun their search for a new location.

On the ground floor of Nana Plaza, the pool bar at Bangkok Bunnies, which is in the space that was previously Voodoo, is now open. It is hoped that it will contribute to an increase in business with Bangkok Bunnies, the largest bar in Nana Plaza and in a prime ground floor position doing absolutely miserably since it changed hands a few months ago. I dunno…I've never thought Nana Plaza was a great place for a pool bar.

Jail Birdz on the top floor of Nana remains closed and any hopes of it reopening are fading. This is not the first time Jail Birdz has closed its doors – the bar closed for a short period a few months back. It's 12 days and counting since the music was playing and there were girls dancing in Jail Birdz. Word is that Jail Birdz fell behind on its rent. As a multi-storey bar area, Nana Plaza bar operators know the importance of location and the position of Jail Birdz on the right-hand side of the top floor has long been a dead zone (whereas, strangely, the other side of the plaza seems to get much more foot traffic). There's a reason rents on the ground floor are so much higher than on the top floor.

Bubbles, on the other side of the plaza and also on the top floor, closed ages ago and was run by the very same fellow who had Jail Birdz. Since that space was vacated there has been little interest in it. It's the same issue – the top floor just doesn't get the foot traffic. Having said that, with Billboard right next door booming, what more proof do you need that if you work hard and create a fun vibe you can make money on the top floor of the plaza. With Jail Birdz and Bubbles both in darkness, that's half the bars on the top floor of Nana Plaza empty.

If you have a midget on your bucket list, drop by Mercury in Nana Plaza and look for #3. Management tell me she is popular. And don't go joking with her about her pint-size and taking her for a short-time – that one wore thin with her long ago.

There has been a flurry of bar name changes in Nana Plaza causing much confusion especially when old-timers refer to bars by their old name. New bars / investment in the industry can only be a good thing, but changing the name of a bar while keeping it exactly the same confuses everyone. Compare Nana with Cowboy and Patpong – especially Patpong soi 1 – where few bars change hands and there have been very few bar name changes.

All the ladyboy bars in Nana Plaza are of the gogo variety, which is to say there are no ladyboy lounges – the sort of bars where there are usually couches and chairs and pool tables instead of chrome poles. Lounges dominate the Pattaya ladyboy scene, yet number only two in Bangkok – the old Guess (now called Chaos 9) in the Rajah Hotel parking lot and the Check-In Bar off Soi 7. The differences are numerous but suffice to say customers don't spend a lot of time in gogo bars whereas many tend to regard the lounges as private clubs, remaining sometimes for the entire evening, where they socialise together as well as with the ladyboys, who tend to be less aggressive. I am told that the music is generally more tolerable in the lounges too.

What is it with all the goons at the entranceways to most Nana Plaza bars? Almost every bar now has heavies at the door – and some of these guys look like they're spoiling for a fight. Door security in Thailand is often made up of off-duty police / army or young punks who fancy themselves as hired muscle – and Nana Plaza seems to have more of the latter. Security is a good thing, of course, but the only uniformed security guards in Nana appear to be at the main entrance; inside are some nasty-looking types. These goons do nothing for the vibe of the place.

One Pattaya gogo bar is taking the idea of only having only slim dancers seriously. The recently appointed manager brought in a set of scales and all dancers were weighed. It was decided that the maximum weight a dancer can be is 48 kg and all dancers over 48 kg were given their marching orders, including one sexy lady who was being barfined every night. They really are serious about keeping the fatties out and making sure the venue resembles a house of dolls.

Service staff in bars asking for a tip when one isn't given (and may not be deserved) is one of the more odious practices in the bar biz. Tips are divided up amongst service staff at the end of the night and 300 – 400 baht per person is not unusual – not bad given that is on top of the 10,000 odd baht service staff are typically paid as a monthly salary. The shared tips are on top of any tips that are given directly to the girl i.e. placed in her hand and theirs to keep. One bar in Nana Plaza currently has a sign outside looking for staff. It says that service staff can expect to earn 400 baht per night on average over and above their salary. In other words, service staff are well compensated so if the service is lousy and you choose not to tip, don't feel bad about it. No-one is going to go hungry if you don't tip!

The Nana Hotel doubles as a retirement home with several older foreigners resident, living there year round. Apparently there was a time when their number was much greater but some have moved on to the afterlife.

Speaking of the famous sex tourist hotel, the Nana Hotel is renovating its restrooms. There are restrooms across from the elevators and there are also some hidden restrooms down the long corridor past the travel agent's desk. Apparently they date back to the days when the swimming pool was located there and still have showers in them.

Business fell off a cliff this week. One Patpong bar owner told me they had their worst night ever one night earlier this week. Many Bangkok bar owners said trade was very bad this week.

This coming Friday, May 20, is Visakha Bucha Day, a significant Buddhist holiday and it is expected that most bars nationwide will be closed. In the old days some bar areas played a game of cat and mouse with the authorities on public holidays, opening and selling non-alcoholic drinks, or serving alcohol in coffee cups. With a military government in place that sort of carry on seems unlikely. If you are dying for a drink, probably Patpong will be open – it tends to get a special dispensation as it is considered a mainstream tourist area.

The expansion of the Hooters chain continues across the region. Bangkok's two Hooters branches have only been going a few months with word that Phnom Penh will soon have its very own Hooters. But Hooters is already in Phnom Penh, I hear you say. No, that was a Khmer copy and basically a hostess bar with girls decked out in replica Hooters T-shirts. I imagine it shouldn't be difficult to hire ladies of the Hooters archetype over the border where the local lasses have figures that very much fit the Hooters mould.

And still in Phnom Penh, long-time partner in Sharky Bar, Mike Hsu passed away last Sunday and was found dead in the bar. Mike was 67 years old and from all accounts led life in the fast lane and it was something of a minor miracle that he lasted as long as he did. But then again, perhaps 67 is not such a bad innings for an expat in Cambodia.

A long-term reader tells me about a new massage shop on the second floor of the S33 complex in Sukhumvit soi 33. It's not the shop itself that is generating interest, but the website which doesn't skirt around what goes on inside, but very much embraces it with descriptions of exactly what services are umm, errr, on hand. Visit the website MituBangkok,
click on English at the top, then on the no hand picture and scroll down the page. * Note, best you don't look at this site at work!

The saddest thing about The Dubliner closing is that it had arguably the best cooked breakfast on Sukhumvit. There's still no word on what will happen to The Dubliner.

And some time in the last few weeks the small Forge Pub which replaced The Black Swan near the Asoke intersection and next to the Asoke skytrain station also closed.

Speaking with a friend over there in Bangkok this week, he put it to me that he feels Thai women will do what they're going to do in a relationship irrespective of what you do and how you are in the relationship and there's really not much you can do to influence their behaviour. He feels that if a Thai woman is going to stray / cheat in a relationship then it really does not matter how well you treat her or even whether you cheat on her yourself. If she is going to cheat, she is going to cheat. I value this friend's thoughts about life in Thailand and relationships with Thais so I gave it a bit of thought. I am not convinced, but he may have a point. What do you think?

And speaking with another friend in Bangkok, he's struggling to cope with the heat in more ways than one. Not only is it hot and sticky, his power bill has gone through the roof. 5,300 baht – or around $US150 – might not sound like a high monthly power bill for those of us in the west, but given that he lives in a small condo and his rent is less than 9,000 baht a month, last month's power bill came as a shock.

If you are fascinated by Bangkok and wonder what it was like before mass tourism arrived, you might like to check out a book published in English way back in 1927 by Major Erik Seidenfaden titled A Guide To Bangkok With Notes on Siam.
The entire book has been scanned and is available to download free as a PDF file.

A popular Sukhumvit restaurant is looking for an experienced chef who can cook western food. Interested parties should drop an email to : Bkkhospitality@gmail.com The position comes with a work permit
and a visa. Starting salary is 45K baht / month and rises to 60K baht / month after probation.