We Have No-one To Blame But Ourselves

So as of late there seems to be a fair few disgruntled Stickmanites, bemoaning the girls or lack of them, the prices, the bars themselves and the whole industry in general. As my title suggests we are now reaping what we have sown. What
follows is my humble opinion on what has led to the decline of the P4P scene in Thailand as some of us used to know it.

For any of you that have read my earlier submission, you will know that I first started coming to Thailand in the mid '90s. I was fairly young then, in my mid 20s, but the crowd I came with was diverse. There were older guys, some
who had been coming for 15 or 20 years, some my own age who had made the trek from Australia, but mostly it was guys like me who were seafarers or rig workers who travelled extensively and just couldn't sit at home after being at sea
for 5 weeks. The point of this is I distinctly remember some very heated discussions with the old boys at the time over the price of going long time doubling from what had been a long-standing 500 baht to 1,000! That's right, folks, the
veterans really couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to pay 1,000 baht for long time. Most of us were cashed up young blokes (more dollars than sense) and we couldn't really see the problem. Those old boys in principle were
right though and the flow on effect from that has made a big impact.

Now some would disparage the "2-week millionaires" coming to Thailand but I wouldn't rain on anyone's parade. If you wish to come here and splash cash around paying well over the odds for everything, well it's your holiday so
enjoy it. Paying extra in Thailand though doesn't get you any extra love or respect or even better service so throwing all those extra 100 or 1,000 baht notes around just makes you look like a prize goose waiting to be plucked. To put
it another way, if a carton of milk costs 2 dollars, do you think a millionaire would pay 8 just because he has more money? Clearly, NO, he wouldn't. That's something to think about.

Back then the crowd were more hardcore. No-one ever discussed sponsorship or taking girls out of bars and the thought of marriage is just as ludicrous now as it was then. In fact if you took a girl for more than 2 or 3 days, you would
be sure to be ribbed about whether you were falling in love or not. So the pond was constantly getting restocked, you never lost your girl only your turn, so you knew she would be available again very soon. Not any more though! The catch and
release system is truly dead. Guys come on their once a year holiday and barfine a girl for 3 weeks or more. More and more guys are also coming here not to P4P but to expressly look for a wife or girlfriend. Now in my nearly 20 years of coming
here I still can't understand why anyone would come to a country to marry a hooker, but that's up to you. Another thing messing up the industry is these guys that only come here once or twice a year and start sponsoring said hooker!
Any sort of sponsorship of bargirls is ridiculous and I live here. Realistically I don't know what you expect to get for your money, for as sure as the sun shines it won't be love or loyalty. If you want to marry a hooker then come
here, grab one and take her home to your own country as that is the only way you can ensure she won't be "playing away".

The bars too are responsible to some extent, starting to run their clubs more like western strip joints. Having coyote girls or different tiers of dancers is ridiculous. At least one gogo in Walking Street I know has 5 different levels
of girls available all at different prices and if you put them in a line up you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. All girls should be the same price in gogos bars regardless. As Stick told me the easiest way to get a coyote girl
to stop moving is to put her in your bed. The same goes for escort agencies. I have looked at their sites and have yet to see one who was a proper standout. One agency girl I know which will remain nameless frequently goes with me for 2000
baht a night. Her agency rate is 14,000 baht a night and I laugh when she tells me she gets that sort of money from customers. But good luck to her as it is her job to fleece mugs for whatever she can get, you know, being a hooker and all.

The final nail in the coffin though is the availability of mobile technology and social media. Any hooker with half a brain has about 3 mobiles, is on Twitter, Facebook, TLL, has multiple emails and is playing every chump off the break
that she can find. The fault is ours though as guys are lining up to be played and then write to Stick about how they can't understand why their girl has robbed them, or isn't faithful… Please spare me!

So where does that leave us? Well clearly any truly good looking girl with half a brain only has to stay in a bar a number of weeks / months by which time she will have enough contacts, customers, sponsors and marriage proposals to last
a lifetime and she will never have to work bar again. Which is why in my opinion now the bars are top heavy with the overweight, the less attractive, the crazy, the drunk and the drug addicted (not that they seem to have any shortage of willing
suckers either). So the next time you put pen to paper to tell Stick how things just aren't the way they were, just remember it is all self inflicted.