Stickman Weekly, May 5, 2024

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo was taken on the main Sukhumvit Road, right next to the start of soi 2, looking east, back towards Nana. The tall building on the right in the JW Marriott Hotel. Peculiarly, not all that many of you got it right. I have to say that sometimes it feels like it can be a bit of an “art” to include a photo which is neither too easy nor too difficult.

 

Stick’s Inbox, The Best Emails From The Past Week

The secret is out.

I heartily agree that sites such as Fiwfans offer a much better experience, and are a much better option, than gogo bars. While it’s true that some ladies’ photos have been heavily Photoshopped, my experiences have been mostly very positive. The women are more attractive, better educated, they deliver good [and sometimes exceptional] service, and the value provided is incomparably better than with bargirls. Another plus is that I avoid the smoke, noise and bad behaviour that is part of the bar scene and maintain my privacy and anonymity. When I visit Bangkok these days I don’t visit the bars at all. The money saved allows me to stay in 5-star hotels and eat really good food, and when I’m in the mood for some intimate company I either turn to Fiwfans or visit a massage shop. I find that the women generally enjoy engaging in conversation and respond very positively if you are polite and friendly. I’ve also not experienced a language issue. It’s too bad the secret is now out.

On Sukhumvit, the world is your oyster.

I tried about a dozen online girls over the years, and they’re not an alternative to Sukhumvit or Pattaya. For those who speak some Thai and only want to smash, it’s better value. However, the entire process is tedious. You basically keep contacting them (or rather, their agents) until you find one who’s free and willing. It’s a chore, could take 4 – 5 tries and an hour or two. Then, you’re in for a long trek across town, a short screw, and a long way back. Too much time to contemplate what better things you could have done with your time and money. Offline, the whole process is way more fun. At my age, the hunt is definitely more exciting than 10 minutes of banging, nice and polite as the lady might be. In the bars there’s an active scene where you’re pursued by hundreds of willing women, hang out, get horny and smash within 15 minutes of snapping your fingers. If there’s chemistry, you can extend the encounter (almost no chance of this online). If you feel you’re on a roll, maybe get another woman the same night (you won’t arrange this in time online). On Sukhumvit, the world is your oyster.

An alternative to FIWFans.

Kudos for revealing FiwFans. May I mention another site with considerable overlap, SidelineThailand. While there is considerable overlap, the Sideline Thailand filters are superior to FiwFans’ rather limited filters. FiwFans does not offer the “natural breasts,” “offsite” (= your place or mine”), “no tattoos,” “ชาย1หญิง2,” and many other useful filters that are available on Sideline Thailand. As you noted, deceptive marketing is the fly in the ointment. An anecdote: In a recent jaunt to Chiang Mai, the plump matron with acne who arrived at the love hotel was not the slim and unblemished young lady advertised. She, as many advertisers offer, first submitted to my review, “Am I OK?” in Thai, offering to leave without charge. While my rule is to not reward deception, I bent my rule for this obviously struggling single mother. In consideration for the child she was undoubtedly supporting, I paid her to leave. Another caveat, commensurate with the gogo bar inflation you have well-described, prices have risen on both FiwFans and Sideline Thailand.

Turn on auto-translate.

Read your latest piece on FIWFans. On my notebook I used the translation feature and had no problems reading the Thai script in English. I thought this might be useful to your readers. And if they use the Line app to contact the ladies, then the translator feature embedded there is well understood by the ladies.

More Readers’ Emails

Loved up in Lolita’s.

I agree with you about the opportunity for a bargain session at Lolita’s. I’m a long-time customer from way back when Lolita’s was on Soi Cowboy. I did get a laugh from your advice about not kissing the girls, although it is good advice but for more reasons than the obvious one. I can remember when Thai girls never kissed but now it is common to get an unexpected kiss right on the smacker when you least expect it. I got a kiss from a bargirl once and the next day I came down with influenza symptoms. The symptoms lasted until the end of my trip a week later and kind of ruined things for me. The human mouth is the most germ-infested part of the body and can easily transmit disease. Maybe my immune system is just getting too weak in my old age but I prefer to cut my risks.

Thoughts for those with a (very) open mind.

On the subject of cut / uncut ladyboys, I second your observation on the preferences of the confirmed ladyboy-only aficionados. From discussions with gentlemen in my own circle who fall into this category, it seems that only the original uncut article really “hits the spot” so to speak. However, I put this to you and your readers: for those of us who like only the female anatomy, but are open-minded enough to not get hung up about chromosomes every single time, the occasional cut ladyboy is arguably an under-appreciated gem. Invariably younger and slimmer, always desperate to please and demonstrate her womanly charms, sexually athletic, no tackle flapping around to confuse anyone, and the best oral you will ever receive. A Nana gogo bar – Straps – caters exclusively for this experience, so the market must exist. Could this explain the crotch-photographing service providers of Thermae?

When she leaves her ID card at reception.

I remember once in a Soi Cowboy gogo bar, I barfined a girl who claimed to be 24. In my hotel room, she revealed she actually was 39. This lady forgot to pick up her ID card from the hotel reception in the morning. Around noon, the hotel manager and security stormed into my room. They even looked in the bathroom, perhaps to see if I had chopped her up or something!

The new Nana Plaza look.

The stairwells at Nana are coming along really well. Whoever thought that up deserves a medal. Much better than the old Banana Plaza look.

Nana Plaza’s new look gets the thumbs up.

I am not usually an admirer of ‘tattooed walls’, but Nana Plaza seems to be doing a decent job. There is an area of east London, Whitechapel, which used to be very run-down, and now it’s a trendy area with just about every building covered in artwork. Not my thing at all. To me, graffiti is a sign of a deprived area, but – like many words that used to mean one thing and now mean the opposite, such as bad and wicked – they are a draw for a different generation. I must admit that, if done well, the art can be fantastic.

 

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This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

There’s conjecture about whether Bangkok bar trade is descending into the low season. It’s been another week of mixed reports with some saying the bars are quiet, others saying trade is holding up well. May is traditionally the quietest month of the year, closely followed by September. In other words, if you enjoy it when it isn’t too busy then now would be a good time to visit. Personally, I prefer it when things are quiet. I seem to tolerate the heat better than most, don’t care for high-season crowds and am no fan of packed bars. So if you’re at all like me, now mightn’t be such a bad time to get over to Bangkok. Cheaper airfares too.

While there might not be big crowds in the bars, there are plenty of people outside the bars. It would seem that Soi Nana is increasingly attracting those who enjoy walking from one end of Pattaya’s Walking Street to the other, and / or walking up and down Soi Cowboy. We’re not talking individuals here but groups, big groups and in some cases even tour groups. Tour groups touring Soi Nana is somewhat new. The Soi Nana walking tour is the same as elsewhere – walk slowly, with little regard that the soi proper is for cars and the pavement for those on foot. If they see something they like, they’ll stop, gawk and take photos / video. And on Soi Nana they like to stop at two popular spots for photos. The first and most obvious is Nana Plaza’s frontage and the large sign. The second is the adjacent beer bars. As a Stumble Inn regular wrote in an email this week, “The balcony seats used to be the best spot in the house. No longer, unless you’re willing to be the star of someone’s holiday video.” Soi Nana is narrow, and can feel congested at the best of times. It’s not at all suited to large groups of sightseers using it for a nightlife walking tour.

I have to make a brief comment here on what is happening out on Soi Nana, and the strict no photo / video policy inside Nana Plaza. While some find it disappointing that you’re no longer welcome to take photos or video in the plaza, these rules mean you have a degree of privacy to enjoy all that the plaza has on offer without your activities being recorded and ending up online.

 

 

While some love to complain about the price of a beer, those in the know head to Angelwitch on Nana Plaza’s middle floor which still has local beers at a very reasonable 75 baht during happy hour on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That’s less than half the price of pretty much all other gogo bars. For those a little sensitive to price, there are good deals out there if you’re willing to shop around.

Also in Nana Plaza, a number of readers have mentioned Red Dragon as having a particularly fetching line-up of ladies at present. If you’re a fan of ladies who some might describe as “fresh”, you should stop by Red Dragon. A few readers have mentioned that the smaller and less celebrated Red Dragon pips some of the bigger, more popular bars when it comes to the line-up of ladies.

Have you ever given much thought to how old the working girl you’re with really is? There used to be a time when ladies not of legal age would claim to be older than they actually were. She could hardly say she was 16 or 17, so she would often claim to be 18, 19, 20 or even 21. Underage seems to be, thankfully, a thing of the past on Sukhumvit. It’s more likely a lady telling porkies about her age is making herself out to be younger than her actual age. There are A LOT of ladies well in to their 30s who claim to be in their 20s, as per one of the emails run in the Emails To Stick section. One bar billed by many to be the best in the industry has many ladies on stage today who were working there 5+ years ago. And, by some miraculous means, their age has not increased by even one year over the past 5. Maybe the Covid years don’t count?

A number of you responded to comments made in the column a couple of weeks back about what’s on offer at Lolita’s. In fact, so many of you seem to stop by Lolita’s that I should try and negotiate some sort of Stickman discount. Of course, Lolita’s is far from the only venue to offer that service. What’s on offer there can also be found in many of the massage shops around that area. There are unlimited options on Sukhumvit.

I was reading a report from someone who engaged the services of one of the ladies featured on the FIWFans site that I wrote about last week. The fellow commented that before the session began, the lady took out a clock and started the stopwatch. With ladies on that site, you choose the amount of time and the number of shots. It’s been a very long time since I was a naughty boy but even so, the idea of being on the clock sounds rather off-putting. I’d find it hard to get my head around being intimate with a lady with a stopwatch counting the minutes down, beside the bed! That said, I can imagine some customers on Sukhumvit who comment that ladies rush things would probably welcome the idea of such a feature.

 

 

Someone has a sense of humour, naming their venue Chit Hole, as per the photo above. It’s a craft beer venue if you’re wondering, and can be found here. I wonder if the owner is Thai or foreigner? While you might think the owner is a foreigner, many Thais are particularly clever when it comes to plays on words like this.

The European Football Championships take place from mid-June to mid-July and in a testament to just how popular international football is in Bangkok, some pubs are already taking bookings for the best seats for the big fixtures. I have to say that when it comes to football matches, watching them in a bar in Bangkok is hard to beat, be it the English Premier League, or big international matches. Rugby, on the other hand, I much prefer to watch at home. Not sure why that is.

There was very sad news in Bangkok expat circles this week when reports broke that Colin Hastings had died in a vehicle accident. Colin was a long-time expat of Bangkok who had been in Thailand for 50 odd years. He was perhaps best known as the publisher of The Big Chili. Colin was one fellow I never heard a single bad word about. Everyone liked Colin and everyone had something positive to say about him. He really was one of the good guys. May he rest in peace.

Down in Pattaya, it’s been busy. More than 6,000 American sailors hit town last weekend for shore leave and just as they left, the Japanese and Chinese descended on Sin City. Both countries are celebrating their “Golden Week” holidays and hordes of Japanese and Chinese boarded planes for Thailand.

Just off Walking Street, a new nightclub, Akira, opened on Thursday in the shell of the former Angelwitch Pattaya gogo bar. Things really got going around 1:30 AM and word is they partied all through the night, until 7:30 AM. Akira retains the original external walls of Angelwitch, and the new design features two floors with state-of-the-art LED panels and lighting. The venue has room for around 500 people which may sound like a lot, but it’s actually a lot less than the bigger, well-known venues and makes for a much more intimate space. Akira will be open until at least 4:00 AM nightly.

You know business is good in Pattaya when you hear that many hotels are still at high season prices as buses clog Beach and Second roads and Walking Street is shoulder to shoulder at night. Does this translate into more trade in the gogo bars? It depends. Gogo bars full of ladies whose looks appeal to Asian men – think Iron Club, XS, the South Korean-owned IvyGo, Palace, and the new Opium – were all going gangbusters this week. In other bars, there were plenty of empty seats. “Only Asia now,” one mamasan at a Soi 15 gogo moaned. They come in, have one 95-baht beer and leave, she said. Expect the Asian invasion to last through this week.

Iron Club was doing great trade this past week. If they handed out “Comeback of the Year” awards for gogo bars, Iron Club would win hands-down. While 15 odd years ago you would have been hard pressed to find a better chrome pole bar, the sad truth is that Iron Club has been very average for a very long time. Even a refit last year did little to turn things around. But it was a full house several nights this week. The crowd, it should be noted, was 95% Asian. The stage was full of ladies who looked like they had just stepped out of a plastic surgery convention. And with a predominantly Asian customer base, you know what that means – lady drinks are a pricey 250 baht.

A couple of friends spent a few hours on Pattaya’s Soi 6 on Wednesday and walked away wholly unimpressed. Both are Thailand old hands and remember when a beer on Soi 6 was 55 baht, girls were ready and willing and a roll in the hay upstairs was a uniform 500 baht soi-wide. Those days are long gone and many long-termers struggle to get their head around 2024 pricing and attitudes. Today on Soi 6, expect to pay around 120 baht for a bottle of beer, 150 baht for a mixed drink and even more for a lady drink in some hot-spots. As for the ladies – if they’ll even give you the time of day – the opening gambit in several bars was 2,000 baht to go upstairs, with only one willing to accept 1,500. Many ladies don’t bother to provide even the most basic service. One friend recounted how, at several places, an attractive girl would draw you inside, sit you down and then leave to go back outside and chat with friends, scroll her phone and eat. No wonder some call it Soi Fatty these days! One friend recounted how he approached one attractive girl outside and she refused to even make eye contact, walking away without a word to grab an uninterested Asian guy. Sure, things aren’t what they used to be, but tourists hitting Soi 6 for the first time would be disappointed.

Following last week’s call for any readers who spot the new Glitterman in Pattaya to send photos of him, for our many London readers, the original Glitterman is still performing the show in London. You may recall that he left Pattaya some 10 odd years ago to return to his native London. He was spotted by a reader this week on Kings Road, Chelsea in West London. I believe he also performed the show for some time in and around Wimbledon.

The first Pattaya location of Snus Source has opened, a few minutes’ walk from Harbour Mall. Snus Source is Thailand’s largest chain of stores specialising in smoking-cessation products, such as nicotine pouches and oral nicotine pearls, with three stores in Bangkok and one each in Pattaya and Koh Samui. The Pattaya outlet is located on Soi Welcome Town, off Central Road near Sukhumvit. Snus Source Pattaya also offers delivery to all three Pattaya-area postal codes. Delivery and more information can be found at SnusSource.com.

I heard rumours this week that the Penthouse Hotel in Pattaya had reopened. Checking online, I could find no evidence of it so I sent someone along and he reported that no, it’s still closed. Coming soon, hopefully.

 

 

Spare a thought for anyone in Thailand the past few weeks. The air quality has been described as terrible for months and the past few weeks the temperature has been said to be hellishly hot. A reader in Udon Thani mentioned it had been 42+ degrees Celsius and every day the AQI has been above 150, a combination that really does sound like pure hell. Many friends in Thailand have commented on this with some saying that even at midnight, it can still be 32 or 33 degrees!

And with these high temperatures, just like this time last year expats are moaning about their electricity bill. But so many of you tell me that Thailand has such good weather! I don’t want to appear mean, but I do laugh at some of the stuff Thailand expats complain about, such as supposedly high electricity bills. A few people complained their typical monthly bill had gone from 2,000 baht to 4,000 baht. Only 4,000 baht? Electricity, like so many things in Thailand, is cheap. Even in summer, my electricity bill is never below 2,500 baht and in winter it’s around 6,000 baht – and I don’t run the air-conditioning or heat pumps very often.

I note the baht is weaker against foreign currencies which makes travelling to Thailand that little bit cheaper. This week, Americans were getting 37+ baht for their greenbacks, while the Brits were getting a bit over 46 baht. Kiwis and Aussies continue to get crap rates in the low 20s.

I can’t stress enough that you should never show your hand financially in Thailand. When it comes to money and personal finances in Thailand, keep your poker face on 24/7. Money changes people everywhere, but especially so in Thailand – and to be clear here, I am not necessarily referring to locals, but to your fellow foreigners. In Thailand, money can cause some people to do some really questionable things.

Thailand-Related News Articles

Quote of the week comes from a learned friend, “If you demonstrate understanding of the culture – including of course a refusal to put up with Farangland-style tactics, you encounter less nonsense.”

Thailand experienced extreme heat this past week, with many heat records tumbling.

A British tourist is charged with assaulting a tuktuk driver in Phuket (where else?!).

A British tourist was visited by police about the YouTube videos he had created on his channel about life in Thailand.

An American YouTuber with a huge following and a history of mental health issues flips out in Pattaya, taking a golf club to his Thai girlfriend.

A New Zealander is arrested and charged with setting off fireworks in Phuket.

A British tourist is caught with a bag of cocaine hidden in his passport by Immigration staff’.

Closing Comments

I visited Bangkok at this time last year and had planned to be in Thailand again this year, around now. But a combination of things from high airfares to commitments on the home front means I’m still in New Zealand and still not sure when I will be back. As much as I’d like to be there at the moment, I don’t like the sound of that hot weather. By the time I get back, it shouldn’t be quite as hot and, hopefully, the air quality will have improved too. For those of you there at the moment, I hope you’re enjoying yourself despite the weather.

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

 

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com