Stickman Weekly, December 8, 2024

Mystery Photo

Where is it?

Last week’s photo was taken near the top of Soi Nana, directly opposite Stumble Inn. I removed the name of the bar and deliberately replaced it with gibberish, which seemed to confuse a few of you – and not that many people got it right. This week’s photo was taken by a Kiwi friend yesterday. He sent it to me and asked me where it was. I took a look at it, scratched my head and said I didn’t know. When he told me where it was, I felt like a total idiot! Hopefully you know where it is and don’t end up feeling like a fool, like I did.

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

The French connection.

I thought I’d weigh in regarding the debate on why French-run businesses in the Kingdom do so well, for reasons not mentioned specifically by other readers. The French excel in the hospitality industry. It is one of their proudest traditions. If the patron is grumpy or the staff are rude or incompetent, restaurants in particular won’t get repeat customers. It is no surprise that the worst restaurants one finds in France are aimed exclusively at foreign tourists passing through. The other reason is business culture. When a French person starts a business, it is with the long-term in mind. Contrast this with the attitude of so many folks from English-speaking countries who just want to make a quick buck and then sell up.

70 baht beer nonsense.

The guy claiming 70 baht beers at Nana “until recently” has probably been partaking a lot of all the cannabis shops in the area.

Baht or brains?

I want to respond to the reader who said, “Mamasans inserting themselves into negotiations for profit, well, why not? He’s got more baht than brains, help relieve the pressure“. This issue, as has been discussed in previous columns, has to do with mamasans requesting the ladies’ fees be paid to them up front, rather than exchanged between the customer and lady in private outside the bar. “Why not?” This raises liability issues for the bar if its employees engage in the business of brokering ladies’ fees for services outside the bar. Regardless, I personally would rather have more baht than brains any day in Bangkok – where one is not thinking with their brains a whole lot of the time.

Wee-wa, Lot Way-get!

More Readers’ Emails

The pot calling the kettle black.

There seems to be consensus about the behaviour of Indian tourists in Thailand. I know that not all of them behave poorly, and that India is a very big country with a huge population, so I’m sure there will be big differences between certain (ethnic) groups. The distances in India are comparable with the distances in Europe, and in Europe you can’t compare, say, the Norwegians with the Italians, but in general the Indians certainly do have a reputation for bad manners and I’ve seen plenty of examples myself. I read that Soi Nana is full of Indians again, but didn’t we hear this some time ago also? I was in Bangkok back then, and I didn’t see the Indian masses as described by others. If I’m correct you were around back then too, and came to the same conclusion.

Avoiding the pill peddlers.

Regarding the Sukhumvit drug dealers, if I had a business there I would not want them outside my business premises. I love walking and often walk between Nana and Cowboy when I’m out and about. But now I walk on the even-numbered soi side of the road. I REALLY don’t like the drug dealers. That said, there must be demand for what they’re selling. You’d be hardcore stupid to buy drugs on the street in Thailand. A Thai prison is not a place you want to end up.

Government workers, retirement and face.

Going back a couple of weeks to the “face” issues within Thai society, where I live in Udon are a number of retired Thai military, Border Patrol Police, regular police, government workers and teachers. Time and again, I’ve seen people hitting around 55 decide that 5 years before that mandatory age 60 retirement is the time to build a house and buy a big SUV, generally the popular Toyota Fortuna. Five years later when they retire they constantly moan about how they are unable to pay their mortgage and car payments and how they are getting hounded by the Government Savings Bank, the bank of choice for all those gubbmint workers. It never ceases to amaze me that they seem to have minimal forward thinking. They know the cost of that Fortuna is at least 1.2 million baht and a decent house will cost the same or more (if they already own the land). They know to the satang how much their pension will be. Yet a year into retirement, cars are getting repossessed and there’s talk about selling the house (or abandoning it) and moving off to live with their adult children.

No cash, no doughnuts!

I went to the Central Shopping Mall here in Chiang Mai and grabbed a few of my favourite donuts from Mister Donut. I went to pay and was told they do not accept cash. You have to have some bullshit app downloaded on your phone just to buy a donut. I can see where this is all heading.

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

Sukhumvit soi 11 doesn’t get all that much coverage in this column, but word is that the vibe on the party soi is changing. It may not rival Soi Nana, but Soi 11 today has a flourishing freelancer scene. Well, that’s nothing new, you might say, and you’d be right. It’s not just in the many bars and nightclubs where you’ll find friendly ladies, those on a budget can find friendly ladies lingering on the street. With the rainy season finished, freelancers are gravitating in small groups in their favourite spot along the soi. And just like on Soi Nana, there has been an influx of Vietnamese ladies on soi 11. With curves in all the right places, soft features and, often more buxom than their Thai sisters, they can stand out. There’s one thing you might like to consider: some who have experience with working ladies from that part of the world frequently describe them as cunning, ruthless and mercenary. There’s always a danger with freelancers, and I’d suggest it’s amplified if they are non-Thai. Stick to short-time rooms – your regular hotel room / your condo should be off limits.

And it’s not just along Soi 11 itself where you’ll find Vietnamese ladies. Oskar and Hillary 3 have become popular spots for Vietnamese working girls.

Nana Plaza’s hidden jewel, Lace Lounge, is slowly being discovered. Originally only open on weekends, Lace now operates every night of the week as the VIP lounge for Tycoon downstairs and, at the weekend, it’s general admission. On Friday night Lace was packed late in to the night – albeit it only seats 50 – with an after-hours /speakeasy vibe. There were many ladies from Tycoon upstairs, which led to questions as to whether Tycoon would be empty of girls and customers. At 2 AM, Tycoon had plenty of ladies and two-thirds of the seats were full. Both bars have really hit their stride.

Sports on 20 – previously known as Sports Corner – will celebrate with a grand opening on Thursday, December 19, in its new location, a short walk in to Soi 20. The bar is best known for live sports and inexpensive drinks. Kudos to the venue for paying staff through the transition period when the bar was not open. While many employers in Thailand get a hard time for the tough conditions and the way they treat staff, I have actually heard of a number of bars and restaurants which have kept staff on the books and paid them while a new establishment was under construction. It was a very long time from when The Londoner closed on soi 33 and the new Londoner opened on Pattanakarn Road, a couple of years or so from memory. Many staff were paid the whole time. It has been challenging to get good staff in the hospitality industry for some time, so it makes sense to do this, if the budget allows it.

I keep hearing positive reports about Geisha on the top floor of Nana Plaza. The bar hosted a party this week to celebrate the boss’s birthday. A troop of professional Burlesque dancers were brought in and it sounds like it was a great night. So I have to ask the question: Why oh why did they do such a lousy job of letting people know about it? Geisha gets positive reviews but make sure to keep a close eye on your bill to avoid any misunderstandings.

Contrast Geisha with Red Dragon, Mandarin and Shark which do a magnificent job of getting the word out about parties. On this note, the Devils and Angels party held at said bars this week was said to be amazing, and possibly the best bar party of the year so far.

The parties keep on coming with the massive Playmates party at Billboard and Butterflies in Nana Plaza on Saturday, December 14, and Full Moon parties at Tycoon, Red Dragon, Mandarin and Shark on Sunday, December 15. The Playmates party, which doubles as a birthday bash for the American owner of both bars, sees all the ladies done up in Playboy Bunny-esque outfits. It’s a lower-key affair than the Babe of the Year pageants at the anniversary parties, but still one to circle the calendar for. And, for Sunday’s full moon festivals, body paint will be the order of the day at both bars.

Are braces on your teeth a requirement for employment at Mandarin A Gogo? Take a look at the photos featured this week – all the ladies from Mandarin have braces on their teeth.

Operating for a couple months without any signage, the now-combined Rainbow 1 (Version 2.0) and Rainbow 2 have obtained a sign….from down Soi 4 at the briefly named Rainbow Nana. Yes, the coloured-chicklets Rainbow sign seen a stone’s throw from Hooters is now in the corner next to Rainbow (and Rainbow Nana now is called Las Vegas). And Rainbow has taken its name literally, as in the rainbow-colored LGBTQ+ flag. Rainbow is now almost fully ladyboys, although the hostess inside the entrance may deny it. Tut, tut, that’s asking for trouble.

A visitor who went to see the larger combined bar asked the transgender hostess at the door if Rainbow was now a ladyboy bar. “No, ladies!” she replied. The visitor pointed to a bikini-clad entertainer who very obviously was not born a woman and said so. “No, she’s lady.” Pointing to another ladyboy, the hostess again replied that the dancer was “cut” and therefore a woman, not a ladyboy. If this is your thing, all power to you but like I say, when bar staff make out that a man with his penis surgically removed is now a lady is potentially asking for trouble. I’ve long said that ladyboy bars should make it obvious which is which while bars which mix things up  and are not transparent are asking for trouble.

Some ladies are asking higher prices than ever for their services. Reports of ladies asking for 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 baht or more for short time often elicit a reaction in what I interpret as frustration as some may feel they are being priced out of the market. It’s not all that long ago that you didn’t need to ask the price and sticker shock wasn’t a thing. Are customers really paying these prices or are the girls being incredibly optimistic? These numbers really are being paid – and by a variety of people. Near the top of the list seems to be Western expats based in wealthier spots around the region like Hong Kong and Singapore who visit Bangkok for a weekend of fun. The ladies asking prices are so much lower than they would pay at home. And let’s not forget many ladies are much more worldly than in days gone by, some have done the Singapore circuit and they are well aware of current asking prices in the lion city. There is this misperception that Japanese and Koreans are wealthy and will throw their money around willy-nilly, but this is wrong. What is right, however, is that these two groups will also happily pay at the top end of the scale. It seems that many Koreans and Japanese don’t like the idea of negotiating a rate with ladies and will pay her asking rate. And then there are those who are part of various sub-cultures who seem to pay whatever the girl asks – and gloat about it. The crypto trading guys are a good example, many of whom are young Caucasians making big money and quite happy to drop 7K or 8K baht for a roll in the hay. These days, demand far exceeds the supply – particularly when it comes to the most attractive ladies.

Down in Pattaya, the GentsClubs.com group is growing again. Already eight bars strong, the group has taken over two more small bars: The Booze Lounge on Khao Talo on the Darkside, and The Robin Hood in Jomtien Beach. Both complement the group’s existing venues, with Robin Hood – now to be called Webby’s – opposite Maggie May Jomtien and The Booze Lounge near the new Maggie May Darkside. Booze Lounge had its last live music performance on Friday. Booze Lounge will close for two weeks for upgrades, reopening around December 20. Webby’s, run by Pattaya YouTuber Webby, will also see some upgrades and Webby will become the host and also promote Maggie May Jomtien.

Years ago, the now-closed Devil’s Den – Pattaya’s answer to Bangkok’s Eden Club – offered a very adult airport transfer service, where you could pass the time from Suvarnabhumi to Sin City with a couple ladies, booze and whatever happens when you mix them. Once Devil’s Den closed, no one replaced that service….until now. The GentsClubs.com group launched its own sexy airport transfer service that brings back the Devilish fun. You can find out more and book the service via the GentsClubs.com LINE channel.

The Indian-led group that runs the new Penthouse Hotel and Penthouse X gogo bar (and are minor partners in the revived Milk A Gogo on Soi Diamond) are about to make history with the opening of the first Indian gogo bar in Pattaya. Of course Sin City already has a few gogo bars with Russian dancers. But one with Indian women? The Jalwa A Gogo will open later this month in the massive Jalwa complex that is home to the Indian nightclub of the same name. Who will the customers be? Indians? Curious farangs? Does a gogo bar with Indian dancers appeal to you? I am genuinely intrigued to see who the customers will be and whether a bar with Indian gogo dancers is viable.

Word is that there are not significant numbers of Indians in Pattaya currently, and nothing like the crowds that who descended on Pattaya several months ago. There’s a pattern with June, July and August appearing to be peak season for Indian visitors.

An Indian gogo bar with Indian dancers is coming to Walking Street.

Work has resumed on the months-delayed i-Doll A Gogo, being built opposite Le Pub on Soi Diamond, with opening targeted for the first week of January. Launched by Deano, the former co-owner of the legendary Coyotees gogo bar who has had a hand in several other successful Pattaya bars, i-Doll got sidetracked when his partner bowed out. New investors, two gents from Canada, are now in the mix and builders are hammering and sawing again. i-Doll is planned to be a small, but high-end bar with ladies whose looks, demeanour and language skills are a cut or two above the normal Pattaya gogo girl with a target audience of VIPs, especially Chinese.

Also on Soi Diamond, the long-running New Star beer bar will be closing come the end of the year. There also used to be a New Star gogo bar next door, but that closed years ago.

In the closing comments of the column a few weeks ago I touched on the issue some guys had in finding a Thai lady to get frisky with. Some of these guys had adjusted their expectations, reaching out to single mothers on dating sites who are hundreds of kilometres away, offering them bus money and compensation to travel and meet them. This week I spoke with a good friend who is currently in Bangkok and perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised when he painted a somewhat similar picture. Between 2006 and 2013, myself and this fellow hung out a lot. This is a good friend, someone I had many, many nights out with in Bangkok, someone I know well and who I trust 100%. He left Bangkok a couple of years before I did, but we have stayed in touch. When I asked him about how the bars were, he had one word to describe it, “Overmanned.” I’d never heard that word before so he used a more agricultural term, “It’s a cock-fest!” He is staying on Sukhumvit soi 11 and said that in many bars, there were far more men than women – and it was so pronounced that it was a talking point between strangers in some bars. He maintains Bangkok is still a great place for a single guy / naughty boy, but he made the point that it’s so much more competitive now with fewer ladies he thought were knock-outs and a lot more guys chasing them. If you’re in town, are you seeing similar? The ratio always changes in high season, but I am not sure if it has been this dramatic in years gone by.

Long-time friend of the column, The Mad Professor’s work has been featured for well in excess of a decade. A reader who lives in the Huamark / Ramkhamhaeng area reports seeing his work in that area.

I still scratch my head at the break-neck speed at which many businesses in Thailand have not just embraced electronic transactions, but how many are now cashless. In a country where many businesses have two sets of books, electronic transactions don’t exactly lend themselves to that practice. Plenty of bars accept payment by electronic means. Down in Pattaya, XS A Gogo was one of the first bars which not only accepted QR codes, customers were encouraged to pay that way rather than cash. That doesn’t surprise me given that fingers in the till is a big issue in the bar business and QR codes would eliminate any skullduggery by staff, right? The only condition for payment by QR code was a minimum payment of 1,000 baht. Are QR codes the future in the bars? Maybe not. XS A Gogo has done an about-turn and QR codes are no longer accepted. What’s that all about? There is speculation that some staff were using QR codes that linked to their own bank account.

As my other half often tells me, Thai staff will always find a way to line their pockets. Long-term readers may remember when some years ago I wrote about one of the companies that provides automated software for bars. When the software was installed, bar revenue increased, on average, 25% overnight!

It does seem that with each visit I make to Thailand, more businesses have gone cashless. It’s all the more surprising when some of these businesses happen to be popular with tourists. Why would the business owner do that? International transaction fees on some credit cards and debit cards can be quite high and I hear of people whose card has a per transaction fee of a few dollars. For a small purchase, that could be enough to put you off. In Thailand, I exclusively use cash.

Speaking of transferring money generally, sending money out of Thailand can be problematic. If you have a chunk of cash in Thailand and wish to send it to your home country, you may be asked to show some sort of proof that it was earned in Thailand (using tax forms / tax declarations) or you may have to show proof that it was from the sale of a property. It all comes down to the bank and, specifically, the officer you deal with. There are some companies which provide remittance services to banks around the world which don’t require any documentation and don’t ask any questions other than the details of the account to send the money to. One such company was Dee Money which for many years had a branch on the corner of Sukhumvit soi 8. Some swore by Dee Money; others had no end of problems with transfers taking not days, but weeks to arrive. Rumour has it that Dee Money may be done. There is a Dee Money app but it has a rather low rating. So what are the options to send money outside Thailand? I maintain the best way is to use a local bank and the SWIFT system. If you have any trouble at the bank, take a respectable Thai along with you. If that doesn’t work, there are other options but they aren’t great.

Many businesses in Thailand fail to see the benefits of a functioning website and similarly, fail to see the damage a non-functional or sub-par website can cause. It seems that many businesses in Thailand, especially in the hospitality industry, prefer a social media presence over a website. But if a business does have a website, they should, at the very least, make sure that it’s working and the email address functions and the account is managed. When checking out a company and finding a dud or non-functional website, or sending an email that doesn’t get a response, some people – especially older folks – may be put off dealing with that company. Websites have long been something many Thailand-based businesses just don’t do well. All that said, it’s probably going to be a moot point before long as social media crushes many websites.

Thailand-Related News Articles

Quote of the week comes from a Bangkok expat, “Being screwed over is part of the Bangkok experience.”

On Ko Phi Phi, tourists unconscious from a night of heavy drinking are wheeled back to their hotel in a trolley by police.

Direct flights between Thailand and the USA are expected to resume next year.

An American caught overstaying 21 days at Phuket Airport finds out the hard way that you can’t just go to the airport, pay an overstay fine and leave without further consequences.

A 30-year-old Brit is arrested in Pattaya for raping a 6-year-old girl after he is identified in a video abusing her.

In Bangkok, a police officer dresses as a BDSM sex wrestler to entrap a suspect wanted over alleged sex crimes.

Eight visa agents in Thailand have been charged after allegedly selling forged New Zealand visas and attempting to facilitate visas.

The supposed masterminds behind the human trafficking ring which organise black hookers in Bangkok have been busted.

On Ko Samui, a Russian tourist dies after she was swept away by a massive wave while doing yoga on a rock at a popular viewpoint.

Closing Comments

Christmas is just around the corner. Thailand might be a predominantly Buddhist country, but Bangkok is heaps of fun at this time as people embrace the festive season. The attitude amongst many young Bangkokians seems to be they’re going to have fun no matter what! Given the time of year, through the month of December all of the ladies featured in the column will be in sexy Christmas-wear. Do swing by and say hi to the ladies featured here. I’m sure they’d love to celebrate an early Christmas with you!

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com