Stickman Weekly, February 2, 2025

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo was taken back in 2007 and kindly provided by a reader. It featured an empty plot that would soon be developed in to what we know today as Terminal 21. The photo was taken from the Asoke skytrain station.

We’re back to the present day with this week’s photo which was taken last Sunday. It’s a spot in downtown Bangkok that I imagine most Stickman readers have breezed past many times.

 

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

Bar manager ageism.

Regarding ageism when recruiting bar managers, Bryan Flowers explained it once. It’s about health, or rather what is profitable for the bar. A bar manager must be able to party hard for a number of years, but the fatality rate for hard drinking middle-aged men in Pattaya is gruesome – so they want young guys. Sadly, many girls can’t stand all the alcohol, but that’s a whole other issue.

A bar owner’s plight.

The reference to the vacant bar for rent on Soi 7 prompted me to outline a point that it’s not just financial ruin that poses a risk. It’s also one’s mental health which is at stake. I know a beer bar owner in Hua Hin who has a load of hassle virtually every night. His bar has about six ladies and he regularly deals with jealousy and loud, raucous drunks intent on causing problems. The bar ladies beckon in passing farangs in the street and the owner of the bar next door gives him a lot of grief saying his staff are stealing his customers. Add to that, he has to keep the boys in brown sweet despite them enforcing midnight closing and also deal with unreliable alcohol suppliers. It seems each new day brings a new problem. The owner is in his late 60s. Is this what he worked his whole life for? He seems to cope but I reckon taking on a bar that caters to farang is tantamount to self-flagellation!

Sailor debauchery a thing of the past.

In regards to your comments about American sailors on shore leave in Pattaya, those wild debauched days are long gone. The sailors and Marines are briefed in advance that anyone caught soliciting a girl for sex will be busted and they may be threatened with human trafficking. The US government basically categorizes all prostitution as human trafficking, unable to distinguish between an Isaan girl from the rice fields making her fortune…or at least trying to feed her family, able to come and go as she chooses, from a kidnapped kid trapped in a brothel getting raped 20 times a day. It wasn’t always that way. As a young Marine in the ’80s, I went through one of those briefings before a trip to Subic Bay in the Philippines. I recall it started with something like, “Boys, this is gonna be Disney Land for adults.” That was my introduction to South-East Asia and, man, was that right!

Navy liberty.

I remember when Navy liberty was a cash injection into a slow season struggling economy. The ships anchored offshore, and sailors were ferried in. Having a Navy ship hat was a thing, and the girls had banners all over the bar with the ship’s name etc. Now I think they pull into Laem Chabang and are bussed in. No goodbye kisses on the pier. I don’t think this generation is as interested.

 

 

More Readers’ Emails

Double drink nonsense.

Regarding the double drink nonsense, here’s my experience. It happens every now and then, but I always inform the bar manager and tell him / her I am not up for this absolute BS. Mostly the manager seems not to know and refunds me by giving me a free drink. Last July I was in Richy bar in Patong where 2 damsels who know me quite well thought they could get a double drink. I went to the manager / owner and she publicly told the 2 ladies this can never happen. For the rest of that trip I returned to Richy Bar but said ladies never came anywhere near me again! And, yes, they feel stupid after seeing me spending good money. I did lose 2 girls, but didn’t lose my favourite bar. Over the past year, I have experienced ladies bringing two lady drinks or charging for two lady drinks but drinking one in  Crazy House, Billboard, Red Dragon and Shark in Bangkok, as well as Richy Bar, Harem a gogo and Suzie Wong in Patong. In Pattaya, XS and Pin Up, girls actually ask for 2 drinks. I will tell them, “No way!” If it happens, make yourself known to the manager, as most of the time they don’t know, and they will compensate you.

Electronic payments now the norm.

I would say that electronic payments are now the norm in Thailand, at least in Bangkok and Pattaya. Over 95% of my transactions are now electronic and I must have made many hundreds of payments in 2024. I can’t remember a single problem, apart from occasionally when the bank’s processing system “hangs” for a few seconds. Many of those that I mix with, particularly Thais, never carry any cash on them and pay electronically for everything. That said, I am not a naughty bar frequenter. If I was, I would use cash so that there was no electronic record and perhaps because of an unproved concern that this might be a place where someone might try stealing the details or there could be other problems.

No cash, no me.

On being wary of problems when making electronic payments, call me a dinosaur if you like (and you once did, Stick, for wearing a digital watch when we met up), but I really have no time for them. Not just the dangers, but the time it can take. Yesterday, typically, I had to wait for about a minute while the customer before me in the supermarket struggled to pay using a QR code. Handing over cash takes seconds. And I habitually have a quick breakfast at McDonald’s at Don Meuang airport when flying back home to Issan after a short break. There and at other branches they have touch machines where people spend a couple of minutes choosing what they want, poking various images, deciding if they want counter or table service and how to pay and inputting instructions. I go to the counter, say what I want and pay cash all in less than 20 seconds. ‘Progress’ means taking two minutes to do what used to be done in 20 seconds. And that is reliant on their digital system working, which isn’t a given. Cash has worked for centuries, always and without question. And if any place refuses to accept legal currency, I go elsewhere.

The definition of misery: High temps and high AQI.

West of where I live in Udon Thani there are some weather stations showing an AQI of 500. I saw a story in the Bangkok Post from a government official advocating a transnational approach to counter the mass burning and off the chart PM 2.5 pollution. Unfortunately there’s no full team effort to tackle this mess. I fully expect that just like last year it will get worse as we progress into the hot season. Temps of 42 plus and AQI exceeding 200 will make it miserable. I wish the wife would have acted on my wishes for us to visit friends abroad for a couple of months.

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

A small number of Stickman readers have been in a frenzy following the news that the popular FIWFans website was busted last week and has been taken offline permanently. The police announced they had taken action against FIWFans but it didn’t stop there. FIWFans’ main rival website SidelineThailand has also gone. It’s unclear whether it was targeted by police, or taken down voluntarily by the owners. It doesn’t stop there. The CNXLocator website which featured reviews, updated schedules, and photos of massage shop ladies across the North, Northeast, and Eastern Thailand has also gone. Telegram channels where many of the very same ladies could be contacted have also been disappearing. Thai webmasters are asking themselves, who’s next?

The crackdown on websites featuring Thai freelancers spooked one foreign Bangkok blogger who has taken his Bangkok nightlife site offline. He feels the recent round of website closures is part of an ongoing crackdown on the naughty nightlife generally and was concerned that his nightlife-focused site could be targeted. He enjoys living in Thailand and decided for the sake of his mental health that killing the site was the best thing to do.

What a week it has been in the online Thailand nightlife space with Dave The Rave announcing that he sold his website, including all of the associated social media channels. Congratulations to Dave whose site dates back to 2006. Dave would like to make it known that he is no longer involved with the site or any of its social media channels. Going forward, Dave has requested that any references to him online, including in this column, refer to him as “Mister Nana” and not Dave The Rave. “I’m no longer Dave The Rave“, he said to me earlier this week.

 

 

ThaiFriendly started out as a dating site and for a time was the place online to meet relationship-minded Thai ladies. These days the site has a lot of ladies whose idea of dating is going straight to the main event and collecting a few thousand baht for the privilege. Some time recently, ThaiFriendly closed a loophole with a script which removes all LINE, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other contact details on profiles. The net effect is that at least one person must have a paid subscription for people to be able to exchange messages and make arrangements to meet – which makes perfect sense.

Away from the cyber world and back to the real world, the bars were heaving this week and no area was busier than Nana Plaza as Chinese New Year saw the usual influx of visitors from mainland China. But Chinese New Year was not so lucky for a couple of Chinese fellows who stopped by Red Dragon in the hope of having a cheap night out. Gogo bar cashiers handle banknotes all night long and are quick to pick up on any discrepancies. The Chinese crooks who tried to pay their bar bill with fake Thai banknotes found out the hard way that these cashiers are no mugs. The boys in brown were called and The Year Of The Snake started with these two Chinese snakes being taken away for questioning. Word is that they had a bag full of counterfeit bills, so it’s not like this was an accidental case of unknowingly passing a dodgy banknote they might have inadvertently come across. Chinese New Year is not lucky for everyone.

Initial reviews about Nana Plaza’s newest bar, On Top, have been mixed. The premises have been described as gorgeous but readers keep commenting on the limited number of booths. There have also been comments that some of the girls are being cycled in and out of sister bars Billboard and Butterflies. It’s a new bar and has only been open a couple of weeks. Give it another month or so and check back then.

On the ground floor of Nana Plaza, a small stage is going up next to the door at Lollipop. As reported last week, expect to see dancers on the patio, outside the bar proper.

Another new manager was appointed at Spanky’s not so long ago which prompted the usual sarcastic comments about how long he’d last. The news is…….he’s still there! Spanky’s must be the only bar where it’s newsworthy that the manager is still there a couple of months after being appointed.

 

 

Photos from Soi Cowboy last night show the soi was wet, hardly what you expect at the start of February. Had Bangkok experienced unseasonal rains? No – and no-one on the soi last night mistook it for rain either. The stench was a giveaway. Word is that the sewer was backed up and the water on the soi was overflow from the toilets of bars on the soi. A friend out last night kindly provided the photo above, and noted that the smell of piss and shit lingered long in to the night. Everyone was commenting on the smell as the usually popular outdoor seating areas became the worst seats in the house. It’s just another example of how business owners on Soi Cowboy have failed to work together to improve the area. This would never happen in Nana Plaza.

A stinking Saturday night aside, Soi Cowboy was busy this week. A friend who prefers Cowboy to elsewhere said it was “unusually busy” mid-week. He did note that most people on the soi appeared to be visitors with many stopping to take photos, selfies etc. Actual naughty boys? Just a small percentage, was his estimate.

Why it is taking so long for Las Vegas on Soi Nana to open? Normally, you’d point to construction or the fit-out for delays – but they’ve had plenty of time to get it up and running. Staffing issues? You wouldn’t think so given there are service staff in various bars across the road wearing shirts with the Las Vegas emblem. Is it the bar’s licence? Operating a bar with chrome poles and dancers in a spot where it’s not possible to get a licence had some protesting. When Las Vegas does open, will it be as the operator envisaged or will compromises be made?

 

 

Most of the Africans who were dealing drugs on Sukhumvit have gone. Word is there are a few walking around but whether they’re actually selling their poison or not, isn’t clear. Their numbers are greatly reduced with a couple of readers who live in the area commenting that whereas just looking at one of them would have them asking what you’re looking for, there is none of that now. For more than 18 months, Africans openly selling drugs had become as much a part of the Sukhumvit landscape as vendors with dildos on display for sale. Will these guys resume peddling their contraband before long? Call me a cynic….I wouldn’t bet against it.

Africans selling drugs to white guys on the streets of Bangkok is nothing new. It has been taking place for decades. Previous waves of drug dealers peddled their garbage in the back alleys of the wider Khao San Road area. The soi just beyond the eastern end of Khao San where you find the wonderful May Kaidee restaurant used to be a popular spot for them.

Their sisters on Soi Nana continue to operate – but there are suggestions that their numbers may have reduced too. Word is the African beauties have moved deeper in to the soi so if you’re looking for a dark-skinned beauty to join you in your hotel room, you might need to walk a bit further down the soi before you come to them. The area around the turning for Soi 6 / the Novotel seems to be their preferred hangout. I wonder what the management of the Novotel (which is right there on the corner) makes of their presence? The troop at the Asoke end of Soi Cowboy can be found there late most nights too.

 

 

The crowds continue to enjoy Pattaya as the high season rolls on with little evidence of visitor numbers easing. That said, a couple of readers said they saw not one of the 5,400 US Navy sailors on shore leave in Sin City this week. I did see one news report where hundreds of soldiers were patiently waiting in queues at the port to board buses taking them on excursions with Nong Nooch Botanical Garden mentioned. Who’d have thought visiting botanical gardens would be on a sailor’s list of things to do in Pattaya?

Puffery is the theme of the new signage outside the Penthouse X gogo bar on Soi Pattayaland. One new slogan says “Luxurious Gogo Of Pattaya” which is basically meaningless. The other, “Biggest A Gogo Of Pattaya“, strikes me as doubtful. Is Penthouse X really the biggest gogo bar in Pattaya? I wouldn’t have thought so. Certainly, it doesn’t have anything like the number of dancers of many Walking Street chrome pole bars. These slogans outside bars are kind of silly. Fill the bar with pretty ladies, play music that punters like and have cold drinks at reasonable prices and you’ll fill the bar. It’s not rocket science.

Recent reports from Pattaya’s soi 6 have been overwhelmingly positive and it has gained a lot of new fans this high season. It used to have the reputation as a place where bargains could be found, but these days many ladies opening gambit is 2,500 baht. How much are they willing to negotiate? You tell me.

One of the dumbest things I ever did in Pattaya was stay at a hotel on Soi LK Metro. I still can’t believe that I agreed to it. A friend from Bangkok was going down to Pattaya for a few days and invited me to join him. Somehow, he managed to convince me to stay in a small hotel above a bar in Soi LK Metro. What was I thinking?! He had stayed there before, explained that the rooms were at the back of the building and they were quiet. Yep, the rooms didn’t overlook the soi, but they most certainly were not quiet! I didn’t make it through a full night, checking out at around 3:00 AM, wandering a few sois and checking in somewhere else. I still can’t believe I was so stupid to be open to the idea of staying there.

 

 

One of the peculiarities of Thailand that I never really got my head around was Thai-style bars with attendants in the hong-nam who would massage your shoulders when you were at the urinal – with the expectation of a tip. I was always very quick to decline. Is this still a thing? I haven’t stepped foot in the sort of venues where this used to be common in a very long time. Is massaging the shoulders of a guy at the urinal still a thing?

I still laugh when I hear some of the odd nicknames used in Thailand. The likes of Nid, Nut, Nat, Nong, Naen, Noo etc are common enough and they actually make sense. Lek or Noi mean small or little and refer to the size of the person when they were born. Other nicknames might be a single consonant from the person’s full name. They all make sense. I heard a new nickname this week that I had never heard before. “Green Tea.” Yep, that really is a young lady’s nickname. It’s not uncommon for some Thai youngsters today to have non-traditional nicknames, often using words taken from English. Another odd nickname I heard recently? “New Year”.

Jake Needham teased his large fan base with the cover of the next Samuel Tay novel, the 9th in the series, “Goodbye, Mr Boogie”, which will be published sometime this year. If you enjoy expat / crime fiction, you can’t go wrong with anything by Jake Needham.

 

 

For pleasant temperatures, now is the best time of year to visit Thailand. Of course, it’s the high season so that means higher airfares and hotel rates. The pollution is a problem at this time of year. One friend who is spending the northern hemisphere winter in Pattaya has mentioned another downside of this time of year – the difficulty of getting a table in your favourite restaurant. It has been so busy in Sin City and Jomtien that plenty of mid-range restaurants can be full from very early in the evening with some diners heading out for their evening meal as early as 5:00 PM.

I’ve commented numerous times over the years how I am not much of a fan of the Bangkok Post. I know many of you like the newspaper but I find it disappointing that a newspaper with such a large expat following chooses not to report much happening in the farang space. As an alternative, you might like to try the English language online edition of Khao Sod. The site includes a lot more articles concerning / of interest to foreigners. The impression I get is that those behind this website have a decent idea of what foreign residents are interested in. Khao Sod is the third most popular newspaper in Thailand, behind Thai Rath and Daily News. The Thai language print edition is a more serious newspaper than Thai Rath or Daily News without the coverage of nasty road accidents, relationship disputes and whatnot which is part of the aforementioned papers’ popularity. The Thai language print edition of Khao Sod feels more like a quality newspaper in the West with excellent analysis and commentary / opinion pieces. I very much prefer the Khao Sod English edition website over the Bangkok Post website. Check it out at English language edition of Khao Sod.

 

 

The curious photo above is seen all over Thailand, especially in bars. It looks like a bunch of American military from the Vietnam era holding a massive fish. Is the image real or has it been Photoshopped? Given the era and how long it has been around, I assume it’s real. What’s the back story? Can anyone shed any light?

What is it with some Western retirees in Thailand and schadenfreude? Last week news broke about a consultant who travelled to Thailand from the UK to try and recover £30,000 owed to her company by an Italian. A Daily Mail article made it sound like the lady was well-meaning but ignorant of how things work in Thailand. It was reported that she approached the wealthy Italian businessman in an attempt to recover the debt and ended up in jail on various charges. Initial reactions online were that the Italian businessman had used local contacts for trumped up charges to be laid against the British lady – even though the article didn’t actually say that. Reading between the lines, the lady thought it would be relatively straightforward to recover the money but things didn’t work out how she thought and she was locked up. The article said that the whole ordeal had cost her £70,000 all up to settle and get back to the UK. I should not have been surprised that there was quite a reaction against her online as retirees piled in on her, many revelling in this poor lady’s plight. I never knew the word schadenfreude until I moved to Thailand. What is it with this extreme bitterness from a very specific demographic in Thailand? Do they celebrate others’ misfortune to somehow feel better about themselves? This schadenfreude often comes from a very specific group – they are not young, no longer work and not in a good financial position. They’re not Kiwis, Aussies, Americans or Canadians. Before I start to alienate people, let’s leave it at that!  * As an aside, a follow up story on the incident was published a few days letter in Khao Sod which reported a very different version of events, supported by still images taken from CCTV in the Italian man’s condo. What appears to actually have happened is that the English consultant and her colleague attacked the Italian in his condo, assaulted him, tied him up and forced him to transfer a large sum of money to her. They also stole various items including mobile phones and key-cards to his other residences. None of that was reported in the original Daily Mail article. The lady remains behind bars and is facing serious charges.

 

 

Thailand-Related News Articles

Quote of the week, “The best thing about Khao San is the people it keeps away from Nana.”

From The Stickman Archives, A Dump Called Nana was published on September 2, 2012, opening with a photo essay which showed how Nana Plaza had fallen in to disrepair. Not long after this column, the plaza changed hands and underwent a major renovation.

Thai Police have detained the British husband of a Thai woman whose body was found in the Yorkshire Dales 20+ years ago.

A British consultant was arrested in Thailand after she confronted a client who owed her £30,000.

And then later in the week another version of events was reported and show the British consultant deserved to be locked up.

Six Brit tourists are busted for ‘cannabis dealing’ after cops break up a party in a Phuket villa.

Fear of scam centre kidnapping has Chinese tourists on edge in Thailand.

A Norwegian is reunited with her wedding ring which was left in a Krabi hotel room 5 years earlier.

A foreigner riding a motorbike in Pattaya collides with a Russian couple crossing the road, killing the husband.

A heavily intoxicated Saudi Arabian is arrested for urinating in the arrivals hall at Phuket Airport.

Closing Comments

A reader this week commented that to make writing this column easier, I could use ChatGPT. I appreciate all suggestions, but I’m a purist and I prefer to do it myself. Quite a few Thailand-centric websites use AI to produce content, but I’m not a fan. Why not? You can spot AI posts a mile away – they often feel wooden. My pet peeve with AI is the way that some news organisations in Thailand have no qualms about copying news from other news sources, using AI to rewrite it and then presenting it as their own work. Have these websites no shame? ASEANNow is one such website that uses AI and is very sensitive to any criticism about it. In some cases, articles are taken from a site which had actually nicked articles from another site and used AI to rewrite them so you end up with a copy of a copy. This column has always been hand-made and will remain that way. Content produced using AI might be free of grammatical errors and the prose might actually be decent, but AI is not part of the Stickman plan. I think of AI-written like I do of EVs – promising, but far from the finished product. Authenticity is what people want these days and that is the one thing you can count on here. I get things wrong. I know that I make mistakes and from time to time I say some really dumb things. This column may have its quirks, but I am determined that it will remain free of AI.

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

 

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com