Stickman's Weekly Column › March 23rd, 2025

Stickman Weekly, March 23, 2025

Mystery Photo

Where is it?

Last week’s photo was taken of the pedestrian bridge that spans Ratchaprasong Road with the Central World Shopping Centre on one side, and Gaysorn on the other. The Police General Hospital was in the background. It’s one of the most vibrant areas in Bangkok, popular with locals and visitors alike.

This week’s photo is very much in the Stickman zone. With that said, good luck recognising it if you haven’t stepped foot in Thailand since the country opened up after Covid.

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

Joey and the potato farmer.

I was interested in the comment about the differences between the ladyboy scene and the gay scene, and how you occasionally comment on one and not the other. It reminded me of “Joey”. In 2001, I took up an English teaching job in Udon Thani. I was in my early 30s, and at that time was one of the younger farangs resident in the city. There was a small group of 5 of us in our early 20s to mid 30s who tended to go out later at night when the old fellas had called it a night. One of our group was a fellow Antipodean, a potato farmer who happened to be working in the backblocks of Nongkhai, growing spuds for Lay’s Chips. The farmer, who loved his rugby and cricket, was gay. There was a cocktail bar in Udon called Mr Tong’s. Customers were a mix of local expats young and old, two-week millionaires visiting up country with or without their teeruk, working girls and boys often on furlough from Pattaya or Bangkok and on the prowl closer to home, and a crew of young, middle-class locals, both men and women who had plenty of money and liked to party with farang. It was an eclectic mix and made for many fun nights out. Joey was one of the working boys who frequented Tong’s bar. He had just completed his conscription in the army and was a fine specimen of a man. Right up the farmer’s alley, so to speak. The farmer and Joey became friends and the farmer became besotted with Joey. Joey would decide it was in his best interests to follow his dreams and move to the bright lights of Pattaya to make his fortune and secure his financial future beyond what a simple potato farmer could offer. So Joey disappeared and was not sighted in Udon for many months. The potato farmer, having been well-schooled in the way things worked in Thailand soon moved on, but always had a soft spot for and occasionally wondered what had become of Joey. Next time we saw Joey at Mr Tong’s he had transformed somewhat. He was now a katoey / ladyboy. He’d grown his hair, donned a frock, and strutted confidently in high heels. He had a sweet smile and was really quite attractive. Pattaya, it seemed, was the making of him. The potato farmer was shattered, but philosophical. He had zero sexual interest in Joey, who, the way he saw it, was now just one of the girls.

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Understanding ladyboy love.

Good point about ladyboys and heterosexual men. MRI scans of blood-flow in the brain confirm this. My take is that for most of us, it’s first about attraction and curiosity. If you go through with it, the typical reaction is “this was odd, something is very wrong here”. Males smell different. We may laugh about it and it’s a great bar story, but some feel deeply ashamed and start to hate ladyboys. If the encounter becomes a habit, then you are most likely bisexual.

Booming Pattaya.

At the end of February I explored Walking Street with my wife for the first time in over a decade. Man, it has changed and sure, maybe because it was a Friday, but everything we checked out was crazy busy from the beer bars to Insomnia to gogo bars like Shark and Baccara. So much more crazy in my opinion than a busy Bangkok night.

The unfinished Pattaya promenade.

Each and every time I walk along Beach Road from North Pattaya to Bali Hai, I wonder why when they completely renovated Beach Road over 2 years, they didn’t do the stretch between sois 10 and 12. They didn’t do anything to the old pavement there. I scratch my head about the reasons behind it. It looks odd, right in between the overhauled sections.

Change coming to Phnom Penh.

I just got back from a very enjoyable break in Phnom Penh. It’s still quiet in terms of visitors in the naughty boy areas and there are plenty of ladies available. I got talking to an official at Phnom Penh International Airport who told me that it will close in July and the new airport will open. The current terminal will remain open for internal flights and cargo. Bit of a shame about its closure as it has always been one of the easiest airports to navigate in the region. The new one will enable carriers with larger aircraft to fly there for the first time. So maybe there will be less choice around Street 136 etc. from July.

HIV, 2025.

Regarding the girls and HIV, you don’t hear much anymore as a positive test nowadays is one tablet a day, paid for by the government.

Hospitals and insurance.

I have been admitted twice to Bangkok Pattaya Hospital. It took a simple phone call with the insurance company to get clearance. I had two luxury stays with good care. Of course the insurance company will not question proceedings, nor whether every item on the bill was necessary. My advice is to be fully insured and go to one of the best hospitals.

Bangkok rocks on.

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

Another week in Bangkok passes by and it feels very much like groundhog day. Tourist hotspots are busy. Bars are mostly busy. The pollution is bad some days and terrible on others. Foreigners keep getting themselves in to all sorts of bother from fights to scams to those without travel insurance having serious accidents. The Thai government announces a new policy which will affect foreigners and then a couple of days later says no decision has been made yet. It’s just another week in Thailand. Honestly, you could stop reading the column now as that pretty much sums things up….but if you want the more detailed version of what happened this past week and Stick’s take on things, read on.

The new awning under construction at the entrance to Nana Plaza has been a bit of a puzzle considering that the entire plaza already has a roof. What’s the story with the new awning? In the rainy season, wind blows rain well in to the entrance to the plaza which has the effect of pushing security back as they try to stay dry. Those queued up at the security checkpoint can get wet. The new awning will provide further protection from the elements.

Just around the corner from the plaza, the pedestrian crossing at the Nana intersection, between sois 3 and 4, has been widened. This is a particularly busy crossing after dark. However, where there was previously an elevated area on the median strip where pedestrians could wait before crossing to the other side of the road, that elevated area has been removed so the space where you wait for the green man is now at the same level as the road. This makes it disabled-friendly. However, some say it is something of a design flaw as it allows space for motorbikes and tuktuks to make a U-turn. How long until Somchai rethinks this? Probably when some innocent souls are bowled over.

The pedestrian crossing between Sukhumvit sois 3 and 4, looking towards Soi Nana and the Nana Hotel.

Who’s that big spender in a certain big-name Bangkok gogo bar who makes quite a show of throwing loads of cash around inside the bar? The fellow is actually staff and, according to service staff, it’s all part of a clever ruse of making a show of it to encourage customers to do similar. The girls flutter about the bar grabbing every last baht.

In last week’s column I mentioned that Midnite Bar had a large new sign hanging over the soi. Midnite is one of the Arab’s bars and despite the hard time he gets from various quarters online, I am told his bars are actually doing quite well. He’s been around for the best part of 20 years and hunt hard through the archives of this site – and others – and it’s a stretch to find something positive said about him. Yet he battles on, and seems to be doing just fine. That’s worthy of a bit of respect.

The decision was made late last year to no longer include photos of ladies in the bars in this column. Pro photos of bar ladies had been a fixture in the column for a couple of years but for reasons I won’t go in to, the decision was made (not by me) to no longer include them. From time to time I will include photos of bar ladies like the shot below – street-scene style / candid photos, not the professional in-bar photos that used to feature. To those of you who have asked about this, it is very unlikely there will be an about-turn on this decision. It’s out of my hands and that’s about all I can say about it.

Girly photos in this column will be limited to street-style photography.

I like to reminisce about the old days and compare the bar scene today with the past. One of the nice touches that is long gone was the presentation of a pa-yen / ผ้าเย็น / cold towel in English) upon sitting down in a bar. I think the practice was coming to an end when I first arrived in Bangkok and I only experienced the tail-end of it. How good was it to enter a cool bar and be presented with a cold towel before you were asked what you’d like to drink. Now that is genuine hospitality! I loved the way some girls would quite artfully squeeze the plastic wrapper so an air bubble formed, pop it, and ease the pa-yen out of the wrapper without touching it. And let’s not forget the artists bars on soi 33 where you were presented with a proper pa-yen made of cotton, not one that would be disposed of. This practice appears to have been almost entirely lost in Bangkok. Are there any bars in the farang area that still offer a cold towel to all customers on entry? What about On Top on the top floor of Nana Plaza which is pitched as a higher end gogo bar? Do they, by chance, do this? If not, why not?! I’d love to see bars reinstate this. It’s a small thing and the cost is negligible – but it’s a great welcome to the bar and makes a fantastic first impression.

Another of those things you don’t see so much these days is bell-ringing. Most bars used to have a bell – or in some bars it was a loud horn – which you could ring to buy a drink for all of the girls in the bar. Back in the days when lady drinks ran less than 100 baht – ok, we’re going back 20+ years here – the bell would be rung quite often. In some bars it felt like if you stayed for longer than an hour someone would ring it. I was reminded of this recently when a friend mentioned he had been talking with wait staff in a popular Nana Plaza bar who confirmed that ringing the bell cost around 25,000 baht, that being the price for a drink for every girl in the bar – not just the dancers but the wait staff too. With all of that said, I never did ring the bell even once – and I don’t feel like I missed out on anything by not doing so!

Top Gun A Gogo, Soi LK Metro, Pattaya, has a pool table located outside the bar.

Down in Pattaya, Top Gun A Gogo in Soi LK Metro has had plenty of coverage in this column to the extent that one reader who visited a few months back asked why?! He stopped by Top Gun when he was in town and thought it was full of scrubbers. Was Stickman receiving a backhander from the bar to promote it? Not at all. I like to give coverage to any bar that tries something different and as surprising as it sounds, a chrome pole bar opening in the afternoon is not common at all. I have since learned that Top Gun is doing something else different. The bar has a pool table. A gogo bar with a pool table is odd, but hardly unique. But where this is, as best as I am aware, unique, is that the pool table is located outside the bar. See the photo above.

Soi 6 continues to be one of Pattaya’s hot spots and a major beneficiary of an industry moving in a new direction as demographics change and service providers rethink just what services they are willing to offer. By day and by night, Soi 6 is busy and it’s now very much one of Pattaya’s busier areas. Some nights it’s so busy after dark that the strip of Beach Road at the bottom of Soi 6 attracts plenty of freelancers who follow the crowds. The days when freelancers were spaced out along Beach Road within a kilometre or so of Walking Street and most didn’t venture beyond Mike’s Shopping Mall are long gone. As Soi 6 attracts the crowds, many girls can be found lingering on Beach Road at the bottom of Soi 6. It may be the best part of 2.5 km from Walking Street, but after the sun goes down girls can be found along that entire stretch.

And just like in Soi Nana, Beach Road has more than a few African beauties lingering in the shadows. This week, a reader had a chat with a friendly lady from West Africa who was open about what she is up to. She travels to Thailand on a tourist visa, stays for a total of 90 days, works, returns home for 9 months and then it’s back to Thailand the next year for more of the same. She did it last year, is here this year, and plans to do the same next year. She believes she could make more money in Bangkok but she prefers Sin City. While there have been reports in the capital of people in uniform collecting a fee to look the other way, Pattaya appears to be a tax-free zone.

How important is the name of a bar? On Soi LK Metro, I wonder about calling a bar “Mamasan Club LK”. For all I know it might be a great bar, but mamasans don’t have a great reputation these days and if I was naming a bar I would never use the word mamasan.

I do wonder about this bar name.

If you find yourself suffering from Pattaya withdrawal, this live cam from Walking Street might help alleviate the symptoms.

Last year, Thailand increased the period visitors could stay in the country on a visa exemption from 30 days to 60 days. This was a boon for those keen to stay for longer than 30 days and didn’t want the hassle of applying for a tourist visa. Earlier this week it was reported that permission to stay for 60 days would revert back to 30. Nothing was said about when the change would take place which, of course, had those who plan to visit for a couple of months wondering if they need to apply for a visa before they arrive, or not. And then yesterday some news outlets reported that in fact no decision had been made and the issue is still being discussed. It might not seem like a big deal, but it’s a reminder that in Thailand no matter what is said even by those in power, it can all change in a heartbeat.

What’s acceptable with a lady on the clock can be way beyond the line for a lady who works in an office. Here in my part of Farangland, we have some beautiful public pools set beside the beach. There we were, enjoying a balmy Autumn afternoon in one of the pools this week, overlooking the bay, when it became clear that the couple at the other end of that particular pool were getting a bit frisky. That sort of carry-on is common enough in many Bangkok and Pattaya hotel pools as ladies of the night entertain their customer. But my conservative other half found it disgraceful and considered such behaviour to be shameful. Good Thai girls show total restraint in public. Thinking about Thailand, if you graduate from working girls to regular girls – as many do – you might like to adjust your behaviour because plenty of what is fine with working girls doesn’t fly with non-industry girls. That’s not to say that regular girls don’t care to have saucy fun – they do – but for most it’s very much a case of strictly behind closed doors!

The Mad Professor, Prakanong, this week.

A close-up of The Mad Professor’s scribblings were featured in last week’s column. This week a long-time reader spotted him in Prakanong on Monday, creating his latest masterpiece while talking loudly to himself.

Follow the news in Thailand, be it the Thai language news, the English language news in Thailand or even news from Thailand reported abroad and it can seem like there’s a never-ending stream of bad news stories involving foreigners in the country. This week a crazy German who had been assaulting dentists all around Korat was arrested and then just a few days later found dead with a slashed neck. There were the usual staples of opportunistic foreigners smuggling drugs, fights involving tourists, accidents where the victim suffered terrible injuries and had no insurance and the worst of all, a kiddy fiddler. And that’s just some of what was reported in the mainstream press this week. Follow social media and it ramps up to a whole new level. I watched some videos of things getting out of hand on Bangla Road in Phuket and the impression I got was that it was nothing like how it used to be. I’m no prude, but what a shithole it has become. All of this begs the question: Is there more crime / are there more problems in Thailand involving foreigners these days? If so, why? Or can it be simply explained by the fact that there are so many more foreigners in the country? Is part of it that there’s CCTV everywhere in Thailand, and everyone has a camera in their pocket? I imagine that’s part of it, but I get the impression there’s more to it. Does Thailand attract a different class of visitor these days? What I can say with certainty is that there are more news reports these days of foreigners up to no good than there were in the past – and none of this is a good look for the country.

Another hansum man.

If there’s one thing the other half does that drives me crazy it’s unnecessarily using Thai and English words in the same sentence when there is no reason to do so. Sometimes she really hits the ball out of the park, putting together a lengthy sentence with around the same number of English words and Thai words, grammar that is mangled in both languages – and then gets mad at me when I ask her for a translation of what the heck she is trying to say! Thais frequently mix English words in to Thai sentences – and sometimes it makes perfect sense when there is no equivalent word in Thai. And occasionally it happens the other way around when long-term expats talk about concepts common in Thailand which may have no exact English translation. Sometimes it’s easier to throw in a Thai word to an English conversation but muddling the two languages up constantly benefits no-one.

Speaking of the other half, we had a tiff when we were last in Bangkok. I had planned to go to my favourite dentist downtown for a routine check-up and cleaning but was so busy running around doing stuff that I forgot all about it. For the last few days of the trip we were staying out in the suburbs and the other half thought she’d do me a favour and made an appointment for me at a dentist in the suburbs. She mentioned this to me and I was like, “Yeah, nah” – which is Kiwi-speak for “No, thanks, you’d better cancel it because I ain’t going to that place.” Side note: When it comes to anything health-related, I am rather choosy and hunt out the best provider I can, even if it’s just a routine dental visit. No need to cancel, she said, just don’t go. She wasn’t being sarcastic, rather she simply couldn’t be bothered cancelling. She never did cancel, they never did call to see if I would be keeping my appointment, and that was that. This is very common in the hospitality industry where reservations are made and then it rains or someone changes their mind….they don’t make their reservation – and neither do they bother to cancel. What is it about Thais making reservations / bookings / appointments, not keeping them nor bothering to cancel them? The other half knows I find this appalling but to her it was simply a case of mai pen rai!

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

Quote of the week is a Stick original, “Ladyboys are generally harmless and just like a flame, if you don’t touch you won’t get burned.”

From The Stickman Archives, Mama Noi, the weekly column from May 20, 2012, featured an interview with a multi-decade veteran of the bar industry.

YouTube video of the week is the Nana Song by The Isaan Project, and was chosen by Mister Nana (formerly Dave The Rave).

Thailand announced that visa-free entry will be reduced from 60 days to 30 days.

The Daily Mail looks at the secretive double life of an English paedophile who hid in plain sight in Thailand.

A crazy German who assaulted dentists at various dental clinics around Korat was arrested, and then found dead 3 days later.

Three Brits and two Americans are caught at Chiang Mai Airport trying to smuggle suitcases of cannabis out of the country.

A Belgian MMA fighter gets in to fisticuffs with a group of Indians in Phuket.

In Pattaya, a gullible Brit falls for the you are fat scam and pays 20,000 baht for a bottle of God knows what.

A drunk Brit flew into a rage at a restaurant in Korat after finding his wife dining with other men.

Thailand is increasingly hopeful of hosting Formula 1 from 2028.

Could Formula 1 be coming to Bangkok?

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Closing Comments

The final news article highlighted above is about the possibility of Formula 1 coming to Thailand. Over the years, Thailand has talked about hosting the Olympic Games, building the world’s tallest building and even one day hosting the FIFA World Cup. It’s nice to dream but I think many of us thought “no chance”. Times change. Weed has been legal in Thailand for a while now and it looks like casinos won’t be far away. These days, it feels like just about anything is possible in the country. The pace at which Thailand is developing makes it hard to rule out anything. What does all of this development mean for the future of much of what I write about frequently? I’ll leave it up to you to join the dots.

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com