Stickman Weekly, March 30, 2025

Mystery Photo

Where is it?

Last week’s photo was taken of Wonderland, the weed shop on the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 5 with the eye-catching design and gorgeous neon. Within 2 hours of the column going live, more of you got this week’s mystery photo right than readers did for last week’s over 7 days. Who would have thought so many Stickman readers were weedheads?

This week’s photo was kindly provided by a reader. Obviously this shot shows a wide expanse of the Bangkok skyline so rather than tell me what you can see in the photo, tell me where it was taken from.

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

Pa-yen pang!

The pa yen comment resonated with me. I sweat profusely and enjoyed the towels. If I go somewhere and I’m sweating when I arrive, I often get handed a towel. But the most memorable one I received was in a nightclub. I was walking through a club I’d visited hundreds of times before. Suddenly, I twisted my ankle and fell down 3 steps. When I looked again, I realised the LED lights that trim the step weren’t switched on rendering them virtually invisible. I needed help to stand up and to get back to my table. My ankle was already swelling up so I asked for a pa yen and some ice which I placed on the injury. 30 minutes later, I was able to walk again and was able to continue my evening. Until a server brought me a 100 baht bill for the pa yen! I rarely show annoyance, but this took the biscuit. He had a pocket full of my tips. The club hadn’t fixed the lights on the steps. And I was in real pain. Fortunately, one of the security guards saw me losing my cool and told the staff to rescind the bill. 100 baht for a badly sprained ankle!

Bad behaviour is a worldwide problem.

I think the increase in bad behaviour by foreigners in Thailand isn’t just related to Thailand. There appears to be an increase everywhere you look, more intolerance and violence in any country. These days, even many schools have security guards and not only to keep bad folk out but to check that kids are not armed in the classroom. When I was a young kid at school in the UK in the ’50s I got into big trouble for simply taking a box of matches into school (why I did that, I have no idea). Carrying any form of weapon would never have occurred to anyone – and I lived in a pretty rough area. Having said that, Thailand has always attracted the lower end of the market due to the ‘anything goes’ attitude of the authorities (up to a point) and the easy way to make such problems ‘go away’.

Consequences of reducing visa-exempt stays from 60 to 30 days.

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The bar industry is going nowhere.

You asked about the future. Maybe the bars have a hard time recruiting top-tier girls. But that doesn’t mean that the industry lacks women who want to do the job. Look at Pattaya where there are probably more ladies than customers. I don’t think moral values have changed despite Thailand becoming more developed with low unemployment. And new generations of visitors will experience how much fun it is to indulge. I am not impressed by the “Bro culture” but at least they reject moral straitjackets and hyperbolic feminism. Business models in Thailand might change, but the bar industry is going nowhere.

Tourists will keep coming.

The fact that The Arab’s bars are seemingly doing well despite years, decades, of bad publicity underlines what I’ve long felt about such businesses aimed at tourists. Whether it be double-drinks, padded bills or inflated prices, those who run these businesses don’t care if they get bad press as there will always be planeloads of more potential victims landing every day who, despite the internet, haven’t read of bad practises and are there for the taking.

Gogo girl reality check.

Very happy to hear that your column will no longer feature professional pictures of the girls in the bars. Professional photographers they may be, but it was really a weekly reminder of how unattractive most of the girls in the go-go bars are.

Annoying Thinglish.

The Thinglish debate is one I can relate to. What annoys me is Westerners speaking long sentences in English and then adding the simplest of Thai words, as though that’s supposed to help the Thais. e.g. ‘My buddy and I were hanging out at a restaurant and chatting when this pooying walked in with a dog on a leash.’ Seriously? You think she’ll know ALL the words EXCEPT ‘woman’? Drives me nuts!

Thinking about the earthquake.

Soi Cowboy, early Friday evening, approx 6 hours after the first earthquake.

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

Following the earthquake which struck Myanmar early afternoon on Friday and was widely felt across Bangkok, the owners of Nana Plaza took a safety first approach and decided not to open for the evening, choosing instead to get engineers in to check the complex for structural damage. The good news is that no issues were found and the plaza reopened on Saturday night.

It was the same out the front of Nana Plaza where Stumble Inn and Morning Night were closed. Further down the soi, it was largely business as usual in terms of bars being open but many were low on staff.

Some of the big-name nightspots on Sukhumvit soi 11 also closed on Friday night, amongst them Sugar, Bafros, Juicy and Levels. Again, it was a case of the owners putting safety first. All were given the all clear following inspection and reopened on Saturday night.

Soi Cowboy did open on Friday night and was, not unexpectedly, quieter than usual. There were fewer girls which is hardly unexpected. All skytrain and underground train services were suspended from mid-afternoon and it was gridlock across much of Bangkok until very late on Friday night. This made it difficult for many girls – some of whom live quite a distance away from the nightlife areas – to get to their place of work.

Much of Patpong was open on Friday night following the earthquake, but the area was generally quiet. The market was said to be much quieter than usual with around half the food vendors open at the Silom Road end, while at the Surawong Road end, only one vendor was open with his tables full of watches. Many bars were open but lady numbers were down in most bars. One exception was Bada Bing which had a good crew of dancers, and the stage was full, shift after shift. Amongst the bars which didn’t open their doors were Virgin, Virgin X, King’s Castle 2 and Radio City. Even the Foodland supermarket on Patpong soi 2 and the Took Lae Dee Diner wERE closed.

Shortly after we heard that there had been an earthquake in Thailand, we fired off messages to friends and family in Bangkok. The first three people I heard back from all said the same thing – there were cracks in their condo unit and / or the building itself. I have since heard from many people whose unit has suffered similar damage and I saw a post online from a popular former Bangkok gogo bar owner who has a unit in one of the flasher condo buildings in town and it was munted (Kiwi-talk for badly damaged / destroyed). He is looking at a complete renovation of the unit. There are going to be a lot of engineers very busy over the coming days, weeks and months.

Horrendous pollution hit Bangkok earlier this week.

Earlier in the week, the only thing friends in Thailand wanted to talk about had absolutely nothing to do with the bars. It’s the story they rant about every year at this time. The pollution. Bangkok was described as beyond horrible this week with one friend who lives downtown saying it was the worst he has experienced in his 27 years there as an expat. A quick check online confirmed he wasn’t exaggerating. Thinking just about the main Bangkok downtown area, the AQI usually tops out around 165 or 170. That is already really bad. Earlier this week, the entire area was 200+. I don’t recall seeing that before in Bangkok, ever.

I frequently report on how busy the bars are generally, and since Covid it feels like for much of the year, the bars in Bangkok do well. I may have underestimated things. The boss of one of Bangkok’s bar groups commented earlier this week that the last 12 months have been the best period he has known in all his time in the industry – and he has been in the business for well over a decade.

But not everyone agrees. Murmurings reached me that Soi Cowboy was quiet earlier this week, and a number of you commented that bar trade in Pattaya is showing signs of easing a little. Not a major dip but everyone said much the same – it’s still busy, but clearly not as busy as it was. I’d expect visitor numbers to slow for the next couple of weeks, and then spike for about 10 days over Songkran, before they slow markedly from late April through May which is often the quietest month of the year.

Indians approaching white men in Pattaya, patting their belly, telling them they’re overweight and that this is something they can help with has been the start of a popular scam for the past year or so. This same scam is now a thing on Soi Nana. These cheating Indians whose goal it is to sell you a bottle of some overpriced herbal liquid will pat your belly, tell you that you’re overweight and that they have a special potion. This has never happened to me. I guess those Indians who have previously told me that I was a lucky man were on to something.

The new sign at Midnite.

I’ve mentioned Midnite on Soi Cowboy has a swanky new sign but have been remiss in failing to include a shot of it. Let’s correct that. I rather like it. Thanks to Arsenal Alex for providing the photo above.

On Soi Nana, a notice outside The Tavern says that they are closed for renovations. Word is that the work is moving at pace and the popular bar will reopen soon.

If you are refused entry to a particular area, take a look at your feet. It might be that you were turned away because you’re wearing open-toed shoes. In one bar area, security has been instructed to identify a sector of a particular ethnic group who some say don’t like to open their wallets. If they’re not wearing proper shoes, they’re turned away. So put on a pair of real shoes to give yourself a better chance of being allowed entry.

Following on from my comments last week and fond memories of the pa-yen (cold towel), it can be confirmed that this wonderful part of Thai bar hospitality is not dead and buried in Bangkok just yet. At Lek’s Last Stand, the double-shophouse bar on Sukhumvit Road between sois 11 and 13, a reader informed me that he was given a full-sized pa-yen with his 100 baht bottle of beer. Lek’s Last Stand has a street-front view of prime Sukhumvit, drinks at bargain prices and free pa-yen. It’s a bar that really deserves more coverage in this column. Shame on me for not giving it more exposure.

I am also told that Det 5 on Sukhumvit Soi 8 offers customers a pa-yen so there are still a few bars which continue this practice. It should also be noted that some bars do have pa-yen but it’s up to the staff which customers are given them. One reader mentioned that he had requested a cold towel in a bar and been given one along with a charge of 10 baht – which seems perfectly reasonable.

Just around the corner from Det 5, the empty plot of land between the popular house of oral relief, Kasalong, and the Grande Sukhumvit Hotel, is currently being developed into……yep, you guessed it, another hotel.

Early evening this week in Pattaya.

Down in Pattaya, congratulations to Phil AKA Mister Egg who sold Le Pub this week. Phil has been a stalwart of the Thai bar industry for decades and enjoyed success on Soi Diamond where Le Pub developed a keen following, helped by his popular YouTube channel. Phil’s last night as owner is tonight so if you happen to be in Pattaya do stop by. The new owner is a young Aussie, who bought the bar on his first trip to Pattaya. While I wish the young Aussie all the best, I can’t shake the feeling that Le Pub is inextricably linked with Phil and when he goes elsewhere, his band of followers will…..follow! Phil has plans for a new venue and will let us know the details when he’s ready.

The flash-looking new venue on Beach Road, not so far from the Hard Rock Cafe that I mentioned last month, Lay Beach Club has opened. There was no fanfare until one day it just happened to be open. If you stop by, let me know what it’s like.

Also on Beach Road, in the space that was previously Hooters, just before Soi Yamato, the son of Tim – from the old, immensely popular Tim’s Bar – has opened what has been described as a sort of pop-up bar, Beertique. It has a large selection of craft beers on tap. For now, just the terrace outside is being used. There was a Beertique shop for special craft beers already in the space where once Tim’s Bar was, so now there’s the new place at Beach Road too.

I frequently talk about how Pattaya is changing and moving away from the naughty nightlife industry. Comments from a friend who wandered Soi 6 this week – purely for the purposes of filing a report, he tells me – suggest that Soi 6 has become very much a tourist attraction. The Soi 6 crowd this week included couples where she clearly wasn’t Thai, families and groups of women.

I remember the good old days when I was a regular on the Sex Tourist Express, the bus from Ekamai to Pattaya. The name was fitting with most passengers on the bus either a single white man, or rural Thai women of a certain age who were awfully quick to give you a friendly smile. It’s a long time since I took the bus and I understand the mix of the passengers is rather different these days. So what new nickname can we come up with for the bus to Pattaya? The “Lack Of Sex Tourists Express” doesn’t have a ring to it. Any suggestions?

In Jomtien, I hear from a friend that a new demographic is looking at many of the condo developments in what is an increasingly busy part of the wider Pattaya area. Indians! Most of the developments they are showing an interest in appear to be the cheaper developments, set well back from the beach. Are we about to see an influx of Indians putting down roots in Thailand? Actually, I am not sure that will be the case. Word is that many are looking at these condos for investment purposes.

Copacabana Condo, Jomtien.

There has been a lot of talk in this column in recent months about foreign hookers on Soi Nana and, to a lesser extent, on Pattaya’s Beach Road. I’ve made the point that these ladies stand out like a sore thumb, be they African ladies, Vietnamese etc. But there is one nationality which does not stand out from the crowd, one nationality which really can blend in to the extent that even Thais may not be aware that they are not Thai. Which nationality am I talking about? Laotians, of course! Laos shares a long border with much of the Isaan region. People in some rural parts of Isaan speak a dialect that is quite similar to the language of Laos. Laos has for decades been heavily influenced by Thailand with Thai products found everywhere, Thai TV is popular etc and some Laotians speak Thai like a native speaker. And looks wise, there’s so much variation in Thailand that a Laotian speaking Thai can easily pass for a Thai. Yes, there are plenty of ladies from Laos around the traps and if you are a naughty boy with a lot of runs on the scoreboard, odds are you’ve been with a Laotian or two. Before Covid, there was a gogo bar in Bangkok where there were quite a few Laotians working as the owners were in, how shall we say, a position of sufficient power to allow them to work. These days, Laotians are more likely to freelance because, strictly speaking, to work in a bar you need a Thai ID card.

I don’t tend to give much coverage to Phuket in this column but for those of you who like to visit the island that once felt like paradise but increasingly sounds like hell, you might find fewer African ladies waiting to welcome you. This week, the diligent local boys in brown rounded up a bunch of Ugandan ladies accused of offering personal services to visitors. Can’t have these exotic beauties competing with the local lasses now, can we?!

A Soi Cowboy beauty for those of you of a certain persuasion.

I try to write an upbeat column and present things in a positive light, but at the same time I’m the last guy you want to do your marketing because I will call a spade a spade. I was chatting with a friend in Thailand about the women in the bars and shared some photos with him I took between 2010 and 2013. This fellow is handy with a camera and has photographed a bar lass or two, and was adamant that girls like that just don’t work in gogo bars anymore. As he rightly pointed out, they have so many more options today like OnlyFans, social media etc. This all begs the question that often comes up – are the ladies in the bars today as attractive as the ladies in the past? For an alternative perspective, I fired off an email to my good friend I travelled with on my first visit to Thailand. Attached to that email was a group photo from one of the best gogo bars in Bangkok with, supposedly, some of the most attractive gogo dancers in the industry. What would he make of them? And to be clear, he is very much an aficionado of Asian women. “Can’t say I like the look of any of those dollies in the photo. Virtually all of them are almost scary looking to be honest. One or 2 look like they were maybe even born with a sausage.”

If you’ve been around for a while then you’ve got memories of old bars and bar areas that have long gone. It’s nice to think back about those good times but sometimes I wonder just how accurate our memory is. From time to time someone mentions Soi Zero and starts on about the place and how good it was blah blah blah…..and I think to myself, are you kidding me? I think I only ever walked through a couple of times and only remember staying for a drink once. It was not my cup of tea. You can still stop by for old times sake. These days it’s a market.

Ploenchit Market. This used to be Buckskin Joe’s / Soi Zero.

In last week’s column, I published a brief email from a reader which read, “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.” This short email elicited quite a lot of feedback. My apologies that I could not include your responses as there simply isn’t enough space in the column. I’m pretty sure what the reader who wrote that email meant was that you don’t hear HIV mentioned by punters like you did 20+ years ago because HIV used to be seen as a death sentence but it isn’t anymore. It went from a disease with a strong social stigma that was a death sentence to a disease which could be managed with a cocktail of drugs which had unpleasant side effects. Today, HIV can be managed and kept in remission with just one tablet per day and if you’re a Thai citizen, treatment is free.

Just like a road accident, it’s hard to avert your eyes from the stream of bad news stories coming out of Thailand involving foreigners, particularly those where a foreigner is beaten up by bar security staff. This has happened enough times that I think we can say it has just about become a thing. There have been so many of these stories doing the rounds that a good friend who has lived in each of Thailand and the Philippines sent me this: “I know you have said, on more than one occasion, that you weren’t interested in visiting the Philippines due to concerns about crime, amongst other reasons. At one time I might have agreed with you that Thailand was a safer country than the Philippines for a foreigner to live, with regards to crime. I no longer believe that to be true. In fact, I’m absolutely certain the Philippines is safer for a foreigner than Thailand.”

Pattaya’s polluted skyline.

What is it with foreign webmasters and Thailand? Oh, boy, could I tell a few – actually, a lot of – stories! Pretty much everyone who works as a webmaster likes their work. It’s fun. So why have so many foreign webmasters in Thailand flipped out? When I say webmaster I use this term broadly, to include both those who created websites and their content like me, along with those who simply managed the back-end of websites. I mentioned a while back that this site was sabotaged by a former webmaster who, for reasons known only to him, flipped out. Ever wonder what happened to a particular Thailand nightlife website that came and went? It may have come to an end because the webmaster lost the plot. Recently I heard that the webmaster of a certain English language news website for Scandinavians in Asia deleted 18 years’ content. I have no idea why so many foreign webmasters have lost the plot when it’s such a fun way to make a living. It got me wondering whether we will see something happen with Thailand’s increasingly large contingent of foreign YouTubers? Bangkok Pat with his calm and measured demeanour will be fine, but I’ll put money on it that before long, we’ll start to see some of these clowns operating Thailand YouTube channels losing it. Wanna take a bet with me on that?

I thought the readers’ submissions section of this site was officially dead until a reader sent in a report from Pattaya this week. If you liked tuning in to that section of the site, you might like to take a look at the recently published Pattaya Uncensored by Chaz Gower. The blurb says, “If you’ve ever wondered what Pattaya, Thailand is really like… hear it straight from the people who work it and live it every day. Taken from Interviews with over 100 people… Go-Go Dancers, Freelancers, Tourists, Expats… Read why Pattaya is known as the ‘Boom Boom Capital of the World’.” It is written by a naughty boy for naughty boys. You can find it in Amazon.

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

Reader’s Story Of The Week is a damning look at Sin City’s bar industry today, March, 2025, In Pattaya.

From The Stickman Archives, on February 12, 2017, I asked Is The Gogo Bar Model Broken?

In recent months, Pattaya has experienced an unexpected surge of Indian tourists.

In Phuket, a foreign man drilled through the wall of a cannabis shop in Patong to steal the goodies.

When asked by Immigration to show them his passport, a German leapt out a window and legged it.

A 28-year old Brit is brutally killed by bouncers after being turned away from a Bangkok karaoke bar.

Three Thais are arrested and several more are being looked for after a brutal attack on a German on Pattaya’s Beach Road.

For those of you who like ladyboys, here’s a photo shoot of ladyboys from Rainbow 1 this week.

Thai police are hunting for a Singaporean suspected of killing his Thai girlfriend in a swanky Sukhumvit hotel.

The Pattaya Mail asks if the Land Of Smiles is losing its warmth.

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Closing Comments

Thoughts got out to everyone in Bangkok, across Thailand, and the wider region, following the earthquake on Friday. I was born in Wellington and while I only spent the first few years of my life there, what little I remember from that part in my life include the house shaking as we experienced yet another earthquake. And when I moved back to New Zealand, I ended up in a region known for earthquakes – and we’ve had plenty of (relatively minor) shakes since I’ve been back. I know what earthquakes are like and how unsettling they can be, even the small ones. With a bit of luck the aftershocks will subside and it will all become just a bad memory. Stay strong!

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com