Stickman Weekly, May 25, 2025

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo was taken inside Hualumpong Railway Station. It proved challenging with not that many of you getting it right. Take another look and you might find yourself wondering why you didn’t recognise it.

This week’s photo features a popular spot I used to visit often, and it’s a place that many Stickman readers walk past (and perhaps step inside) all the time. It’s very much in the middle of the Stickman zone!

 

 

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

The big dope.

Encouraging news that within 40 days a new law could be passed requiring the idiot dope smokers to have a medical prescription from a doctor to indulge in the magic puha. I observed a guy of Middle Eastern appearance lounging on the steps of the local 7 Eleven smoking a big fat joint, like it made him some sort of a big man. The whole weed business is out of control, and I think the government has woken up to the fact. A couple of days ago in Pattaya, after smoking the crap, a Russian took a dive from the 9th floor of his condo, screaming that a monster was chasing him. So the news isn’t all bad.

The girls are hungry.

Not sure what is going on but in the past month my ThaiFriendly dating site account has been extremely busy, more so than in the past. Maybe it’s because of the low season? I’ve been hit up by girls in Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and throughout Thailand. I suggest if your readers can put up with a bit of rain, book a trip now because it’s a buyers’ market. I am heading over next month!

Postcard from Pattaya.

I just finished up 10 days in Pattaya. I got the impression that low season is in full swing. My group of 4 walked into XS A Gogo on Friday night around midnight and we were offered a table for only 8K baht minimum spend combined. According to a guy in the group who lives in Pattaya, he says that 2 or 3 months ago we likely wouldn’t have gotten a table together at all – and it would have cost at least twice as much if we did. Soi 6 is overflowing with girls, and the girl : customer ratio there was insane. The Walking Street clubs were sparse. The massage shop girls were very aggressive, a few of them felt like walking past a soi 6 bar. Talked to a few Western bar managers, and they agreed that low season is here.

Few are influenced by missionaries.

On the topic of preachers on Sukhumvit Road, I think most people just ignore them no matter the location. Back in the ’60s in London it was a common sight to see Hare Krishna devotees walking along Oxford Street and other places chanting and making what could loosely be described as music with their cymbals and other stuff. They were harmless, colourful in fact, and were mostly ignored. I don’t think any of these people actually achieve anything, but if it makes them happy in themself then okay. Not unlike election time in Thailand where parties roam the streets in pickups and vans promoting their candidate. I doubt that anyone is actually influenced by them, but their supporters feel as if they are doing something useful.

Khao Lak road safety.

I’d like to share an opinion with you on the German family that was sadly hit by a songtaew in Khao Lak recently. I first visited Khao Lak about a year ago and had a hire car with my wife for the 6 days we were there. The one theme I noticed is the number of (specifically) westerners that walk on the bloody road 3 abreast and don’t move out of the way for traffic that’s passing by. A few days in, I found this maddening! They could clearly see me coming, but simply didn’t give a stuff. I wound up at one point blasting my horn at some of them at times because they simply wouldn’t get out of the way. Now, I am not ensuing that the poor family mowed down by that idiot was to blame in any way at all, and the driver of that songteaw ought to be facing a lengthy jail sentence – one cannot expect that people will just do the right thing. To add fuel to the fire, that people walk on roads as though they are an extension of the footpath is nothing short of stupid, and a surefire way to get oneself injured or killed. Just because in the west, drivers will give way regardless, we can’t expect everywhere to do the same. Extra caution needs to be exercised, especially around that area in Khao Lak where it’s 5 lanes on each side of the road with lengthy crossings. I’ve seen cars barrel down that road as fast as they can, and they have no way of coming to a stop if a pedestrian were to pop out in front of them. Not to mention, banning this, that, and the other isn’t the answer either. Being attentive and careful is the answer, on everybody’s part. I hate to say it, but I saw this coming a year ago. Hopefully the family sees justice for this tragic event.

 

 

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

When exactly is low season? For that matter, when are the depths of low season? Once upon a time, I would have said that perhaps September would have been the depths of the low season, and the quietest month in the bars. September is slap bang in the middle of the rainy season in Bangkok and Pattaya, and a month known for lousy bar trade. May is another month when total visitor numbers dip. And so that is the case at the moment with many people – from readers, to naughty boy forum users, to bar owners – saying bar trade is worse than erratic. Some nights, the bars are alarmingly quiet. We’re not talking about back alleys here. Soi Cowboy, Patpong and even Nana Plaza was said to be quiet some nights this week. That pitter-patter sound may not be just the unseasonal rain, it may be some bar owners’ tears.

But there is at least one bar in Nana Plaza which has bucked the trend. Red Dragon. The bar’s business model is somewhat different to other gogo bars, with Red Dragon targeting a particular group of punters. Or to be precise, groups of Asian men. This demographic spends freely, with the yield per customer sometimes measured in multiples of what the average Caucasian punter spends. These guys visit in groups, grab a bunch of girls, buy bottles and lady drinks and have quite the party. Red Dragon’s seating is well set up for them and often, there will be a couple of ladies entertaining each guy in the group as the lady drinks just keep on coming. A bar doesn’t need many groups like that to have a great night.

Down the road in Soi Cowboy, Red Dragon’s sister bar, Shark Gogo Club, will undergo renovations at the end of the month. This will bring it up to a similar spec to Shark Gogo Club in Pattaya. There will be an exclusive VIP section that will make it the plushest bar on Soi Cowboy. Expect it to attract a similar demographic to Red Dragon.

In the same group as Red Dragon and Shark, once the work is completed on Shark in Soi Cowboy, the group is finally going to renovate Mandarin. Earlier this week they were taking measurements. The plan is to work on the upstairs section first.

 

 

While some say it is already the dead of low season, that doesn’t mean every night’s a fizzer. Tycoon in Nana Plaza had a very good night earlier this week when one fellow stopped by the bar and dropped 225,000 baht. That’s all a bar needs to make the night, if not the entire week. All the Cheap Charlies in the world won’t make any meaningful addition to the bottom line when one punter does that.

Spend some time on the nightlife forums and you begin to realise that there are guys around these days willing to spend up large. And unlike the days of old when the big spenders tended to be late middle age or older, the big spenders these days are often the young guys (or groups of Asian men). Many of these white guys are the so-called “crypto bros”. The girls know who has the money and many have refocused. That middle-aged guy who asks for the menu, grumbles about there being no happy hour or no draft beer option is a punter many Bangkok gogo bars wish would venture elsewhere. While some punters like to say Indian men aren’t welcome in the gogo bars, the reality today is that in some gogo bars they’d prefer that most white guys went elsewhere.

Speaking of the price of a drink, the new menu at Billboard is not yet done. Widely regarded as the best gogo bar in all of Thailand, I am intrigued to see what the new prices will be, especially as their prices haven’t changed in years. I believe the last price increase was pre-Covid. Billboard is known as the best bar in the industry but it also has the lowest prices for regular drinks in a gogo bar in the plaza. The bar is so busy that at times some punters head elsewhere as they simply can’t find a place to sit. Prepare yourself, readers, the new prices are coming soon. How much will they go up by? Given prices have stayed the same for several years, I’d expect an increase in the range of 25 – 30%. Many bars now charge 200 baht or more for a standard drink. Quite a few bars charge 220 baht. Some bars charge as much as 270 baht. A standard beer runs around 170 baht in Billboard, presently. I’d expect prices to go up to 220 – 230 baht – and the bar will continue to be packed every night.

 

 

The bar industry continues to move more upmarket. While the days of Bangkok as a cheap sex destination are not necessarily over , I think the days when you could have a lot of fun in the best gogo bars and get a lot of attention from ladies for not a lot of money are largely over. And the days of taking one of the hottest girls out of a Bangkok gogo bar for a holiday for a week or two for a small amount of money are long gone. The bars are refocusing, targeting a new customer base, as are the ladies. Some punters who have been around a long time like, I suspect, much of the readership of this column – often object to the numbers being asked today. As I wrote earlier, some bars actually don’t want the guys who were around when drinks priced at less than 100 baht and long-time for 1,000 baht was the norm.

A friend who works in the industry put it well to me this week, “I’m glad I don’t play around and partake anymore. So I’m not offended by the prices because I don’t pay them. But I’m an observer and I see that the place is not the same as it was 15 – 20 years ago. It never will be the same again. They’re beautiful girls and if you’re looking for a porn star experience for 30 – 60 minutes then it’s a great place. But if you’re looking for a discount girlfriend for a week, this is not the place for you anymore. Time moves on.”

As I wrote earlier, comments from many claim that May has been a terrible month for bar trade. A friend sent some photos from Soi Cowboy on Saturday of last week. Saturday is second only to Friday as the busiest night of the week, and the peak is usually between 10:30 PM and midnight. My friend had the following to say about Soi Cowboy at peak hour last weekend. “Personally I found Friday / Saturday to be dead. Sure there are people milling around and the large numbers of staff in the bars tends to give the illusion of visitors, however the amount of people spending was very light. This photo was taken at 11.29 PM. I counted 6 customers, myself included, in Dollhouse. Some of the smaller bars had no one inside.”

 

 

Is your preference to visit in the high season when bars are busy, or do you prefer the depths of the rainy season when you might be the only guy there? I was always a low season guy – but low season / quiet bars come with a proviso. When the bars are busy, the girls are making money, are upbeat, bouncing around and the bar can feel like one big party. The downside is that with so many punters around, you might have to act quickly if you’re shopping. On the other hand, when the bars are quiet you have more choice and don’t need to rush. The other side, however, is that when the bars are quiet the girls can sulk and may not be a lot of fun to be around.

With all the reports that visitor numbers are down in the bars, imagine how it would be if the number of Chinese visitors to Bangkok had increased by 10% year after year after year?

I don’t cover massage parlours in Bangkok except in passing, but I have recently been made aware of the closing of Angel Massage on Sukhumvit Soi 24/1. According to their website they have simply closed after 20 years. Angel was a big place with as many as 60 ladies on the premises at the weekend and I am told that some of those ladies had been there pretty much since it opened. Hmmm, I won’t give that too much thought! Can anyone provide any details on what happened? Why did they close? Where did all those ladies go?!

This week a friend sent me a video clip extracted from the soft core porno movie “Oriental Vixen”, also known as Die Sex-Spelunke von Bangkok, from 1974. It included scenes of the exterior of Bangkok nightspots from that period. One thing stood out to me. Like to take a guess what that was? Go on, have a think about it before you read on…..what stood out? What got me was that the name of most of the venues was in the Thai language AND Chinese text. The neon sign featuring English? Only in a few. Mostly, they were Thai and Chinese. Chinese tourists may not have been visiting Bangkok back then but Chinese settlers must have made up a big part of the customer base. The Chinese have long enjoyed Thailand’s famed nightlife.

Angelwitch in Nana Plaza will celebrate its 25th anniversary this week with Thursday, May 29, marking 25 years of the famous Nana gogo bar. This show bar – Angelwitch was long known for the best shows in the industry – was started by Matt in May, 2000. The original location was at the top of the stairs on the right-hand side of the plaza, where Red Dragon is today. When a superior location became available, the bar moved across to its present location wedged between Spanky’s and Sexy Night. For more than a decade, Angelwitch was considered one of the best bars in the plaza and undoubtedly had the very best shows of any gogo bar in Bangkok, probably the country. The bar hired a pro choreographer and some of the shows were genuinely stylish. Some were sexy. There was customer interaction and some shows were totally outlandish. Angelwitch was the pioneer of professional choreographed gogo Bar shows. They were in a league of their own. After many years of extreme popularity, the founder of Angelwitch hit the jackpot when he sold the bar in 2012 for a figure said to be well in excess of a million US dollars. The exact figure is not known but for a long time the asking price of the double-shophouse bar was 55 million baht. The Pattaya Angelwitch changed hands at the same time for, I understand, similar money. When Matt owned it and Dave managed it, Angelwitch was like Billboard is today – the one bar in the plaza which was a must visit. Do drop by this Thursday as the bar celebrates 25 years in the plaza where rock band The Lessers will play live, free pizza from Gallery Pizza, shirts given away, drink specials and new shows from the Angelwitch show dancers. The party starts early with the bar opening at 5:30 PM. (I wouldn’t get there too early myself; the girls don’t respond well to be being told to go work early.) A special thanks go out to former Angelwitch manager Dave, AKA Mister Nana, who despite being based in the UK was able to get me info about the bar’s big events when everyone I asked in Bangkok didn’t have a clue about it.

Next door to Angelwitch, on the middle floor of Nana Plaza, Sexy Night – which has a particular following amongst Stickman readers, and is known for playing older music – now has two DJs. There must be a reason for it, but given that it’s such a small bar I wonder why they need two.

In another month or so, there will be an influx of Indians visiting Thailand, and particularly Pattaya. Did you know that India has a ratio of 1.06 males to every female, meaning there are approximately 45 million more males than females. Just saying!

 

 

Away from the bars for the rest of this week’s news and comments, I note that despite talk about a so-called imminent change, holders of passports from Western countries arriving in Thailand without a visa still get 60 days permission to stay, and not the 30 days that was mooted. Will this change? There’s been a lot of bluster from Thai officials about how allowing 60 days to foreigners has resulted in an increase in crime so, yeah, probably it will change at some point. (And as per usual, there’ll probably be little notice given!)

In the space of just a few days, there were three separate stories in the mainstream press of young people caught smuggling drugs out of Thailand. In the first case – which I linked to in last week’s column – an 18-year old English girl was caught with 14 kg of cannabis and hashish at Tbilisi Airport in Georgia. She’d flown there from Bangkok. Next up was another young English lady, a 21-year old caught with 46 kg of kush at the airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Again, she’d flown there from Bangkok. And earlier this week, a young Aussie was caught with 22 kg of methamphetamine as he was about to board a flight in Bangkok to Melbourne. I don’t remember so many cases of young people caught smuggling drugs in such a short space of time. There’s a pattern here. Such a large quantity of drugs would require a lot of money to purchase – and I would not expect these young people to have sufficient funds. It looks like these young people have (unknowingly?) got involved with organised criminal gangs. Young people visit Thailand for the beaches, the islands, the drinking, the partying and perhaps they are attracted by being able to legally consume weed. They don’t go to Thailand with the idea of smuggling large quantities of drugs across international borders. One wonders if the decriminalisation of weed in Thailand and its availability and consumption in public places (which is not legal) has caused them to lower their guard. Has it given them a false sense of security that drugs are somehow ok in Thailand? Whatever the case, it’s very sad when someone so young gets caught up in this nasty business.

 

 

Further to comments in the last couple of columns about the medical system in Thailand, one thing I really like is the speed at which it operates. If there is one area where the Thai medical system really excels, it’s that you can see a specialist quickly. The whole Thai medical system seems to be structured different to home where you have to see a general practitioner first and you need a reference from them before a specialist will see you. And that can be a very slow process. In Thailand, you can make an appointment yourself to see a specialist that day. It might not be the best person in the field nor your first choice, but make a few phone calls and I guarantee you’ll be able to see a specialist that same day. You can get tests done right away and get the results back very quickly. Granted, speed may not be the first thing to consider when embarking on medical treatment, but when you’re used to a super slow system – as is the case in my part of the world, and many developed countries – the speed at which the Thai medical system operates is so refreshing. (I know quite a few doctors and medical professionals read this column – your thoughts and input would be very welcome!)

The other half has generally adapted well to life in New Zealand, but sometimes she does things that leave me scratching my head. We keep our house and section tidy so she was very unimpressed when some slices of bread appeared on our back lawn one morning. What was that all about? They didn’t get there on their own! Like many Thais, she is quick to point the finger and a neighbour was blamed. That they are Cambodian and we have had problems with them previously made them easy to blame. But it wasn’t the Cambodians. Another neighbour had been throwing whole slices of bread on to her backyard to feed the birds, which would swoop down, collect the entire slice of bread and fly away with it. Presumably a whole slice was awkward to carry or perhaps a little bit heavy – and a couple of slices fell out of the bird’s mouth, in to our backyard. With our cats patrolling their territory, the birds couldn’t swoop down into our backyard and collect the bread. So what did my other half do? She picked the bread up and threw the slices over the fence in to the neighbour’s backyard! I wasn’t impressed, but within moments, circling birds swooped down in to the neighbour’s backyard, scooped them up and flew away. I suggested that perhaps putting the bread in the bin would suffice, or taking the cats inside so the birds could get the bread. She didn’t see it that way. Her response was one I have become used to when we disagree on such matters. It always starts like this, “If we were living in Thailand……” Living with a Thai in Farangland is never dull!

 

 

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

Quote of the week comes from a friend, “In Thailand, $8 for a Corona is the new normal.”

From The Stickman Archives comes When Somchai Pulls The Trigger, a well-received column published May 8, 2011.

YouTube video of the week is from Bangkok Pat, a look at the new MRT purple line extension.

Another young British female is caught trafficking drugs out of Thailand, and is arrested in Sri Lanka.

There is speculation that Thai gangs may be targeting young British backpackers and recruiting them as drug mules.

An Aussie is arrested before boarding his Melbourne-bound plane after 22 kg of ice is found in his baggage.

A Bangkok condo owner annoyed about a noisy dog in an adjacent condo releases two giant snakes in the condo hallway.

Popular Thai rocker Sek Loso – who has a following amongst some long-term expats – begins a prison sentence.

Overturning a previous decision, the Court Of Appeal sentenced a Swiss man who assaulted a Thai doctor to a month in prison.

A Frenchman on Ko Phangnan is arrested after brandishing a weapon at tourists.

In Pattaya, a drunk Aussie who had overstayed his visa for a year is arrested after destroying a rescue station.

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Closing Comments

I have always written this column for myself and for those I will term “dedicated Stickman readers”. Many dedicated readers enjoyed the bar industry in the past but don’t partake so much any more, if at all. At the same time, they’re still interested in what’s going on. And they like to reminisce about times past and bars which may no longer be around. This group includes me. This is why I often talk about bars which were popular in the past and tell stories from the early days in Bangkok when I was a naughty boy. Once again, the news section this week mentioned how the demographic in the bars continues to shift towards a younger, more international customer base made up of guys who are willing to pay however much is asked so they can get the full bar experience. These younger guys are not the target market of this column. I doubt many from that demographic read this column and those who are even aware of this column probably see me as a dinosaur. A text based column? They don’t want to read, they want video! As I have said many times before, I will not be starting a YouTube channel. I know the readership better than anyone and I will always do my best to serve you guys. This column, and my take on the bar industry is very much for those who have been around for a while, enjoyed it in the past, and may still enjoy it now. We don’t make up the majority of customers in the bars like we used to, but we still like to keep an eye on what’s going on, even if it’s just for old times sake.

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com