Stickman Weekly, September 14, 2025

 

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo was taken outside Duangporn’s Haven, a blowjob bar in a small soi about 100 metres south of the Asoke intersection. This venue is essentially the replacement for Som’s Haven which closed, and Duangporn’s Haven was born. I have never walked past a venue where the girls were so eager to tell passersby about the primary service on offer. Only 4 of you got the photo right, while perhaps twenty or so of you thought it was Soi 7/1.

This week’s photo is, as per usual, in the Stickman zone. I meant to use it when I was in town as I am conscious that this one might not look quite the same as when I took the photo in July, – but you are a clever lot and I expect a number of you will get it right.

 

 

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

The joys of flirting.

Regarding flirting, the laissez-faire attitude of Thai life is why I moved here. I certainly did not move here for the sex industry. I really like overhearing motorcycle taxi drivers shoot the shit, or flirting with Thai girls at a bar, or hearing the ลูกน้อง gossiping in the office. You would never hear or be able to partake in this extremely normal, very human, type of socializing back home, in 2025. I think these days young people are lonelier than ever. I don’t realistically think many people that move or retire here do so purely for the sex industry. Tourists, sure, but not retirees and not long-term expats.

Midnite madness.

I was shocked but sadly not surprised, reading the report of what happened at Midnite. To contrast, last night I was short-changed in Geisha. I handed over 500 baht for 2 beers at 170 baht each, and got 60 baht back in change. Here’s the difference: I didn’t actually get a chance to complain. The bathtub babes spotted the error and berated the hapless service staff who rushed off for the remaining 100 baht. I guess it helps that I drop more 20s at the bathtub than tourists drop satang at Wat Po. None of those girls would risk losing my custom for a measly 100 baht. Customer satisfaction is paramount, even in gogo bars. This goes a long way to explaining why AAA bars have digital billing, no call down fees, no double-drinks, honest staff and more customers.

Midnite madness 2.

That experience by a reader in Midnite is exactly how things used to operate in the ‘clubs’ in London’s Soho during the ’60s and ’70s, until the police closed them all down. Pay the inflated bill or be assaulted. Those places are no more. I suppose one could complain to the police stationed at the end of the soi, but I suspect they’d follow the path they are famous for, shrug their shoulders and do nothing.

Wettest of wet seasons.

This has been the wettest soggy season I can remember in my nearly 30 years here in provincial Isaan. It rains at least once a day, just about every day, and sometimes it lasts for many hours – like all day or night, or both. A few years back we had around three solid days of heavy rain that filled the roadside ditch and we had water lapping close to the house, but that was just a brief interlude. Last year, almost no rain. As we rely on pumping water from underground that could be a cause for worry, but there’s no chance at all of the supply running dry this time.

Empty flight to Bangkok.

I’m an offshore worker so twice a month, every month, I’m on the Thai Airways flight from Perth to Bangkok. I was on one of the first flights to Thailand when they resumed after Covid. Since flights between Bangkok and Perth resumed, I literally haven’t been on one that hasn’t been chock-a-block full or very near full. Today? I doubt there were 150 people on the plane. Every passenger had 3 seats to themselves except for a handful of couples travelling together. I haven’t seen that since Covid. Not sure if it says something about Thailand more broadly or maybe Perth, but it was weird. Quite a few mates have booked flights to the Philippines or Vietnam. I’d probably be there myself if I wasn’t a family man.

 

 

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

Just a stone’s throw down the road from Nana Plaza, Las Vegas opened on the main soi several months ago to some controversy. The initial plan was for a full-on gogo bar. While punters loved the idea, gogo bar owners in the plaza went into a frenzy. Why? They pay a premium to rent space that comes with a licence to legally operate a gogo bar – and no new licences can be issued in the area. Needless to say, the idea of competition from an unlicenced venue with a low monthly rent didn’t go down well. The message reached the owner of the new bar loud and clear, and the format changed….to what was essentially a gogo bar without dancing. There were no surprises when that didn’t work and the biggest surprise at its closure was that it took so long. As per the photo above taken on Friday, the interior has been gutted. With the new counter seating at the front, I’d expect a beer bar will be built in that space.

A section of Soi Nana from around 50 metres beyond the plaza, up to the plaza itself including the entrance, was ripped up as a crew repaired underground pipes. Were they working on the sewage system? One wonders if Somchai messed up the memo and wrote Soi Nana when it should have been Soi Cowboy, given that for months there have been frequent reports of stinky sewage coming up from below Soi Cowboy. No such issues have been reported on Soi Nana.

Speaking of Soi Cowboy, at the soi 23 end of the soi, work has finally started on what was Kazy Kozy as that space is transformed into a gogo bar. It’s taken quite some time to get the job started and the rumour mill has it that it won’t open until next year. Why so long? Wouldn’t aiming for the start of high season make sense?

On Friday night, Shark Gogo Club on Soi Cowboy marks 23 years with a big “thank you bash” featuring a large, fancy buffet and several special shows. The exact show line-up hasn’t been released yet, but typically guest performers from Thai talent shows are brought in. And the food is not the unimaginative pig on a spit or a gazillion boxes of pizza favoured by other bars. Shark is French-owned and we know the French love good food, so expect what’s on offer to be a step up from elsewhere.

Work is moving at pace in the space that was previously Stumble Inn Soi Cowboy. For several weeks after it closed, nothing was happening and there was a chain across the front preventing entry. But someone hit the fast-forward button this week and progress has been swift. The patio has gone. The French doors remain – but for how long? Beautiful signage has gone up and the owners have opted for an old style cinema sign, not dis-similar to the signage at Las Vegas A Gogo in Soi LK Metro. The Stumble Inn Group builds some of the best bars in the industry and Showtime looks like it will be up to their usual high standards.

 

 

In last week’s column I mentioned that Rainbow 2 had a new crop of ladies who were easy on the eye. What I didn’t mention was that some are entirely new to the bar industry – which is not common these days. The other bit I failed to mention is that barfines will set you back 1,500 baht. Ouch! Yep, prices have risen but this is not the going rate for a barfine in the plaza these days. Billboard’s short-time barfine (yes, some bars price barfines according to whether the lady is going short- or long-time) is just 700 baht.

What’s happening at the Soi 7 Beer Bar Complex? I have heard precisely nothing from soi 7 in months. I swung by a couple of times when I was in town, and found it quiet. Not dead, but very quiet. The complex was rebranded CenterPoint a while back –  but that name hasn’t really stuck and hardly anyone seems to use it. I think the last major news I heard from Soi 7 was back in late April when a last minute deal was struck to extend the area’s leases for another 6 months. There had been a plan to develop a large Middle Eastern eatery but bar leases were extended and the restaurant plan fell through. Since then? Not a peep!

There has been little mention in recent weeks, probably because they’ve become very much part of the landscape these days – but for those of you who’d like a taste of Africa, there is quite the selection of African beauties on Soi 4. You can find them in their preferred location, down the soi along the section before the Novotel.

The biggest gogo bar party of the year will take place the Saturday after next, September 27th, when Billboard, on Nana Plaza’s top floor, celebrates its 10th anniversary. Billboard parties are quite the event with 100+ girls, a free gift for the first 200 visitors, free pizzas galore, prizes and more. It’s worth going out of your way for but do be aware, these parties can get so busy that if you don’t get there early, you might not get inside. Alternatively, you can book a table.

 

 

Recent columns have seen a few comments about security in Nana Plaza and I think it’s fair to say it’s something more than a few readers don’t like. Fair enough, I get it. But perhaps one thing to consider is that if you value your privacy, in Nana Plaza there is very little chance of you being photographed or caught on video which may end up on YouTube. In Soi Cowboy, on the other hand, the chance of that happening is very real.

Gogo bars are fun places to be enjoyed but where there is alcohol, sooner or later there are problems. The most common problem in gogo bars are disputed bills. It could be the number of drinks with the punter saying they could not possibly have consumed that many. Or it could be their shock that every lady drink was charged not as one drink, but as two. With the language barrier there can be communication issues and it’s not unusual for a dispute to escalate and things get ugly. In such cases, what should a “reasonable” gogo bar owner do? Perhaps part of the problem is that the owner is often not on the premises and there may not even be a manger. And if there is a manager, they’re often more concerned that the staff are happy and may care little about customer satisfaction. What can / should a bar operator do when a customer disputes, or worse still, flat out refuses to pay a bill in full? I ask this question on the back of the report from a reader in last week’s column where security at Midnite in Soi Cowboy roughed up a Stickman reader and gave him a slap on the head which prompted him to pay before things escalated further. What should a bar do in such circumstances? Some bars have security staff (some of whom are just plain thugs, and most of whom have zero training), others don’t. Should the cops be called? What’s a bar to do? It’s a tough one. I put this to Mister Nana who managed gogo bars in Bangkok for over 20 years, and here’s what he had to say:

When a customer argues about a bar bill, the manager, or owner, will try to explain that the customer ordered the drinks. The girls in question will be spoken to about the dispute. In the rare case a girl has ordered drinks without consent, they will be deducted from the bill. She will then be disciplined by the bar’s owners.

Extreme cases may result in the bar calling the Police to arrest the customer, who refuses to pay a big bar bill he runs up. If the customer is sensible, they pay the bill before they get put in jail.

It should be noted that bar policies threaten staff with high fines and being fired if they are caught bill padding. At the same time, there are dishonest drunks who try to get out of paying big bar bills.

New staff are told about bill padding, as part of the bars policies. They are also warned about the consequences. At Angelwitch, Pim always warned staff about scamming customers. She told them they would lose their salary, and be fired on the spot. Pim hated anyone trying to damage her bar in any way.

Mister Nana

 

 

For several years I was friendly with the owners of some of Bangkok’s top escort services and spent quite a lot of time hanging out with them, and around the girls. I interviewed the girls, photographed them and frequently wrote about them. As I became a regular at their meetings and they became comfortable with me around, some opened up and told me a lot about their lives. The two things that stood out at the time were that they were busy and they were making a lot of money. The people behind those escort services have moved on to other things, and a crackdown on escort services a few years back shook the industry up. Most of the brands popular pre-Covid are long gone. There is a new crop of escort services operating today. The big difference today seems to be that many of the ladies listed at escort services are available elsewhere, on the likes of Tinder, ThaiFriendly, Smooci etc. This is quite different from the past where ladies were exclusive to one agency.

I took a lot of photos of escorts back in the day, and was frequently chastised by one of the owners for the minimal processing of the photographs. The owner, herself a very attractive lady, liked photos to be tweaked far beyond a level I was comfortable with. I processed images to make them “pop”, as per the photo above which has been mildly saturated and sharpened, and that’s all. She, on the other hand, wanted the ladies’ skin to be smoothed, whitened and other changes made like moles & pimples removed etc. I have always sought to present the ladies as they looked to my eye. Today, photos taken of ladies working in the bars are heavily processed. Their skin is smoothed and imperfections removed, their eyes are brightened, their smile is increased and perhaps their mouth widened and their nose made a little narrower. But it doesn’t end there. Today, with new AI tools that are incredibly powerful, all it takes is a single slider to make a girl look considerably slimmer, or increase the size of their bust. Even non-photographers can turn a plain Jane into a glamorous looker the average guy would lust after. Keep all of this in the back of your mind the next time you book an escort online or make arrangements to meet a lady you’ve been communicating with online, sight unseen. In the old days, some ladies  (and some men, on dating sites) used photos that were several years old and showed a younger version of themselves. Today, the image of the lady in the photos may have been enhanced to such an extent that she looks like a completely different person. Photoshop and other photo suites have always given you the power to make some amazing changes, but now it feels like you have the power of God. With these new AI-driven photo editing tools, a bulldog can be turned into a beagle!

 

 

Down in Pattaya, Shark Gogo Club will celebrate its 23rd anniversary this coming Saturday, September 20. The bar was previously located on Soi Diamond and Soi 15, but never reached the pinnacle of the new Shark on Walking Street. If you’re in Sin City this coming weekend, do stop by.

Le Pub A Gogo on Soi Diamond will be hoping that the reopening of Milk will draw more punters up to the top end of Soi Diamond. You’ve got to feel sorry for Le Pub A Gogo which is being mercilessly mocked by Pattaya locals to the extent it feels like the bar is being bullied. A brilliant photo was posted this week showing despondent ladies standing outside Le Pub, looking down the soi, parts of which were in darkness, with not a soul in sight. While Pattaya locals have focused on the design of the bar, I think the main problem it faces is the location. Soi Diamond just isn’t the happening soi it once was and with many bars at the busy end of the soi closed and lots of dark spots, the location is a problem. If I had some advice for the owner it would be to bite the bullet and move to a location where there is some foot traffic.

Milk A Gogo has opened up right next door to Le Pub A Gogo. Two small gogo bars at the top of Soi Diamond is more enticing than one so perhaps the two bars will feed off one another. I maintain, however, that the top of Soi Diamond has basically fallen off the map, just as happened to Soi Pattayaland 2 – pictured below back in its heyday. Do you remember Soi Pattayaland 2 back in the day? If you’re really clever, drop me an email and tell me which year I took the photo below.

 

 

Bald? Got a pot belly? There is hope! Friendly Indian herbalists based in Pattaya soi 13/2 roam the general soi, parts of Beach Road and The Avenue and offer to help you! Don’t be put off by their sloppy presentation, lack of credentials and their extreme pushiness. They have your best interests at heart……actually, I am lying, they don’t! These guys selling potions to promote hair growth, weight loss and other miracle cures are scammers. While I can’t imagine any Stickman readers would fall for their nonsense, there have been reports of punters handing over piles of baht for a bottle of God only knows what. These scammers were rounded up several months ago but the scam is back. One imagines this lot will be rounded up before long.

Last week’s Stickman archives link featured a column from 2011 about what was then the up and coming Soi LK Metro. At that time there was a lot of talk about how Soi LK Metro would be the next big thing. Has it taken over from Walking Street as some said it would? In a word, no. And it was never going to because the soi is tiny compared to Walking Street. But for sure, many foreigners who once frequented the gogo bars of Walking Street now prefer Soi LK Metro. So, how is Soi LK Metro doing today? How can you measure it? A bar count, perhaps? Currently, Soi LK Metro has 18 gogo bars and 21 beer bar style bars which is more than enough to make it a destination. Soi LK Metro’s expansion has seen the surrounding area blossom with the concentration of bars on Soi Buakhao increasing, while newer bar areas like Soi Boomerang have emerged. So has the wider Soi Buakhao area taken over from Walking Street? In terms of visitor numbers, no. But in terms of its general popularity with Westerners into the nightlife, possibly.

 

 

A few weeks ago a bar opened in Jomtien with a name that will probably trigger some and send them into a frenzy. Trump Tower is run by an Englishman who has been in Thailand for decades.

Over recent weeks I have talked about how a lady made 130,000 baht in lady drink commissions in a Nana Plaza gogo bar in just one month. Some of you commented that this number seems unusually high – and it is – but it’s not without precedent with similar reports from some of the best bars in Walking Street. The ladies in this particular bar receive 100 baht commission per lady drink. That means customers bought the lady more than 1,300 drinks in a month. If she worked every night of the month, that’s over 40 drinks on average, per night. A couple of you pointed out this sounds highly unlikely. If the drinks were alcoholic and she consumed them all, her liver would be shot. If they were soft drinks, her blood sugar levels would be through the roof. Yet these girls look great! (That may be true – but I wouldn’t want to look too closely under the hood and do a general health check because you might be alarmed at what you find….but that’s another story). Anyway, some readers quite reasonably questioned whether these numbers add up. They do, and I’ll try and explain. The first thing to consider is that some customers like to outdo one another and may, for example, buy a lady ten drinks at a time. Not to be outdone, another guy in the group might up that. This sort of carry-on strikes me as unusual, but it’s their money, it’s great for the girls and it’s becoming more common. Let’s consider that there are gogo bars with a VIP area – or multiple VIP areas – and the odd gogo bar has a hidden, private area upstairs. There have been plenty of bar bills leaked to social media that look more like a telephone number than a gogo bar bill. Remember how I said upon returning from Thailand that it feels like the bars are becoming more like Las Vegas? This is what I meant! There is another really simple explanation – and this is nothing new – in some bars, “tequila” is actually…….water.

 

 

One of my memories of working girls from my early days in Thailand was that many wore a gold necklace and / or a gold bracelet and had a gold ring or two. I don’t know what the price of gold was back then, but I can remember in 2003 that it was around 8,000 baht per baht (15.244 grams) unit. You don’t see ladies of the night wearing gold these days like they used to, no surprise given the price is currently around 54,000 Thai baht per baht unit. A necklace weighing a baht or two would mean 100,000+ baht around your neck. That makes you a target.

Before I travelled to Thailand this year, a few of you told me that paying by electronic means in Thailand was slower than paying by cash. Honestly, I didn’t really believe it. It made zero sense to me, probably because paying by electronic means in my part of the world is faster than paying with cash. Flash your card against the machine, ding, and it’s done. A second, two tops. But readers were right and paying by electronic means in Thailand is so slow and convoluted. A number of times I found myself stuck behind people who appeared to be having a problem paying electronically. Whether it was the system or them, I don’t know. The whole electronic payments system in Thailand with QR codes strikes is so terribly slow. It’s just one reason why I am genuinely surprised at how popular it has become.

 

 

Over the past couple of weeks I mentioned a friend whose Bangkok Bank account had been frozen. He provided all the documents the bank branch requested and after 2½ weeks, the account still hadn’t been unfrozen. He had been told it would take around 7 days. Frustrated, he returned to the bank and whadya know, they unfroze it for him there and then. It’s interesting how it appears that staff in the bank actually have the power to unfreeze an account, whereas the impression people had was that branch staff could not do anything and it was only Head Office who could unfreeze it. If you are in the same situation, it might pay to return to the branch and follow up.

Now that the first phase of Dusit Central Park – opposite Lumpini Park – is opening, the skybridge / walkway between it, the MRT Silom and BTS Sala Daeng has been dramatically widened from a narrow walkway to a promenade.

What’s the story with all of these fancy new barber stores in Bangkok and Pattaya? They’re not your typical, old-fashioned, neighbourhood Thai barber’s but modern, trendy barber’s stores like you find in the West, places which typically attract younger people into fashion and hipsters. Wherever I went in Bangkok and Pattaya, it seemed like there were new barber’s shops everywhere, and many were beautifully built and elaborately decorated. Of course, you’re going to pay more for a cut in a modern barber’s and the places I had a nosey at were mostly in the 400 – 750 baht range for a standard men’s cut. Personally, I’d rather pay that for a decent cut than go cheap and perhaps be disappointed.

 

 

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

From The Stickman Archives, it’s nice to reminisce about how things used to be, Sukhumvit soi 33 From The Inside.

YouTube video of the week shows the flooding in Pattaya earlier this week.

The Daily Mail reviews an ex-Love Island star’s exposé of Thailand’s dark side.

In Phuket, a foreigner avoiding a flooded road inadvertently drove down a yacht ramp and into the sea!

In Bangkok, lions kill a zookeeper right in front of horrified visitors.

In Pattaya, a Brit’s refusal to pay 4 ladyboys who came to his house 10,000 baht each sees him being slashed with a knife.

BBC’s Thailand: The Dark Side of Paradise documentary sparks a backlash from viewers.

In Phuket, high season accommodation bookings are approaching pre-pandemic levels.

 

 

Closing Comments

Across the forums and social media, people are saying they are going to take a break from Thailand. Some are regular visitors, others may be long-term residents. A multitude of reasons are given but often it comes back to one thing: Thailand is getting more expensive. These comments aren’t new and people have been complaining that Thailand doesn’t offer the same value for money it once did. But are people actually doing as they say they will do? I honestly don’t know. Is it a vocal minority making a lot of noise or is there more to it? Will this have an effect on the next high season – and could it partially explain why this year’s low season has been so lousy? I honestly don’t know what to think because most people I know in Thailand have no plans to leave, and those I know who visit regularly will continue to do so. So amongst my peers, there has been no change. What about you? Has the equation changed?

* A reminder: one of next week or the week after, I will take a break and there will be no Stickman Weekly.

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

 

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com