The Stickman Story Part 2: Early 2001 – Mid 2006, 5 Busy Years

My first 3 years in Bangkok were full of adventure. I discovered new places, made new friends and had settled into a routine I enjoyed. At the same time I never really felt like I fit in. It was like I was more than a tourist but not yet an expat. Where those first 3 years were about fun, discovery and adventure, the next 5 years would be about knuckling down, establishing myself and building a warchest.

Bangkok felt smaller to me in those first few years, not in terms of the size of the city but the expat community. There just weren’t that many Western expats about and you really noticed it when you ventured away from downtown. You saw the odd white face but in some neighbourhoods you didn’t see any.

From around 2001, it felt like more and more white guys were moving to Thailand. When you came across a foreigner in the suburbs you often recognised them as someone you’d seen in the bars. In Bangkok’s expat community, it never felt like there were more than 2 degrees of separation between expats. Now Bangkok was changing and the expat community was growing.

 

 

The Internet had become a part of our lives. It was still the early days, but it was clear that it was here to stay. The first Stickman Weekly column was published on April 8, 2001. There were 12 paragraphs and 3 small photos. There was no mystery photo, no readers’ emails nor were there any links to current news articles. It was light, but it was well-received. Over the following weeks the column would take shape and before long I had come across the format I would stick with for the next 25 years.

In May of 2001, I returned to the classroom. Official hours were 7:45 AM until 4:00 PM but in reality, us foreign teachers sneaked away when our last class of the day was done. That was any time between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM. Due to amazingly good luck, I never had a class scheduled after lunch on Friday. I’d have lunch with colleagues and then quietly slip out the back gate and my weekend would start early.

The job came with a work permit and a visa, and that brought a change in mindset. The first 3 years in Bangkok I had to leave the country on a visa run every 3 months. Those days were over. A work permit came with a long-stay visa and now I feel like I was part of the community. I finally felt like an expat.

You needed a work permit to get a mobile phone on a post-paid plan. I’d survived quite happily for 3 years without a mobile phone, but prices had come down and there was a new model that everyone was talking about because, of all things, it was said to be “strong”. Drop it, throw it, do whatever you wanted with it wouldn’t break. It was the Nokia 3310, and I think it cost something like 9,000 baht.

 

 

I‘d written half a dozen weekly columns when I started the new job. I’d return home each day between 2:30 PM and 4:30 PM, do some website work, pop out into the soi and grab some dinner, return to my apartment and do more website work before I’d conk out. I didn’t venture out more than one night during the week, a big change from the previous 12 months. Late nights largely became a thing of the past. Even at the weekend, I wouldn’t be out that late and usually took the skytrain home before it shut down for the night.

2001 marked the end of my days as a naughty boy. It’s ironic to think that of the almost 25 years I would write this column, I was only fooling around with ladies of the night for the first several weeks of the column and from then on, I would essentially observe from the sidelines, and was not a participant.

I was a young guy in Bangkok so if I wasn’t going to the bars, where did I meet ladies? Online, of course. In 2001, that meant ICQ. The number of Thai women on ICQ keen to meet a white guy massively outnumbered said white men. Some ladies were relationship-minded, others were just looking for discreet fun – although they would never say that and always feigned interest in a relationship when what they were really interested in was much more simple. They had an itch they wanted scratching.

 

 

My apartment was at the end of Soi Kasemsan 1 and from the lobby it was a short 5-minute walk to either MBK or Siam Square. These were perfect places to meet because everyone knows Siam Square and MBK. After a coffee or a bite to eat, many would come up with a corny line like, “Can I see your apartment, I want to know how foreigners live.” You can guess the rest.

Over the next several months I would meet some lovely women. Most spoke good English. Most had a decent education and a good job. Most would have made a great girlfriend. But I was young and not really interested in settling down. I was spoiled and it was hard to shake the idea that the next lady would be even better than the last. And as lovely as these ladies were, many lived in suburbs I’d never even heard of. And that was a challenge because Bangkok was much more difficult to get around back then. There were just two short skytrain lines, from Mo Chit to Onnut, and National Stadium to Saphan Thaksin. That was it. The underground train was still a few years away. Some of these ladies worked 6 days a week and while the economy was finally recovering from the Asian Economic Crisis, it remained fresh in people’s minds and no-one wanted to lose their job. People spent as long at work as was necessary to stay in their boss’s good books. Most ladies had so little free time that you would see them once a week if you were lucky. That made building a relationship difficult. And there was another issue with a few ladies, one of whom I was very keen on. Meeting a foreigner was a secret they kept from their family who would not approve of them having a relationship with a white guy. They were happy to be a rebel when it came to fun, but things would never get serious.

Meeting ladies on ICQ was fun but it wasn’t without its challenges because the program – which is what we called them back then, not apps – was buggy. And as new versions came out, it actually got worse. You’d be chatting with a lady when another lady would say hello. And then another, and then another. New windows opened and the program would slow right down. Then it would crash, and it would take time to log in again. Now you had a bunch of ladies asking why you were taking so long to reply. Are you talking to other women?!, they’d ask. And let’s not forget that annoying 40-minute phone call limit in my apartment building where every 40 minutes the call would disconnect and I’d have to reconnect with the ISP before resuming the chat. My life was busy and I probably met, on average, one new lady each week. If you had the time and the patience you could have met a new lady every day.

Teaching was my main priority. The website was still very much a hobby, albeit one that was increasingly taking more of my time. I’d never really thought that the website would become a money-maker. I was writing about life in Bangkok and sharing my thoughts, and people seemed to enjoy what I wrote so I was happy to stick with it.

There was never a plan to monetise the website. The idea of running a website was still new and most people thought online businesses weren’t real. I’d been running Stickman for a couple of years and it was still very much a labour of love.

 

 

The first person to advertise was an Israeli called Asi. He contacted me and requested that I place a banner on the site to promote his business. He was based in Ko Samui and he had a small website where you could order flowers which he would hand-deliver himself to a lady anywhere in Thailand. Why would I place an ad on my site, I responded?! It would make the site look ugly, I told him, ironic given the site has never been known for cutting edge looks or design. He asked if 4,000 baht for a month would work for me. I changed my mind! He came up to Bangkok and we met up in Woodstock one night. That was a time when many men fell in love with a lady they had met in the bar and went on to marry her. It was the right business at the right time and he advertised for several months.

Life was busy and it was hard to find a balance. The school day started early with morning assembly and the national anthem, which meant I had to get up early. From Sunday to Thursday nights I was usually in bed by 10:00 PM. Early nights meant I couldn’t go out so much like I had and because of that, I missed the first Nanapong dance contest. The Nanapong dance contests became a real phenomenon and were a little like this column – those behind it had no idea how popular they would become.

Around the same time the first Nanapong dance contests took place and were open to the public, were the Midnite parties which were invitation-only. Midnite on Soi Cowboy was popular with a bunch of us in 2000 and 2001. It was owned by an American, and managed by an Englishman called Mike who had a very open mind about what could take place on the premises. The upstairs level had been set up like a mini gogo bar for private parties with a bar and a dance floor in the centre. A few private parties were held, and things got wild. I guess you could say they were more interactive than the Nanapong events and it wasn’t just the ladies who participated. There was a lot of behaviour that usually only takes place in private. Those who attended still talk about those parties today.

 

 

The site was becoming known and doors were opening. No-one had any interest in meeting an English teacher named Paul, but the guy behind the Stickman website was a different story.

I met Nick Nostitz at one of the Midnite parties. At the time he was known as the nightlife photographer. He knew the site and I had a copy of his wonderful book, Patpong, Bangkok’s Twilight Zone. We would become friends and for a long time were the only two people allowed to take photos at Nanapong dance contests.

I got to know many bar owners. Bar owners like David Walls who had been around for a long time were very open and had many tales to tell. And then there with the new kids on the block like Big Andy and Darel, who were creating a buzz with Dollhouse at Clinton Plaza.

I became friendly with all of the established authors who were amongst the best known expats at that time. Christopher G Moore, Steve Leather, Jake Needham and Dean Barrett were all very different, while each was equally interesting.

In the case of Steve Leather it was special. I’d never heard of him nor read any of his books when I grabbed a copy of The Solitary Man a few days before I left New Zealand, selecting it simply because parts of it were set in Bangkok where I just happened to be going. I enjoyed it so much that over the rest of the year I read the entire back collection of Steve’s books.

I met Steve in 1999 after he dropped me an email to let me know that a copy of an article he had written was on the site and he’d like me to take it down. He would later flesh out that article and it would become Private Dancer. It was a very nice email with no threats or anything like that. Of course I complied and the article was removed. He then suggested we meet for a drink, and I got to meet my hero. Ok, perhaps not my hero, but undoubtedly my favourite thriller writer.

I used to get a lot of emails from readers keen to meet, and when time allowed I tried to meet one new person a week. Meeting so many interesting people was one of the unexpected benefits of writing the column. The more people I met, the more I learned about Bangkok and the more sources I had.

 

 

I can’t remember exactly when I first met Dave The Rave but I am pretty sure it was some time in 2001. But I do remember how I met him, and like the way I met Steve Leather, it’s a little embarrassing. I was out one night with my Canadian mate in Hollywood on the top floor of Nana. At that time many of us regarded it as the best bar in the plaza. I’d written quite a bit about the 10,000 baht “long-time barfine” charged to customers who wanted to take a girl out of the bar for good. I described it as a scam, and explained that the money was usually split between the mamasan and the girl and didn’t actually go to the bar at all. That night, myself and my Canadian pal were being obnoxious in the bar. We made out to service staff that we wanted to take a girl out of the bar permanently, baiting them to charge us the 10,000 baht fee which, like clockwork, they did. We were winding up the bar staff, telling them what a rip-off it was and generally being wankers. I have no idea why we were behaving like that, and it wasn’t normal for either of us. We pissed off the service staff so much that they called for the farang manager. Along came Dave. Knock me down with a feather, the first thing out of his mouth was, “You’re Stickman?” The mood changed, handshakes all around and suddenly all was well in the world! Dave would become a friend, a confidante, a reliable news source and was always one of the first people I stopped by to see when I was in the plaza, or spoke with whenever there were any issues related to the site.

Site traffic was rising fast. In July, 2001, a reader wrote an email with the subject line, You Saved My Marriage. It was a powerful email which I thought other people would enjoy. I wanted to publish it on the site, but it was too long for the weekly column. I faced the same problem I had prior to the weekly column – there wasn’t a place on the site where it would fit. So I decided to start another new section, readers’ submissions, where I would invite readers to submit their own articles on the site. It took a while to grow, but over the next 20+ years, more than 10,000 readers’ stories were published.

 

 

The work required to write the column was becoming a burden. I had a weekly column to write which at that time was around 4,000 – 5,000 words.

There were readers’ submissions to publish, and it wasn’t just a case of copying and pasting them from email and uploading them. I had to read every article and tidy it up which could mean anything from correcting a few typos to a major rewrite. I had to remove expletives, resize photos, format the text, write some considered comments at the end and only then could I upload it to the site.

Emails had become time consuming. The only way to contact me and comment on anything on the site was by email. At the site’s peak, I’d receive around 350 emails each week. Most Monday mornings I’d wake up to more than 50 emails which had come in over the 7 or 8 hours I’d been asleep. This was on top of a full-time job. And let’s not forget socialising and dating.

The previous year I had done a bit of travelling and was a frequent visitor to Pattaya. For the next few years, visits to Pattaya would become few and far between.

 

 

The bar industry was humming and planeloads of newbies arrived every day. Many had learned about the bar scene from this new source of information, the Internet. Things were going along nicely…..until they weren’t.

Thailand had a new Minister Of the Interior, Purachai Piumsombun. A criminologist by training and a puritan by nature, he was only in power for a year or so but in that short space of time he set about leaving his mark on Thailand as he underwent a crusade with what he called his new social order. There were howls of protest industry-wide as all sorts of restrictions were announced at a time when the bar industry was experiencing strong growth. Purachai responded to the protestors that what he was doing was nothing new, and he was simply enforcing rules that had been in the books for decades but had not been enforced. But tourism would suffer, those in the bar trade howled. Purachai would counter that the long-term benefits would outweigh the short-term costs. It all settled down and the time when Thaksin was in power from 2001 until 2006 was a period when businesses were thriving, people were making money, and the economy was humming.

On the evening of September 11, 2001, I was at Asoke Plaza, a ramshackle beer bar complex in the prime real estate that today is the Interchange building at the Asoke intersection. The odd bar had a TV and at some point I noticed people were all focused on TV. I distinctly remember wondering what movie they were watching and would later learn it was a horror show. What was I doing in Asoke Plaza? I was carrying out an investigation.

 

 

I had developed a sideline, Stickman Bargirl Investigations, where I checked up on ladies of the night. This was the era of the girlfriend experience. Take a lady back to your hotel and she didn’t just stay for an hour, or even just the night. Often she would stay with you for your entire holiday. Many ladies treated men in a way no lady had treated them before. And these men did something they never dreamed of – they fell in love with a prostitute. He didn’t want it to end and they discussed a relationship. I used to write a lot about relationships between working girls and customers and I received many emails asking for advice. The story usually went something like this: He was in Farangland, she was in Thailand and he didn’t know how to make it work. My advice was always the same: you need to get her out of the bar environment, support her financially, and clearly communicate a path showing how the two of you will be together as soon as possible. She would tell him that she had left the bar and he would support her financially. 30,000 baht a month seemed to be the sweet spot back then which was around $750 at that time. Before long he would have problems contacting her and would wonder if she really had stopped working and was back in the village like she said she was. Video calls were something you did computer to computer – and almost none of these girls had a computer – so he could never really be sure that she was where she said she was. After failing to get hold of her a few times, he would get worried, email me, and I’d look into it for him.

The previous year I had helped out a few readers who had found themselves in such a situation and had volunteered to drop by the bar and see if she really had left. I was frequently out and about and if I could help someone, why not? After volunteering to check up on a few ladies for readers, one fellow said he’d happily pay for the service. That was a light-bulb moment! I placed banners on the site promoting Stickman Bargirl Investigations with the question, What is she really up to? I would carry out, on average, 6 or 7 investigations a month.

Investigations were never a big earner but what they did was get me to go to me bars that I would otherwise not have stepped foot in. And that gave me new places to write about.

 

 

In early 2002 a lady sent me a message on ICQ in Thai, สวัสดีค่ะ. Sawasdee ka, or hello. Her name was Loogai. After a little chitchat, we swapped photos. The moment I opened her photo, I was hooked. Those big eyes. That warm smile. And that obvious joy for life.

Our first date was at an Italian place in the World Trade Center. I had a good feeling about her and I deliberately broke the pattern of meeting within walking distance of my apartment. A couple of weeks later we took a trip to Ko Samet and the relationship bloomed.

We were a great match in so many ways. Our age gap was just two years. She had a great education and was just completing her MBA. She would go on to get a very good, very high-paying job as a broker in an investment firm. We were both equally comfortable in Thai and English. We liked the same movies, the same music, and had a similar outlook on life. She was unlike anyone I had met before and I fell for her like I had never fallen for someone before.

She lived out at Ramkhamhaeng in an apartment on soi 15, next to The Mall Ramkhamhaeng. I was downtown in Soi Kasemsan 1, a stone’s throw from Siam Square. Travelling between our apartments was a bit of a hike in a taxi. But as it happened, there was another way. There was a Saen Saeb Canal boat stop just 3 minutes’ walk from my apartment, and it just so happened that that same canal boats stopped at the end of her soi. The canal boats aren’t the most comfortable means of getting around, but they were quicker than a taxi most of the time.

 

 

We did everything right. We didn’t jump into bed on the first night. We didn’t move in together not long after meeting. We enjoyed hanging out with each other’s friends and despite the temptation, we didn’t spend every moment together.

So how did I approach dating a so-called good girl when for the past few years I’d been fooling around with ladies of the night? In a word, with honesty. That doesn’t mean a blow by blow account of everything I had got up to, but honesty meant there wouldn’t be any surprises later that could rock the relationship.

I didn’t tell her about the website on the first date, but I did tell her about it early in the relationship. She was curious, and when she learned that it made money, she was very much on board. As a side note, most Thai ladies I dated who knew about the site were very much in favour of it. I had always thought that it might put some off when in fact the opposite was true.

 

 

One night she called me when I was out at Dollhouse in Clinton Plaza. She asked me where I was. I told her. She asked if she could come along. Sure, you can! Like most Thai ladies, she’d never set foot in such a place and the mere idea of even walking through a bar area was scary to her. She’d had it drummed into her from a young age that farang bar areas were bad news and to be avoided at all costs!

She would meet up with one of her professors from the American university where she did her MBA who happened to be in town. She told him she was dating a New Zealander who was a teacher and ran a website. The professor knew the site and let her know that in his mind, I wasn’t the right type of guy for someone like her. He told her that he was no fan of the nightlife industry and no good comes to anyone who has any involvement with it. She would be better off with someone who had nothing to do with it. Fortunately she didn’t see it that way.

One night a few of us had dinner at The Londoner including her, the professor and a few of my workmates. A week later, one of my workmates was in the food court on soi 7 opposite the Biergarten and he called me, all excited. The professor was there with a friend and they were entertaining two obvious bar ladies. I never did tell her about that….but I was tempted!

We did all the usual stuff. Movie and dinner dates and soon we were taking trips around Thailand and the region. We would often go to the matinee on Saturday at Scala in Siam Square. And as it happened, a certain Mr. Trink used to be a creature of habit and was almost always there on Saturday afternoon with his Mrs. It would be a couple more years before I met him.

 

 

As Stickman Weekly became known, bar bosses and other businesses took notice and were keen for exposure.

The first bar to advertise with me for an extended period was Dollhouse. Big Andy called me one night when I was at Loogai’s place. He wanted to advertise with me and asked for a price. I gave him the price for a month. He asked how much for a year. I had never considered that someone would advertise for so long. I came up with a price and he said he’d go for it. I said I’d pop by at the weekend. He said he might change his mind by then and if I wanted the money, I should go to the bar right now. I jumped out of bed, got into a taxi, and headed downtown. I’d return later than night with 60,000 baht in my pocket.

Despite the nightlife focus, the best advertisers weren’t actually bars but mainstream businesses.

The first big advertising deal I made was with DirectRooms. A short trial proved successful and they were keen to make a significant, long-term commitment. I spent a couple of days at their head office in Phuket negotiating the deal and working through the technical details. They wanted a unique ad on every single page of the site. It looked like a banner but was in fact made up of text links. They were less concerned about readers clicking on the ads, rather they wanted Google’s algorithms to see these text links which would elevate their site in Google searches when people searched for hotels in Thailand. It worked. Their monthly advertising spend was more than what many teachers made in a month. It was a huge job to add their code to every page of the site, something I had to do manually – but it was worth it. That deal ran for many years and combined with the monthly cheque I received from Google, I could have lived quite comfortably on the income from just those two advertisers.

 

 

Google had an affiliate program where webmasters could place a small piece of code on pages of the website. Google would examine the content of your site and place ads accordingly. So if there was an article about visas in Thailand, Google would display ads for companies that helped with getting a visa in Thailand. Every time someone clicked on a Google ad, you earned a commission. Each click averaged around 15 cents (about 6 baht, at that time) per click, but some ads were lucrative and a single click could earn you a few dollars. When you’re getting hundreds of clicks each day, every day, it can be quite an earner. The first cheque was around $500. I thought that was great. Within a few months, the number had got much more interesting. As traffic to the site continued on its upward trajectory and I became adept at knowing the best locations on the site to place the ads and increase click-through rates, that monthly payment from Google got even more interesting.

Another advertiser I did a significant deal with was MyThaiFiancee.com, run by Brian Wright. Brian was an American lawyer who had an outstanding record securing a visa for Thai women keen to move to America. Brian had emailed me and we had lunch one day at the Novotel at Siam Square which was a short walk from school. There was a fantastic bakery on the ground floor and I would schedule site-related meetings there at lunchtime with anyone who wished to meet during the day. It wasn’t unusual for teachers to slip away to Siam Square at lunch-time and some of my colleagues would comment that whenever they went to the Novotel for lunch, they’d always see me there. I wasn’t there everyday but I was there at least a couple of days per week.

Getting back to MyThaiFiancee.com, Brian committed to a month. A week later he called me and he was frantic. He wanted to meet me that day. No, he had to meet me that day, it was urgent! He didn’t give me a reason. We met at the same place. The week before I had sat down with a very calm, measured man who had talked about his business, and his proud track record. This time was very different. He was flustered and excited at the same time. It turned out that the ad had hit the jackpot and gained him a heap of new customers in just one week. He wanted to make a long-term commitment and he wanted exclusivity, meaning no-one else in that sector could advertise anywhere on Stickman. He knew this was a big ask – and he was willing to pay for it. I hadn’t even had a chance to think about it when he pulls out an envelope with 100,000 written on it. I went back to school that afternoon with a spring in my step.

 

 

My teaching colleagues were aware that I was Stickman. A few of them read the column and the readers’ stories but for most of them, it wasn’t something they were interested in or gave much thought to. By teaching standards, we were well-paid. At that time, the salary band for foreign teachers ran from 60,000 – 150,000 baht / month. Most of us earned less than 100K. A few teachers had other teaching jobs on the QT and a couple had quirky ways of supplementing their income. Most of us were late 20s or early 30s and at that point in our lives when we were keen to maximise our income. I’ve never been one to live high on the hog, have always lived well within my means so I don’t think anyone, save my Canadian friend, had any idea that the website was a decent earner. And it was important to keep it that way because jealousy is every bit as rife in expat circles as it is in general Thai society.

I enjoyed being in the classroom and teaching, but the rest of the job? Not so much. There were a lot of politics and some of the school’s policies were backwards and obviously hadn’t changed in decades. For the first couple of years I was in a large office with 3 other foreign teachers and some Thai teachers who were very nice but at the same time they were resentful that we all did the same job yet the foreigners were paid many multiples of what they were paid. We all got along, but you knew there was jealousy simmering below the surface.

It never really occurred to me back then how questionable it was for me to be teaching in a high school while running a website which chronicled the nightlife and helped men navigate the minefield of turning a hooker into a wife. Looking back, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that prostitution and teaching shouldn’t mix. So why was I ok with it at the time? There were probably a few reasons. For the first few years I was running this website, no-one really took the Internet seriously. And while I was writing about the nightlife, I was actually a good boy. Fooling around with ladies of the night was over and I was no longer a participant. That was in contrast with a good few of my colleagues who absolutely were fooling around, some of whom were married. No moral judgments here, that’s just the way things were. I guess in my mind I was thinking that they were actually playing with bargirls while I was only writing about bargirls.

 

 

Bar owners were keen to advertise but there was always a challenge. How could they measure the benefits i.e. the new customers they got from an ad. It’s easy to measure how much traffic one site gets from another, but that was a time when most bars had no online presence and the ad essentially said, “Come to our bar!” Most bar ads didn’t last that long. In an effort to keep bars as customers, I offered heavily discounted long-term rates. And in time I focused on getting new advertisers from outside the bar industry. Mainstream businesses stuck with me for years.

I met Greg Lange when he was still something of a newbie. Greg had started Sunbelt Asia, a business brokerage. He was keen to advertise but boy oh boy, was it hard work to get him to pay anywhere near even my discounted rate! Greg was a skilled negotiator, and I wasn’t! He negotiated a rate far below my discounted one-year rate, and he would pay that same for many years to come. In time he would commit to more banners and it became a big account. Greg was so easy to get along with and I would look forward to getting together with him every 3 months when I went to collect a cheque and enjoy a long lunch at the Fortune Hotel buffet. We were both very, very busy those first few years, but always enjoyed getting together and shared a lot of news and gossip. We would go on to become good friends and hung out a lot in later years.

The only person who was a tougher negotiator was Boss Hogg. The one time I negotiated an ad with him for his bar Bully’s was quick. He had invited me to dinner at the Sheraton Grande and he cut to the chase straight away, “I want to advertise with you for a year, and I want to pay 10% less than what Greg Lange is paying. And don’t bullshit me because if you do I’ll find out. And if I find out I paid more, I’ll expect you to return the full fee plus interest. So let’s agree on that and then we can forget about business and enjoy a nice dinner.” And agree I did!

Why did he want to pay less than Greg? They were both wealthy businessmen and as it happens, both were well-known for their generosity. They also happened to be good friends and I think Boss Hogg wanted bragging rights with Greg so he could say that he got a better deal with Stickman!

Another advertiser who comes to mind – to be clear, I am getting ahead of myself timewise and this deal was done a few years later – was an American who ran webcams in the Philippines. He rented an apartment complex and each unit had a lady with a computer and a live webcam who would do all manner of things for money. It was the usual story – he advertised for a few months, it worked and he was keen to make a long-term commitment. He wanted to lock in multiple prime positions on the main page of the site for 5 years, and he was happy to pay for this commitment in advance. That was a very good payday. I guess the ads worked because I received emails from readers who told me they had spent hundreds of dollars on the webcam girls. The Philippines government outlawed live-cam operations, and the ads were never renewed.

 

 

The site was doing well but it wasn’t all a bed of roses. Some bar owners would get nasty if anything was written about their bar that was anything but glowing.

The first time I remember being threatened followed a meeting called by David Walls of all the foreign bar owners in Nana Plaza. They got together and David told them to increase the price of a standard beer in all the bars from 90 baht to 110 baht. I called it what it was, price collusion. A couple of bar owners were angry I had framed it like that. David banned me from all of his bars and told me if he saw me in any of them, he’d beat me up. I knew that he went to the plaza every morning to collect the previous night’s take and he was almost never out in the bars at night, so I ignored that ban.

And then there was Rick who ran Nana Disco. He was a real nasty piece of work. Nana Disco on the ground floor of the Nana Hotel was a super popular freelancer bar. Entry had always been free. They implemented a cover charge which started at 100 baht, increased to 200 baht and topped out at 300 baht. As good as the bar was, punters turned their back on it and that would be the beginning of the end. I wrote in the column that you could get in to the likes of Spasso’s for free and bluntly commented that the ฿300 entry fee for what was a basic bar with not a lot going for it other than lots of pretty girls was a rip off. Rick was furious! Someone gave him my phone number and he called me up the Monday morning after the column was published and told me was going to do me. I’d had a few threats over the years and nothing ever happened so I never took it seriously. Rick didn’t know me but someone gave Rick a photo of me. Rick took that photo to Ricky who was managing a bar in Nana Plaza (to be clear, Rick and Ricky are two different people) and asked Ricky if it was me. Ricky said yes. Rick took two heavies with him and I heard that the guy in the photo was given a hiding although whether that is true, no-one really knows. But certainly that sort of thing was not beyond Rick. It was not me in the photo. Just who it was in the photo and who gave that photo to Rick, I have no idea.

 

 

Love was in the air and a year after Loogai and I met, wedding bells would ring. It was early 2003, and we moved into a lovely 1-bedroom corner unit apartment with great views across the city, well away from the farang ghetto.

We were madly in love. It was tough balancing teaching, website and a wife.

Every few weeks we would spend the weekend at her family home in Korat. I bought a car and we could make the 250 km trip in under 3 hours. Korat was great, a nice change of pace. People were nice and her family were wonderful. Korat became a home away from home and we spent a lot of time up there.

But time in Korat made publishing the column difficult. The phone line at the family home was so bad that Internet connections dropped all the time. Mobile Internet was still a few years away. As it happened, there was an apartment building at the mouth of the soi and they had open wi-fi, which was not that common back then. I’d take the laptop along, sit in the lobby, upload the column and then could relax until that evening when we returned to Bangkok.

The website was now firmly established and a big part of my life. In a short space of time it had become a real earner, bringing in far more than my day job. Every time I got online there were a heap of new emails. 10, 15, sometimes 20 new readers’ submissions came in each week. There wasn’t enough space on the site for everyone who wanted to advertise. I had to turn down investigations and refer them to someone else because I didn’t have the time to carry them out. The site was going gangbusters. It was hard to keep up.

 

 

Bernard Trink had been reporting on Bangkok’s nightlife since the ‘60s, and was probably the best known farang in all of Thailand. But times were changing and a newspaper was no longer the place for a column like that. Bernard’s column was cut from the Post. An attempt at publishing his column online with a subscription model failed.

I had seen Trink a number of times at the Scala cinema but had never said hello because he was always there with his wife and I thought I would be intruding. I was keen to interview him even if I didn’t think he would be up for it. It was said he didn’t reply to emails, in fact he didn’t even access them himself and had someone log into his Hotmail account and print out the emails for him to read. So I was surprised when he responded that he was happy to meet. Just as the Stickman moniker fits me – I am very slim – his Nite Owl moniker fits him. He suggested we meet at midnight at the offices of the Bangkok Post as that was when he arrives at the office each night. That was really late for me. I had to get up at 5:30 AM for school. He made an exception and came in early to meet me. We met at 11:00 PM.

 

 

The meeting almost never happened. I guess I was excited and my mind was elsewhere because when I crossed the road outside my condo to grab a taxi on the other side of the road, I almost got bowled over by a motorbike. The Bernard Trink interview ran over two weeks and generated massive traffic. His column may have faded but he was still very much the biggest name in town.

At that time the weekly column was being read by around 35,000 people the week it was published. 10,000+ people would read it on Sunday and numbers would drop each day through the week until the next column was published and the cycle would repeat. At that time, the Bangkok Post’s printed edition circulation was a bit over 50,000. The Bangkok Post had been around since 1946 and I had started in late 1998. I had to be happy with where things were at.

When I first started Stickman, it was text-only and there weren’t any photos. I was a keen photographer and had a Minolta film camera. I scanned a few photos from film and put them on the site. That went down well. There was demand for more images. Shooting film was expensive and scanning prints or slides was time-consuming. I needed a digital camera.

My first digital camera was a 2-megapixel Kodak which cost something like 35,000 baht. It was followed by a 5-megapixel Sony F717 which cost something like 50,000 baht. Both were very basic. I learned the way to go was a digital SLR with interchangeable lenses. In August of 2004 I bought a Canon 20D and a Canon 24-70L F2.8 lens. I was keen to take get more photos up on the site.

 

 

I shot my first ever bar photo shoot in Hollywood in September, 2004, on the top floor of Nana Plaza. At Dave The Rave’s invitation, I took a few hundred photos but I didn’t really know what I was doing and the results weren’t great. It would be a number of years before I shot in the bars regularly.

It was at that photo shoot I first met someone who would later become a good friend. I always referred to him in the column as the Dirty Doctor. My life was busy then and it wouldn’t be until around 2008 when he would become my partner in crime.

I was friendly with Steve Leather and took the photo used on the cover of the first edition of the Private Dancer paperback. That said, the concept for that shot was all Steve’s and I merely pushed the shutter button.

 

 

Since moving to Bangkok in 1998. I had only been back to New Zealand once, for a short break in 1999. It would be 6 years before I visited home again. Being away for so long was a mistake. Spending 6 years in Thailand, I had lost perspective to some extent and a lot of the crazy stuff that happened in Thailand I had come to see as perfectly normal.

In 2005, I took the Mrs to New Zealand for a holiday. Until that point the idea of moving back home had never really crossed my mind, but when it came time to head back to Bangkok I didn’t really want to go! I took the Mrs to the airport, put her on the plane and extended my stay for 10 days. Time spent with friends and family reminded me of all that was good about the Kiwi lifestyle. I think I knew then that Thailand was not forever. With that said, once I got back to Bangkok I soon forgot about New Zealand.

That same year I would receive an offer to buy the website. It came from a friend and was very much out of the blue. It was a clean, simple offer – one hundred thousand greenbacks for the site. Said friend is a straight shooter and the offer was real. I mentioned it to a couple of confidantes who said I should snatch his arm off! It was a fair offer, and I did give it a lot of thought, but declined. I was really enjoying running the site and while $100K would have been nice, I’d never really thought about selling it. When things went pear-shaped the following year I would think how nice it would be if I could go back in time.

 

 

2005 and 2006 were incredibly busy and I had little time for myself. I used to say that my life was the “WWW” – wife, work, website.

I sometimes wondered which “W” would be the first to go. I imagined it would be the website first, followed by work / the teaching job. I never contemplated that the wife would go. That “W” was very much forever.

Thailand still felt exotic. Infrastructure was improving, the underground train had been running a couple of years and there was talk of new skytrain lines in the future. The new airport would open soon. But Thailand still very much felt like Thailand. Central Bangkok felt more international but you didn’t have to venture far to escape the foreign influence. Time it right and you’d still come across elephants making their way along Soi Cowboy.

The past 5 years had been hectic but I couldn’t complain. I had a wonderful wife. I had many good friends and was meeting new people all the time. The website was firmly established. I was earning good money. They were good times.

While I don’t like to ever use the word “regret”, if I had had any foresight of what was coming I would have resigned from teaching at the end of the school year in early 2006 and focused entirely on the website. Life has taught me that when you experience a long period of calm and prosperity, you should keep in mind that it won’t last forever. Sooner or later something will happen. For me, it would be sooner. Very soon, in fact.

2006 had started well, but a shit storm was coming. My life at the end of 2006 would be very different from how it had been at the start of the year. What had been a good year was about to turn into a nightmare. Each “W” of the “WWW” was about to come under extreme pressure.

 

To be continued next week….

 

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo was difficult and just six of you got it right. It was the Teddy Castle on Thonglor soi 5.

This week’s photo is back in the Stickman zone. Not too hard, I reckon!

 

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

The world has changed.

I read with interest your personal account of how you spent so many wonderful years in Thailand. I think you might agree with me that Thailand today is just not the same place. I was in touch a couple of weeks ago with an English guy I worked with in Thailand, who now lives back in the UK. His wife owns a property in Udon Thani, and he said that we had the best years. 20 baht grass huts on Patong Beach. The girls in the bars were great with no pressure, no desperate hard sell, and everything was so easy-going. Thailand has changed along with the rest of the world.

Long-stay health issues?

The Stickman Story reminded me of my first few years in Bangkok. I moved to Asia around the same time you did and spent 5 years in Thailand over a 10-year period. Do you think you have any longer term health issues from living for so long in Bangkok? From air quality / pollution and drinking primarily? We are around the same age – I’m 49, and I have been aging rapidly the last few years which I attribute partly to some wild Thailand years. <I am fortunate to be in good health and don’t think I have suffered any long-term health issues due to the time I spent in Thailand but then maybe it will all catch up with me in the future. You never really know, do you? – Stick>

Different folks, different strokes..

The reader who commented the following in this week’s column, couldn’t be further from what I see in real life: “…and it’s rarely a life of luxury. It’s not the Farang who adapts to the language, and the food. And if she has children or family in Thailand, the Farang often doesn’t help. Most of these ladies find a job in addition to being a servant…” Once a month, on a Sunday, a group of 30 – 40 year-old Thai women come to my house to socialise, cook delicious food and generally have a good time. When I look out the window on to my driveway and the surrounding streets, the roads are full of brand-new Mercs, BMWs and even a couple of Porsche EV SUVs. The girls normally wear the best Rolex watches, sport luxury handbags and show all the trappings of wealth, including regular trips abroad. Their husbands generally work abroad in the oil and gas industry, normally in tax-free Middle-Eastern countries and earn a pretty-packet. This life of servitude that your reader mentioned simply doesn’t happen within the Thai community in my local area, and if it did, these girls would get out and upgrade as fast as possible, which has happened on a few occasions.

Stickman leading the good men of the world astray.

Fantastic column this week, like the Stickman of old. Everything I’ve ever heard makes it sound like that was a magical time. The guy who first got me into the idea of going to Thailand went over shortly after you did. I remember him sending me a grainy early 2000s era digital camera photo of an elephant walking down Soi Cowboy with scantily-clad girls prancing in the background. My mind was blown! It just seemed so wonderfully alien and exciting. I didn’t make it to Thailand until much later in 2012, after spending much of 2011 poring over the Stickman archives and the readers’ submissions, soaking up every little bit of info I could. I hit the ground running, and needless to say I promptly made all the classic mistakes I’d been reading about! It was amazing and I ended up staying for a year, and have been back on and off ever since. It wasn’t just about the nightlife – that ended up being a pretty small part of it really. It was more that after spending my whole life until that point living and working in suburban Auckland, I’d never felt more free. That experience – mediated by your columns – opened up my eyes that there was a completely different but equally valid way of living. Every Monday since I have opened up the site with my morning coffee, and even when things have been shitty, it’s been a reminder that freedom was still a possibility. I currently find myself living in small-town Japan with my Japanese wife. Although it pretty much sucks balls, I can’t help but think that I never would have found myself in this unexpected situation if it wasn’t for your column. Without that nudge, I never would have discovered the joy of travel. It’s not an exaggeration to say that your column changed my life, and I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of stories like mine. I’m sorry to see you go.

Visa confusion.

I watched the Buzzin’ Trevor video and rather contrary to what was said there, I was stamped in with no issues on my third entry this year.

Bar name suggestion.

My name for a gogo bar would be Wild Orchid.

When Vientiane opened up.

I went to Vientiane in 1990 just after Laos re-opened. You could drink in little bars with hostesses, go out to nightclubs with that bizarre Lao line dancing but definitely no “hanky panky“ or else it was off to the re-education camp! There was a midnight curfew with soldiers armed with machine guns enforcing it. I returned a year or so later and what a change. Khop Jai Der was up and running and great fun. A few other bars and discos had  sprung up and Vientiane was liberated. A year or so later after a massive brawl amongst the freelancers, ”girls” were barred. Luang Prabang with its UNESCO listing however has always strictly banned any liaisons with foreigners, as have other parts of the country.

 

 

 

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

How are things going at Hot Lips, Soi Cowboy’s newest bar? In fairness, it’s a bit early to say too much as the bar has only been open 10 days and is still finding its feet. On Friday night, there were 22 dancers which isn’t enough for a bar of that size. I imagine they are working on that. The bar has been described as darker inside than most. There are two rows of stadium seating either side of the stage, with high-back chairs which a friend noted are very comfortable. Curiously, the official grand opening is not expected until the middle of January or later. Errr, why so long?

Another report noted that Hot Lips feels like a copy of Spanky’s. Shower cubicle ✔. Similar music ✔. Spanky’s-style shows ✔. A former Spanky’s manager ✔. That said, if you’re going to copy a bar, Spanky’s would be a good choice.

Speaking of Soi Cowboy and Hot Lips, on Friday night the sewage water was flowing from below the patio out front of Hot Lips. On Saturday night there was no sewage visible until 11:00 PM and only then did it start seeping out. It was all around Moonshine and Jungle Jim, right next to Hot Lips. A friend noted that it looked like it was moving from Hot Lips down to Jungle Jim. By 1:30 AM a large pool had formed. Management at Hot Lips deny that their bar is the source of the filth, and claim it’s coming out of Cowboy 2.

 

 

As mentioned a few weeks ago, XXX Lounge on Patpong soi 2 – previously Club Electric Blue – has become yet another ping-pong show bar. And just to ram that point home, a new sign has gone up outside to let everyone know. You really get the feeling that the Patpong of today with the food court on the main soi, and bars on both sois promoting ping-pong shows, is very much for tourists.

A few weeks back I mentioned that Crystal Palace in Patpong soi 2 was now a ping-pong show bar. This is not correct. The bar has neon signs outside saying ping-pong show but it is actually advertising said shows at Super Pussy in Patpong soi 1, which is part of the same group.

Word is that bar trade has picked up in Bangkok but it’s uneven and the love is not being spread around evenly. On Friday night, Nana Plaza was extremely busy while Cowboy was doing good trade but nothing like Nana. Patpong? Sorry, no idea!

The boss of 3 of Bangkok’s best gogo bars will celebrate his birthday with a Playmates party held across all 3 of his Nana Plaza bars on Friday, December 12th. The party will kick off at 8 PM in each of Billboard, Butterflies and On Top. There will be more than 200 playmates across the 3 bars and free pizza for all. These parties are always a lot of fun so do pop by if you’re out and about that night.

 

 

Sukhumvit soi 11 was always the upmarket nightlife soi in the Nana / Asoke corridor. A friend made a point this week that had me nodding in agreement. The change in demographics – particularly the crowds who favour staying at the Ambassador – along with some of the more basic venues that have opened up in recent years, have changed the vibe somewhat. What once felt somewhat more upmarket than other sois in the area now feels like it’s not such a big step up from Soi Nana. Sure, there are plenty of flasher venues on Soi 11 but many are hidden behind a facade and many don’t even know they’re there. On the surface, Soi 11 doesn’t feel as flash as it once did.

Nana Night Club on Soi Nana celebrated its 2nd anniversary this past week. Has it only been around for 2 years? It feels like it has been there for longer.

Udon Thani doesn’t feature very often in this column despite boasting the largest farang-centric nightlife area in the entire Isaan area. On Friday night, a large number of regular Police and Immigration Police raided a bar in the Night & Day complex, in downtown Udon Thani City. Just what they were looking for is moot but if the past is anything to go by, a decent guess might be that there were Lao nationals working in the bar.

 

 

Some people get all bent out of shape at the prices quoted by ladies in the bars today. But are the asking prices today really that much higher than they used to be? I was going back over some old columns when I came across this: “In Camelot Castle amongst others, the mamasans walk around with cards that have the price for the barfine which varies according to the girl’s role (gogo girl, waitress, cashier, mamasan). They also have cards that say short time 2000 baht and long time 4000 baht. Is this a sign of things to come?” When was this? That excerpt is from a column published July 22, 2001, 24 years ago!

For those of you flying into Suvarnabhumi Airport over the next few months, note that many people have reported long queues at Immigration and depending on the time of day and the number of flights arriving at that time, it can be an hour or more before you’re at the carousel to collect your bags.

Is Amsterdam coming to Soi Nana? A new bar has opened on Soi Nana called Red Room Lounge. It is described as a bar plus smoke shack, where both alcohol and weed are sold and can be consumed on the premises. It opened a bit over a week ago and is said to be very popular already. It’s hard to imagine it will last.

 

 

Down in Pattaya, a huge new gogo bar is being built on Soi Diamond. It has been described as Baccara-style with 2 levels and a glass floor stage. No idea who is behind it or what it will be called.

Also in Pattaya, the new Mafia Club can be found in the space on Walking Street that was previously the Burj disco. Serious money went into Burj but it didn’t last long. The Mafia Club has a massive LED screen with weird 3D graphics, kind of like Sun Club, but even bigger. The number of Indians in town at this time is not what it was a few months earlier which raises the obvious question – how will these giant nightspots that are very much for the Indian crowd fare outside of India season?

The new Pattaya Eye opened on Thursday. It’s near the Runway Market on Second Road, between sois 5 and 6. It is not actually called The Pattaya Eye, but The View Pattaya. It’s about 60 metres in height so I imagine there’s a sweet view from the top.

 

 

A bunch of videos appeared on YouTube last week about the situation with the new visa rules, and I linked to an interview by Buzzin’ Trevor with Mark of One Stop Service Pattaya. In that video, Mark, a respected visa agent, was adamant that under new regulations you would be declined entry to Thailand if you attempted to enter more than 2 times on a visa waiver i.e. without a visa you had applied for in advance. There has been much conjecture about just how accurate that information is and this week I have heard from readers who have come to Thailand for their 3rd (or more) visit this year without a visa and been stamped in no problem – with not a word from the Immigration officer. There is a lot of conflicting information and quite a few sources say that the two entries per year applies to land entries, while flying in multiple times per year for a short stay without a visa is not an issue so long as you can show that you are a genuine visitor. One of the challenges I have writing the column these days – and it’s one of the reasons I will finish up next month – is that I am unable to verify this sort of thing. It’s a worry when those who are in the business of helping people get visas say things that contradict many people’s experiences on the ground.

The recent visa rule changes have people confused and concerned. It’s even worse with announcements from some border points about how they interpret them – which is often different to how they are being interpreted and enforced elsewhere. The new 2 visits in one year rule is counterproductive when you think of all the moaning about how tourist numbers are down on previous years.  I think of the many foreigners in the likes of Singapore or Hong Kong with good jobs / high salaries who enjoy frequent weekends away in Bangkok. Or perhaps they have a lady friend in Bangkok they visit every other week. Some of these guys fly into Thailand many times per year. These new “rules” would make it tricky for them. They come for a few days, stay in nice hotels, eat in good restaurants and spend large in the bars. I imagine this profile of visitor spends far more per day than the average visitor. Surely they are the type of visitor Thailand wants to attract? Making it difficult for people like this, and putting doubt in their mind feels like an own goal for Thailand’s tourism industry.

 

 

A reader suggested that I write a column opener about what happened to many of the bar bosses who featured in this column over the years. It’s a great idea but unfortunately there isn’t space with the 4 remaining column openers all mapped out. So instead, here is a short update on some of the bar bosses who featured in this column over the years. Note, I use the term bar boss to include both bar owners and bar managers.

Ricky left Bangkok for Pattaya more than 20 years ago and to this day he is in the very same condo he first moved into. I understand that he is still with the same lovely lady. Ricky has a bar on Soi Honey but I am not sure if he makes it there so much these days. Ricky was always a big drinker and smoker and has been in poor health for some years. Just crossing the road is a struggle these days for Ricky and he is seldom seen far from his condo.
Matt, the founder of Angelwitch, was a scientist in a previous life. He always stood out from the crowd and is probably the most intelligent guy to operate big-name gogos in Thailand. Matt did extremely well from the sale of the two Angelwitch bars and has gone on to live a good life. Today, Matt lives in one of Sukhumvit’s top condos with his son and daughter. He has little interest in the bar industry these days. Matt lived in the fast lane and was known as a big drinker, but unlike many former bar owners, he is keeping well.
Big Andy has lived in Pattaya for a number of years and recently celebrated his 70th birthday. These days he pursues his passion for motorbike riding and operates a successful motorbike tour business.
Larry, the owner of the Rock Hard A Gogo bars in Phuket and Bangkok, was killed in a road accident back home in the United States a few years back.
The other Larry, who managed Secrets, is happily retired in Pattaya and enjoying life. He frequently travels around Thailand. He still has the same smile and quick wit that made him so popular when he was the man at Secrets. He has received a number of offers to return to the bar industry but the sensible fellow is quite happy enjoying retirement and has no intention of working again.
Boss Hogg returned to the United States many years ago. I have not heard anything about him for a long time. He appeared to lose all interest in Thailand and the last I heard was that his health wasn’t great.
Dave The Rave is mentioned in this column frequently because we are in regular contact. Once a month or so we chat on WhatsApp for an hour and gasbag like two old ladies about what’s happening in the bars, and reminisce about the good old days. Dave left Thailand at the start of Covid, returning to his native UK. As was widely reported, Dave had serious health issues resulting in the loss of a leg. He is currently waiting for the NHS to provide him with a bionic leg. Dave sold his website and no longer has anything to do with it. He has developed into an accomplished football photographer and many of his photos have been published in the local newspaper. Dave still keeps an eye on the bar industry, and hopes to return to Bangkok for a look one day.
David Walls, the principal of the Crown Group of bars in Nana Plaza which included many of the best bars at that time like Voodoo, G Spot and Fantasia, died in early 2023.
Michael who ran a bunch of soi 2 Patpong bars including Bar Bar is serving a multiple-decade sentence in a Bangkok jail after being found guilty of a crime that many of us who know him doubt he had any part in.
Peter, who ran Pretty Lady on the ground floor of Nana Plaza, spends most of his time back in his homeland of Switzerland.

 

 

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

Quote of the week comes from a friend, “Ladyboys in Christmas gear were about tonight, now I definitely have seen everything!”

From The Stickman Archives comes The Girl Who Didn’t Get Away, the one and only bar lady investigation I did for a Russian.

Just another day in Thailand as a Thai woman is found alive in a coffin after being brought in for cremation.

Thailand’s tightening up of visa rules makes the mainstream news.

A British woman accused of running a Ko Samui bar illegally through Thai nominee shareholders is arrested.

Parts of southern Thailand including Hat Yai have flooded in what have been described as once in 300 year rains.

A resourceful Thai man explains how he managed to keep his house dry while all his neighbours’ houses flooded.

The draft layout for a proposed Formula One street circuit in Bangkok has been unveiled.

Ko Samui Police arrested a 29-year-old French man after he was accused of stealing valuables from a neighbour.

The Economist says America’s oldest ally in Asia is drawing closer to China. (Account needed to read / sign up for free.)

 

 

Closing Comments

Friends in Bangkok this week have been telling me how nice the weather is. One friend described it as “Mediterranean”. Many restaurants have their doors flung wide open and the air-con turned off. If it gets much cooler, girls in the chrome pole bars will slip on a jacket between dance sets. The start of the cool season always makes for a pleasant change. Weather-wise, from now through until mid-February is a nice time to be in Thailand. Would I like to be there now? Sure I would!

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com