The Stickman Story, Epilogue

My girlfriend is furious. No other word comes close to describing how she feels right now. She’s been here beside me for the past 15 years as I have run this site and written this column. She’s seen me announce that I was leaving, only for things to change at the last minute as I had to hurriedly explain that it would all continue. She was there to farewell me at Auckland Airport when I flew to Bangkok to sign the website sale contract on a trip she couldn’t join me on due to visa conditions. And more than anyone, she has seen the conflict I have been through over the past couple of years as I have wrestled with the idea of calling it a day. And now, with what has just happened, she’s furious!

Last week’s column, Part 5 of The Stickman Story, ended with me noting that just a couple of weeks before the end of the year, the owners of the site let me know that they didn’t want me to leave. They wanted me to continue writing the column.

I’d explained to the owners that amongst the reasons I was stepping down was that I was just not happy with the quality of the column. I wasn’t writing any column openers because I wasn’t there on the ground. When I wasn’t seeing things with my own eyes, I didn’t feel like I could write interesting openers. And visiting Thailand just once per year meant it was 11 months between visits which is far too long for someone who writes about the place. So much changes while I am away, including the very vibe of the place. People can tip you off about news and gossip, but not the vibe. You need to be there to experience it yourself.

Since moving back to New Zealand, writing the column has not been about the money. The small amount I have been paid is essentially pocket money.

So a proposal was put to me. An increase in what I would be paid. 3 all-expenses-paid trips to Bangkok a year. It would be worth my while financially and I would never be away from Bangkok for more than 3 months or so. I would visit regularly, feel much more in touch with the place and not only would the column continue, the quality would almost certainly improve.

But this wouldn’t address the issues I have raised in The Stickman Story from falling out of love with Thailand, to feeling disengaged with the bar industry to the long flights which I have come to loathe. I can handle the limited space in economy fine, but the 20+ hours on planes and in airports takes a day or two to recover from. And I just can’t face doing that 6 times per year (3 times there, and 3 times back).

My girlfriend is ¼ Chinese but often acts more like a stereotypical Chinese than a Thai. She is very entrepreneurial, and pursues opportunities with vigour. So when I told her about what had been proposed, she was excited. “It’s a great deal, take it!” She was quick to add that she would take extra special care of the cats and handle all of the jobs I do around the house when I was away.

Since moving back to New Zealand, writing the column has not been about the money. It is essentially a hobby for which I am paid pocket money / much less than minimum wage. Writing the column forces me to keep in touch with what is happening in Thailand, maintain regular contact with friends in Bangkok and has helped me justify the 3 trips to Bangkok per year we made each year between 2016 and 2019. And during Covid when there was so little going on, it was a great way to fill in some time.

But now I want to focus on life in New Zealand and writing the column prevents me from doing that. One trip a year to Thailand for a holiday would be fine. I’d enjoy that. Roaming the bars to hunt for news and gossip? It just doesn’t interest me any more. Honestly, I’d be happy never to step foot in a chrome pole bar again.

So when I told my girlfriend that I had declined the proposal the owners had put to me, she was furious!

It was nice that the owners made an effort to keep me involved. But short of making an offer that would have been over the top, it wasn’t enough to change my mind.

So today really is the end of the road, and this is the final Stickman Weekly column. Just a few months short of what would have been the column’s 25^th anniversary, it ends today.

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo showed Ping’s Shark Fin Soup restaurant on the corner of Asoke and Soi 1. It was tricky and not many of you got it right.

This week’s photo was not taken in some obscure soi in a far-flung suburb. It is in the heart of downtown and in what I have termed in recent columns, the Stickman zone.

 

 

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

Investigating Sewer Cowboy.

I had a plan to investigate the sewage on Soi Cowboy. A friend and I planned to go into each suspect bar and flush different UV plumbing dyes down the toilets. We’d wait to see what colour the street water turned. Then we could match the leak with the bar. We’re having trouble finding the dyes, but if we manage it, I’ll let you know. <I think this is a marvellous idea and I’d love to hear the results! – Stick>

Are you a stud muffin?

Passing through a half dozen or more time zones does not make you more handsome. When I meet newcomers primed to be fleeced, or to use that other phrase…a bug in search of a windshield…I try to find a nice way to say that if you did well dating back home, you can do well in Thailand, but if you were not so special back home, Thailand is not going to make you a stud muffin.

Cherished memories.

Regarding referencing the past, feel lucky that you have that option. There were good times in the past. Yeah, a lot has to do with price gouging these days and the push to be more of a tourist destination than a monger destination (and the girls had to cater to the monger mentality attitude back then also), but be glad you got to see both. We also got to see life without a cellphone and the internet. Regarding the guy who raved about indulging at Radio City for over the top prices, he was happy and it was more than what he would get back home for relatively the same cost. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

Where to visit when the love affair with Thailand is over.

I was never in love with Thailand. Though I loved the climate when visiting the islands, I found the cities just a horrible concrete mess, clogged with cars and pollution. I prefer countries that are not on the main tourist trail. They are more interesting to me. Columbia and Cambodia were two of my favourites as they get so few tourists the locals seemed more like real people than the many Thais who see visitors as money-making machines. Maybe I just met the wrong people when I was there. You say you may visit Europe. I recommend Poland and Ukraine (when the war ends) to see the original Europe and Italy for the world’s greatest food. Visit London only if you want to have your mobile stolen or get caught up in a mass demonstration calling for any number of mad causes. And don’t forget your stab vest. It is no longer the city of Mary Poppins and chirpy Cockneys!

Stick is humbled.

I was going to write a long waffling email but that would bore you. Instead, I’ll just say my time in Thailand was close to yours. I pored over your site back in the day as a bottom feeder in the teaching scene. I’ve been back and forth over the decades, each time falling more out of love with the place. But your website has been a constant throughout. This sounds silly, but you are like a friend to me. Often you were the only normal farang I could find in Thailand, and some kind of moral compass amid the dysfunctional sleaze. Now we are both middle-aged, and after three decades Stickman is finally coming to an end. It must be a very poignant time for you. But you should be very proud of your achievements. Bangkok is a tough place to make a mark, and I only ever managed to bump along the bottom. But you showed the drive and nous to carve out a name for yourself that stood the test of time. Only those with something to say last this long. I will close by just saying thank you. Your website has informed and entertained me over the years, and you never charged a penny. Ignore the haters and take a bow. My warm regards and best wishes as you embark on the next chapter of your life.

 

 

 

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

Is the only way to resolve the sewer issue on Sewer Cowboy to dig the entire soi up, rip out everything and lay a whole new set of pipes? It does rather seem like that’s what’s needed. And if that is indeed what needs to happen, how long would it take? A few days? And could the bars continue to operate? Would the department responsible for said repair consider an appropriate time i.e. not during the high season? So many questions, so few answers.

Speaking of the sewer issue and the bar which for a while we were all pointing fingers at. The patio outside Hot Lips has opened just in time for the peak of high season, which is right now. All along the soi, expect the patios to be a hot spot for at least the next month or so.

The past few days in Bangkok’s bar areas have been – as expected – very busy. And the hottest spot of the lot has been Nana Plaza where, at times, there has been quite a queue waiting to get inside. There isn’t a lot of space out front of the complex so there might have to be some changes made. Not a bad problem to have.

Back in the day there were gogo bars which had photos of the ladies who danced inside posted out front of the bar, often including their number and nickname. And there were a few bars which had iconic images of ladies outside, such as the King’s Group gogo bars on Patpong soi 1 with its Hot Stuff For Lovers signs. I note that the Arab has erected large photos of hot Thai ladies above the sign outside Midnite bar. It’s for promotion only and you won’t find any of those ladies inside.

 

 

Reader Jimmy made a poignant observation in his reader’s submission published earlier this week, Take Care, Stick. “Gone are the ladies yelling handsome man, where you go? Nowadays they have their eyes glued to their smart phone.” I can’t remember the last time a lady hollered out to me as I walked past a bar or massage shop. And I don’t think it’s because I am no longer a young man. Myself and my best mate still joke about that first trip to Thailand when we headed out from our hotel on Karon Beach each night to cat calls from ladies in the beach-side beer bars, “Hello, welcome please!” which we thought was hilarious. It’s not a case of a little something lost, it’s a real change in the bar industry. The ladies made you feel like they were genuinely interested in you. Nowadays? They’re fixated by their phone and they don’t even try to feign interest in passersby. It’s a massive change.

Down in Pattaya, what was Penthouse A Gogo, on the ground floor of the Penthouse Hotel, is being rebranded as Big Banana Club. I can’t imagine that it will appeal to most Stickman readers, but for those of you who swing both ways, you might like to stop by.

The Hive, on Walking Street, has a Japanese-themed party for New Year’s Eve. Those ladies classified as “models” and “coyotes” will don Japanese oiran-style robes. If you’re not familiar with Japan, Oirans were like Geishas but the difference was that they actually engaged in sex work. The PR staff (I still don’t know what that means!) will be in winter Yukatas. All punters will receive an Omamori – a New Year’s lucky charm….so maybe you will get lucky that night! What’s the deal with the Japanese theme – it’s not like the bar attracts a lot of Japanese punters or there will be a large contingent of Japanese on Walking Street that night. The answer is that the owner of The Hive is a young Japanese guy. Additionally, on January 3, The Hive is going to have a sushi party. A genuine sushi chef will be there to prepare sushi Nigiri rolls fresh. The sushi will be free when you buy a lady drink.

 

 

An Indian reader who sent an email this week says he’s been visiting Pattaya since 2005, and was a regular in many of the gogo bars that were popular 15 – 20 years ago. He notes that he didn’t have any problems getting into any Walking Street bars back then. But today, he finds that some bars on Walking Street turn him away. That’s the complete opposite of how I thought it would be given that there are far more Indians visiting Pattaya today than there were 20 years ago. Of course, this is just one punter’s perspective but I found it interesting nonetheless.

Getting back to some of the terms used to classify the ladies working in the bars these days, they strike me as contrived. Coyotes? As I wrote a few weeks back, 4 Bangkok commentators couldn’t agree on what that term meant. Models? I think the idea here is that models are the slightly more attractive ladies who may command a slightly higher salary than other girls. But then in some bars, the term model refers to all dancing girls. What about PR, as in public relations? Sometimes this refers to the ladies outside the bar who will drag punters in from outside, and find them a seat. In other bars, PR simply means waitress. And then in some bars you have the term hostess. How are they different from PR? Maybe in bars with PR girls and hostesses, the PR girls can be found standing outside while the hostesses are those inside the bar who take orders and deliver drinks? I honestly don’t know. I find these terms to be unnecessarily confusing.

 

 

The new Upper Deck sports bar on Sukhumvit soi 20 has the potential to be a winner. It’s a large sports bar with lots of screens showing live sports, and it has a kitchen serving the usual selection of farang favourites. So what’s so special about that? The pièce de résistance is the deck where you can sit outside and watch the world go by and the skytrain whizz by. The entrance to the Upper Deck Sports bar is right near the start of Sukhumvit soi 20, just a few steps from the main Sukhumvit Road.

Is there an epidemic of hypertension prescription drug use by middle-aged Thais? I ask this question after the other half told me about the conversations she had with friends in Thailand this week. She called a bunch of friends as she does each year at this time to catch up and wish them all the best for the coming year. Don’t ask me how it came up, but she commented that many are on drugs for hypertension. They’re all middle-class Thais, most are in good jobs, most appear healthy and they are all in their 40s. I am aware that some doctors in Thailand can be quick to prescribe drugs and may not recommend lifestyle changes – but I imagine most of these people went to a decent enough hospital where you’d hope doctors would consider other solutions. So back to my original question: Is there an epidemic of hypertension prescription drug use in Thailand?

Have you noticed that the DVD stalls have disappeared from the streets of downtown Bangkok? Up until Covid, they were still a thing. The last few years I haven’t seen any. Not that I miss them, of course, it’s simply an observation.

 

 

I notice that a regional, English-language newspaper in Thailand uses AI to produce images which accompany articles. The images are easy to spot as AI due to what is still something of a cartoon-look. And I get the feeling that said newspaper might be using AI to write articles too. So many articles have a wooden uniformity and read the same. Of course, it could be one person’s writing style but the sheer volume of articles and the way they feel almost generic makes me wonder if AI is being used. ASEANNow and Thai Thaiger have used AI for some time for some of their articles so it’s not unusual. I also suspect the odd email sent to me recently may have been written with AI as they had this weird flowery tone that struck me as inauthentic. AI has its benefits for sure, but getting the tone right is tough. I suspect the problem is actually not the AI, but the instructions given to AI. With the right instructions, I imagine AI could get the tone spot on. I know AI looks like it’s going to play a big role in the future but at this point in time, I really don’t like it when AI is used without disclosure that the content was not created by a human.

The discussion in recent weeks about Mexican food saw some essentially saying that it’s very hard to find decent Mexican food outside Mexico or the USA. There is something about Thai food where it also doesn’t “travel well”. Here in New Zealand, most Thai restaurants are rubbish. It’s easy to understand why when you know how they work – most are family-run businesses where whomever in the family is the best cook ends up in the kitchen. But just because Thai food in this part of the world isn’t great doesn’t mean that’s the case elsewhere. Across the Tasman, plenty of Thais insist that there are many really good Thai restaurants in Sydney serving authentic Thai food. And I imagine there must be plenty of good Thai eateries in Los Angeles too with the large contingent of Thais living there. Thais are particularly fussy about their own food and I can’t imagine all those Thais in LA would flock to Thai Town if the food there was rubbish.

 

 

Chatting with an American friend in Bangkok this week, he was having a rant about the exchange rate and how he gets much less baht for his greenbacks than he did not so long ago. I don’t follow what’s happening with the baht so closely these days so I checked the latest rates on Vasu Exchange’s site. It says that a $USD 100 note will get you 3,662 baht, which is an exchange rate of 36.62 baht to the US dollar. I didn’t think the US dollar was quite that strong. I have long felt that a neutral rate for the baht was in the range of 33 – 35 to the US dollar. Over 35 and the dollar feels strong. Under 33 and the baht feels strong. Vasu Exchange’s rates can be seen in the screen capture below. But they didn’t feel right so I clicked refresh a couple of times and they kept coming back with that rate. The US dollar was stronger / the baht was weaker than I thought. I tried another browser and the rates were still the same. Hmmm. So I did a Google search and went to Vasu via Google – and the rates were different. What gives? It seems that at some point Vasu lost their website. Vasu’s old website which had a .com domain name has not been updated since mid-2024. It is still showing rates from 18+ months ago that is why the dollar seems so strong. Vasu’s new website is a .co.th domain name, VasuExchange.co.th – and that is where you will find the correct, current rates and see that one US dollar currently buys a tad over 31 baht – but only for Benjamin Franklins. Smaller denominations and it’s 30.xx. It’s got to be a concern for those retired in Thailand on a limited income seeing the rate go from 36.62 in the middle of last year to 31.02 now. That’s a huge drop in a relatively short space of time. And if it continues on its current trajectory, how long will it be before one US dollar dips below the psychological barrier of 30 baht?

 

 

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

Quote of the week comes from a reader’s email, “Passing through a half dozen or more time zones does not make you more handsome.”

For my last ever Stickman Archives link, here’s the column which kicked it off, the very first Stickman Weekly column.

Reader’s story of the week is What You Are Leaving Behind, A New World.

A Danish man and a Thai woman are arrested for bonking in full view of the public in Pattaya Bay.

It was discovered a farang had cheated in a curry challenge after he had left with the 30,000 baht cash prize.

In Prachuap Khiri Khan, a Thai woman has been arrested for killing her German husband.

A Thai woman is arrested after allegedly forcing her 12-year-old daughter to work as a prostitute in a Tokyo massage parlour.

A Brit who flushed his partner’s rabbit down the toilet will spend Christmas behind bars after being caught on the run in Thailand.

Two Germans are arrested in Chiang Mai after causing 200,000 baht worth of damage to their rented room.

The BBC looks at how British detectives found a cocaine kingpin hiding out in Thailand.

 

 

 

Closing Comments

So this really is the end. What happens next?

As far as the column goes, Stickman Weekly ends today. It won’t continue. How could it? There is only one Stickman. But someone else could be brought in to write the column, couldn’t they? They could, but it wouldn’t work. I’m not saying that to talk myself up. When anyone with a presence online who has their own style and brand steps aside and is replaced by someone else, most regulars leave because the replacement is different. Even if the replacement imitates the original, it’s never quite the same. Imagine if, for example, popular YouTuber Bangkok Pat was replaced by John Smith. It wouldn’t matter if John Smith was a professional documentary maker, fluent in the Thai language and had a PhD in the history of Bangkok, it just wouldn’t be the same – and Pat’s regular viewers would leave. And so it is with Stickman. If someone wanted to do something similar they should start up their own brand. Their chances of success would be much greater that way. I’d suggest that anyone who is looking to fill my hole – not literally, of course – to look at doing something on YouTube. It’s so much easier to quickly build up a large audience on that platform and monetise your work. Websites are less popular with younger people who make up more of the punters in the bars these days.

Is there any chance I might come back? It’s unlikely but never say never. I am not saying that to keep the door open. I just don’t know what the future holds. Maybe I will miss it more than I think, and end up doing an abrupt about-turn.

So with Stickman Weekly finished, what are the alternatives if you wish to keep up with what is happening around the traps? There is only one site I recommend: BangkokEyes.com. It’s the closest thing to Stickman Weekly and features a monthly round-up of changes in the Bangkok bar industry. The fellow behind it is the very definition of an old Asia hand, and has been writing his monthly since 2001. He actually started documenting the bar scene long before he began publishing online. More than anything, he is the only person I know covering the nightlife industry who has no agenda and does not do it for the money, but for the love of it. He’s a good friend and someone I have immense respect for, both as a person and for the wonderful work he does chronicling the bar business.

This site will remain online. There are absolutely no plans to take it offline.

I will still be contactable at this email address: stickmanbangkok@gmail.com. With that said, any issues with this website, concerns about content or anything like that should not be directed at me.

I’ve been asked whether I have plans to start a new website or develop a new presence online. I don’t. Going forward, I’d actually like to spend less time in front of a computer. So many of us lead a lifestyle that I think can be described as digital over-load. I’d like to spend more time with people whose company I enjoy, and more time outdoors / in nature. A very long time ago I made the decision to spend less time in front of a TV; now I have made a similar decision to spend less time in front of a computer and devices.

I am going to take a long break and enjoy the New Zealand summer with a mix of active and not so active relaxing. Fish and chips at the beach. Short hikes in the hills around the province. Watch cricket. And get lots and lots of sun.

Some time after New Year / in early January I will start a Thailand detox. I will stop following the news from Thailand and won’t look at anything Thailand-related online. And I’ll be out of touch with pretty much everyone in Thailand for a while – so if you email me over the first few weeks of January, don’t expect to hear back from me for a few weeks. I expect my Thailand detox to last until late January so if you try to get a hold of me but don’t hear back, that’s why. I *will* get back to you and I will continue to reply to all emails and messages – but only when the Thailand detox is over.

I’ve said my goodbyes before and then something happened at the last minute and I looked a little silly as things continued and I didn’t finish up after all. This time it’s real. I’m done.

Thanks for tolerating the many mistakes I’ve made in this column over the years, the many times I’ve changed my mind and the myriad of errors and typos that have littered pretty much every column I have written.

It’s been a great ride, but it ends today.

All the very best to everyone who has tuned in. May 2026 be a great year for you all, and bring you good health, prosperity and happiness.

Thank you, everyone, for everything.

 

Your Bangkok commentator for the very last time,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com