The Stickman Story Part 3: Mid 2006 – Late 2010, Turbulence & Uncertainty

Part 3 of The Stickman Story follows on from: The Stickman Story Part 1: April 1998 – April 2001, Background & Beginnings &

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

 

I described my life as the “WWW”, with my time consumed by my Wife, my Work, and this Website. At times I had wondered which would be the first “W” to fall. That question was about to be answered.

The Mrs declared that she was sick of cleaning the condo. But fear not, she had a solution and I needn’t concern myself with it. She would take care of it. We would be getting a maid.

We were both so busy. Between teaching and the website, I had precious little free time. And it was the same for the Mrs who was working her way up the ranks in the brokerage, entertaining clients after hours and taking frequent trips to meetings in Singapore.

A lady who cleaned units in the building had been recommended. She would be stopping by for a chat and the Mrs wanted me to be there to meet her. There was a knock on the door. In walked a lady who was keen to be our maid……resplendent in a Club Electric Blue t-shirt!

I had to ask the question – Did she know that the t-shirt she was wearing was from a gogo bar? She did, and explained that she had never worked in the bar but friends had. This was a concern, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker. Others in the building confirmed that she was a great cleaner and no-one had an issue with her, so we took her on. She did a good job and we were happy to have her.

 

 

The Mrs. and I were each so busy at work that we were spending less time together. And when we did spend time together, our minds were often elsewhere. Time together had become something we thought we should be doing, not what we wanted to do. It wasn’t fun like it used to be. Small things set each of us off.

Trips to Korat that we both enjoyed – and needed to help us to wind down – had gone from every few weeks to every few months. We didn’t do stuff together, and we were eating at different times. We felt more like flatmates than a couple. We argued over silly stuff. The spark had gone. Christmas passed, then New Year, a birthday and a wedding anniversary. We spent each of those days together, but we were going through the motions and neither of us was having fun. Deep down we each knew we’d be happier apart.

What went wrong? We were both busy. But it was more than that. In retrospect, wedding bells had rung too soon. We tied the knot before all the data was in, so to speak. As much as we had initially enjoyed being together, ultimately our priorities were different. It’s a shame because we were a good match, but we didn’t prioritise one another. We drifted apart and reached a point where each of us wanted out. There was no cheating, no nastiness and little drama. But we each knew parting ways would be for the best.

We’d married quickly and we separated even more quickly. One weekend we agreed that it was what each of us wanted, and a couple of days later we were in the same District Office we had signed the marriage papers just a few years earlier. It was a shame things ended but it was entirely civil. Stickman was Singleman again.

The first “W” of the “WWW” had fallen.

 

 

We both really liked that condo, both the unit itself and the building. The facilities were great and it was well-managed and maintained. We both felt like it was home so when we moved out of that unit, we each took out a lease on another unit in the same building. She moved up several floors; I moved down one floor to an identical corner unit. It sounds awkward but it wasn’t, and there were no issues. Despite living in the same building it would be several months before we saw each other.

I was so busy teaching and running the website that there was little time to dwell on things. I really didn’t give much thought to being married one day and divorced the next.

Not long after we parted ways, I became aware that there was a new website with a similar name to this one where the purpose seemed to be to scrutinise what I was doing. The person behind it appeared to be obsessed with me like a stalker. It was creepy. A few days after I published the weekly column, an article would be published on that site which appeared to be an attempt to discredit me and pick apart my most recent article. Most weeks the article would comment on what I had written and / or say what a terrible person I was. Occasionally there would be an original article with thoughts of his own.

I had no idea who was behind the site and why they were doing it.

The whole thing was bizarre and I didn’t expect it would last, but I started getting concerned as the weeks went by. I knew how much effort it took to create a website, and to write a weekly article. And I could see that he was spending money promoting the site. So he was putting in time & effort and spending the money. That didn’t strike me as someone who would be a flash in the pan and disappear as fast as they had arrived.

He was quite clever the way he went about promoting his site, paying money to Google AdWords for an advert for his site to appear on other websites. He could specify the websites where he wanted the ad to appear. He cleverly specified this website! As soon as I realised what he was doing, I blocked it.

 

 

As he wrote more, his reader numbers snowballed, and he became more emboldened. He requested anyone who knew me or had had dealings with me to contact him as he wanted to know more about me.

I was out and about all the time, and knew a lot of people in the wider expat community and the bar industry. My identity was known by many. My place of work wasn’t. I was a teacher and while many teachers spent time in the bars, most were discreet.

He would soon announce that he had my name, photos of me and my place of work. He sat on those details. As he became more confident he began to write some crazy stuff.

The frustrating part was that no-one knew who this guy was and why he was writing all this nonsense. He reveled in this and would give the odd clue but then he would contradict himself so we remained in the dark about the motivation of what he was doing.

Some of what he wrote was perfectly reasonable criticism and was simply a difference of opinion. No problem. Other comments were off-the-wall nonsense. He wasn’t the talk of the town, but it was a story more people had become aware of. I’d  bump into people out and about I only knew vaguely and they knew all about it.

Unfortunately, some people believed some of the crazy stuff he was saying. Some enjoyed what he was writing and sided with him. Stickman was evil! Was it jealousy? Or was it possibly schadenfreude?

I had to identify who this was. A few people had tried, but no-one could figure it out. I dug around online, followed the clues and eventually figured out who was behind it.

It turned out he was an American living in Nakhon Phanom where he had a small manufacturing facility. The main product was after-market headlights for motorbikes which he sold on eBay. His name rang a bell and a search of my inbox showed that he was a keen reader of the column and had sent many emails over the years. At some point he had flipped out and gone from fan to stalker.

 

 

He’d been writing his nonsense for months when he finally outed me, publishing my name and photo on his site, along with the name of the school where I worked. Some of my teaching colleagues had been following the story closely. When the school was named, a couple of them got nervous.

I’d figured out who he was and gone back through his emails looking for clues. He had first visited Thailand a few years earlier on an organised sex tour. I dug around on the sex tour website and amazingly came across photos of the people who took tours. I leaked those to David who ran the MangoSauce site and he outed the guy.

With our respective identities out there, interest in the story took off and it was the talk of the forums. It was also mentioned at least twice in The Bangkok Post.

The school where I worked had about 20 foreign teachers and most were aware of what was happening – but most had little or no interest. But there were two teachers who were concerned. Why they were concerned, I had no idea because they were not involved in any way. These two badgered the other foreign teachers about what was happening and tried to turn them against me. Most of my colleagues were disinterested but to appease the two making a noise, a meeting was held to talk about what was happening. It was attended by less than half of the teachers. I told them straight that there was little I could do to stop this guy. He was bonkers. It was unfortunate that he had brought the school into it and I was embarrassed about it but realistically, what did they expect me to do?

The two teachers weren’t happy so they went to school management. Paul has been running a website and now someone is writing nasty stuff about him and the school has been named. I was summonsed.

The school was good about it. They wanted me to stop writing, which I agreed to.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place. If I stopped publishing on the site I would lose readers. If I continued writing, I would have to resign from a job I enjoyed.

From mid-November, 2006, the weekly column went into hibernation. It would make a return, somewhat ironically, on April 1st, 2007.

I stopped publishing readers’ submissions but resumed 3 weeks later.

I did very little work on the site and for a few months I was assisted by my friend Bangkok Barry who tidied up readers’ submissions so they could be uploaded.

 

 

The vultures had started circling. A reader I’d never met was very keen to buy the site. He offered $US12,000 and pestered me with many emails. He appeared genuinely keen and seemed to think that was a number I wouldn’t refuse. I was not interested.

An Australian expat contacted me and said he represented a group who were interested in acquiring the site. I didn’t want to sell, but we met up. I told them that I had turned down an offer of $US100,000 for the site the year before. That surprised them but after convincing them that that offer was real and it wasn’t a ploy to try and inflate the selling price, they discussed things amongst themselves and said they would be willing to pay $US75,000. It was not a firm offer but they seemed genuine. Nonetheless, I turned them down.

School management was concerned that word would get out about this website and it would become embroiled in a scandal. It was 2006 and while the Internet was popular with younger Thais, older Thais still didn’t know what to make of it. But what they did know was that if even one student got wind of it, within an hour every student in the school would know. And what happened next would be impossible to control.

It was hard to know what to do. I sought the counsel of Big Greg who operated Sunbelt Asia and Sunbelt Legal. Greg was uniquely placed to help. He was a good friend and I trusted him. He owned a legal firm. He knew about what was going on. And he was willing to help.

Greg was concerned, but he had a solution. The problem as he saw it was that I couldn’t defend myself against this crazy guy because I was not legal. To fight back, or to silence him, I would have to fight him through legal channels. To do that, I would need to get legal first. That meant I would have to form a company which was straightforward. I could then get what would essentially be a second job put on my work permit. The problem with that was that you have one work permit book, but the details of both jobs would be listed in it. As such, the school would be aware of it – and they didn’t want me writing any more columns. I was still enjoying teaching and while I knew it wasn’t forever, I was not quite ready to leave. So Greg’s solution wouldn’t work and I was back at square one.

 

 

Towards the end of the year, school management told me there would be a meeting at the end of the day which I had to attend. It sounded ominous. I thought I was about to get my marching orders. I figured it was probably for the best and it would make things easier for everyone involved. It would be irregular to fire someone during the school term but they’d obviously made up their minds. That afternoon I collected some of my personal stuff and loaded it in to the car. At 4:30 PM I went upstairs.

In the meeting room were two people, the manager, and her assistant. Both Thai. I was told the Police would be arriving soon. My heart sank. I wasn’t being fired, I was about to be arrested. Thoughts raced through my mind. I was tempted to leave the meeting room, go to my car, drive to Pattaya, check into a hotel that didn’t require ID at check in, and then give Greg Lange a call and tell him to send his best lawyer down. Greg was in my corner and one of the few guys I trusted 100%. But his legal company was concerned with professional services – company registrations, employment contracts, work permits, accounting, property conveyancing and the like. Criminal matters was not their area of expertise.

Before I had time to think about it any more, two people walked in to the meeting room. One is a tall, middle-aged Thai man in an immaculate suit. He was accompanied by a young Thai police officer in uniform, carrying a large briefcase. Introductions were made. The tall Thai man spoke perfect English. He hands me his business card. He is one of the directors of the DSI. Nice one, Stick, you’ve just hit the big time.

 

 

Thailand’s DSI – Department of Special Investigations – investigates serious crimes involving influential people, organised crime, or crimes using highly sophisticated technology. I was well aware of the DSI as it had only been formed a few years earlier under the Shinawatra government. It’s not really the same as the USA’s FBI, but that would be about the closest thing to it. The DSI are the big boys. If they’ve come for you, you’ve been a really bad boy!

The man in the suit is friendly. He asks how he can help me, and notes the confusion on my face. He asks me to describe what has happened in my own words. Of course he would have already been briefed on the situation but he wanted to hear my version of events. I told him that I had been operating a website for many years without any issues. Recently someone had started a website which focused on me and my website. He wrote unkind and untrue things and had published my identity along with other details like place of employment, phone number etc.

The cop was curious as to why it had all kicked off in the first place. This guy seems to really hate you, he said. Are you sure you haven’t done anything to make him feel this way, he asked? I told him that for a couple of months I didn’t even know who was behind it, and explained to him how I had figured out who it was.

He then asked me what I wanted him to do about it. The question caught me by surprise. Why would he ask that?

 

 

The meeting was organised after the stalker had upped the ante by posting images taken from the school website of some of the female Thai admin staff. He had Photoshopped bananas over their mouths and included sexual innuendo. In a recent column I had written an innocuous paragraph about how Thais in the workplace aren’t hung up on many things like people can be in the West and noted some of the banter from Thai staff I had worked with included references to bananas and milk. The manager was a conservative older Thai lady and was appalled at these photos. She was desperate that the teachers pictured never found out about it – and as best as I am aware, they never did.

The cop was not there to take me away in handcuffs. He had been invited as a former alumni of the school to help resolve the situation quietly. The school wanted his opinion on how to go about that while keeping a lid on it. Very few people in the school knew about it – which was just as well because Thais are terrible at keeping secrets. The manager knew about it, as did the male Thai teacher who was in the meeting. The Director of the school knew about it. I don’t think anyone else knew about it.

The one suggestion I could come up with was perhaps a senior Thai policeman could have a quiet word with this fellow and suggest that it was in everyone’s best interests that he bring it to an end. He agreed that was the best way to go.

The Thai manager asked the cop if action could be taken to arrest this man. It could, he said, and the fellow had definitely broken laws – but arrest him and it could all become public. The school absolutely did not want that.

A senior policeman did have a word with the fellow – I don’t know if it was this fellow or someone else – and the stalker duly wrote about it! He said he’d been called by the police, the school had had enough of me and I would be fired at the end of the school year. It was a lie – but people believed it, including my two colleagues who had reported it to school management in the first place. They backed off because they thought I would be fired in a couple of months. That never happened.

In retrospect, it would have been so much simpler if they had fired me on the spot, or if I had just said bugger it and resigned. Why they didn’t do that / and why I didn’t, I really don’t know.

While all of this was going on, more than a few times I thought back to the offer I had received the previous year from a friend to buy the site. If I had sold it, none of this would have happened and my life would have been so much easier.

 

 

No weekly columns were published for 5 months. It opened the door for other sites and many readers went elsewhere.

The end of the school year was late February and the school revisited the issue at my performance appraisal. The male Thai teacher had been keeping an eye on the site and was aware that no new weekly columns had appeared. There was no talk of being fired. After the long summer break, I was back in the classroom in May.

The stalker kept writing even after I had stopped writing the column. Most people had lost interest in what he had to say. And with no weekly column for him to comment on, he didn’t have anything interesting to say. Eventually he would have legal problems with someone else he libeled and he would flee from Thailand. A much more detailed account from a slightly different perspective about the whole ordeal with the stalker was published in 2011, Cyberbullying and Karma.

A few years earlier I had been featured in The Big Chilli magazine in an article cleverly titled “Bangkok’s Agony Uncle”. The writer of that article really got what I was trying to do. I genuinely enjoyed helping those who had become involved in a relationship of a nature they had never anticipated. I used to receive emails every day from readers struggling to navigate the minefield of a relationship with a former working girl. I would be featured in The Big Chilli again when Dean Barrett wrote an article about the whole affair with the stalker. Luckily, no-one in the school management saw that article.

One of the few good things to happen that year was a get-together for the readers’ submissions writers. It was held at The Big Mango bar in Nana Plaza. It was limited to those who had submitted a story to the site. A few people planned their trips to Thailand around it and about 40 people made it along. That get-together was a bright light during a dark time.

 

 

What I didn’t know then was that mid-2006 was peak Stickman. When I resumed writing the column in 2007, reader numbers were poor. For weeks I was getting less than 10,000 readers per column. 6 months earlier I had been getting well over 35,000. Many readers had gone. I struggled to get back into the groove. Over time, reader numbers improved but by almost any measure – total site traffic, weekly column visitor numbers, number of readers’ submissions published, number of advertisers, site revenue – the metrics were all down. They never returned to what they had been.

The weekly column wasn’t what it was. To avoid the school and my colleagues thinking it was me writing, I rebranded it as Stick Mark II. It worked, and they thought it was someone else. The problem was that most people thought it was someone new – and that put them off. If it wasn’t the original Stick, they weren’t interested.

I lost confidence. One friend said he thought I was depressed. I didn’t think I was, but it had been a really bad year and I wasn’t entirely myself. I’d parted ways with the Mrs and then the site had given me all sorts of problems which spilled over to the workplace. I felt like I wasn’t in control of my life.

I had become guarded and friends later told me I had put walls up around me. My phone number had been published online and I was getting crank calls from all sorts of nutters. I changed my phone number and only gave it to those close to me. Even Dave The Rave didn’t know my new phone number.

 

 

The 2007 school year started. Even now, many years later, when I think about everything that happened, I don’t know why I hung around. There were so many reasons I should have resigned – and it would have made things so much easier for everyone.

Like so many institutions in Thailand, the school was keen for accolades and to be recognised for its achievements. There were various awards schools could apply for including one that showed they had provided a service to the community. A new project would be taken on by the school. That project? Teaching English to police from the local station. Ordinarily, no-one would volunteer for these projects but I could see the potential benefits and I put my name forward.

Police from the local police station came to the school and myself and an Australian colleague taught them together. It wasn’t formal instruction, rather we had a simple objective to help them with conversational English and phrases they could use in their work. It didn’t last long and we did what was necessary for the school to get the award.

I had my own reason for volunteering to teach the police. I worked out who held the highest rank and befriended him. We met up away from the school and I became a voluntary on-call interpreter for that Police Station. When a foreigner was arrested and there were communication difficulties, they would call me to go there and interpret. It was always with non-English speakers, mainly Eastern European. If ever a native English speaker was arrested, they could manage that without help. It was always minor stuff, mostly shoplifting. The main thing discussed was bail and the conditions that came with it.

2007 wasn’t a good year for the site. Columns weren’t great and many readers simply never came back. Over the years I would get email from former readers saying they hadn’t realised I had resumed. My best guess is that being offline for 5 months cost me 40% of the column’s readers.

 

 

The site wasn’t doing it for me. I looked for happiness elsewhere. Internet dating was becoming more popular and at that time ThailandFriends (as distinct from ThaiFriendly) was the most popular site. ThaiLoveLinks (later ThaiCupid) would take over and that would become the most popular site for a good few years until ThaiFriendly came along.

Things had changed since my first round of meeting ladies on ICQ several years earlier. It was a very different breed of ladies. The days when almost every lady had a university education, a good job and was perfectly comfortable in English were long gone. Many ladies were in menial work, and had minimal schooling. There were lots of country ladies – and no matter what you wrote in your profile about the type of lady you’d like to meet, many took no notice. Say you only want to meet a lady located in a certain area of Bangkok who has a university education and a job and you’d still get lots of messages from unemployed single mothers all around the country.

There was very little BS with the Thai ladies on ICQ. Now it seemed like many were lying about their age, posting photos taken years earlier and it all felt like hard work. ICQ had been free of that sort of nonsense. But it wasn’t all bad. Where once we had to contend with buggy ICQ on a lousy phone line which cut off all the time, now I had a DSL connection that was rock-solid and there were no disruptions. And if you came across someone you were interested in, you reverted to MSN Messenger and could see them on a webcam. Communication was a whole lot easier.

Many of this new breed of ladies were starry-eyed when they met a foreigner. They were easy to meet and if you were so inclined, easy to get back to your condo. But unlike the ladies on ICQ, these ladies were often from a different – oftentimes difficult – background. Many were anxious to meet a foreign man who would look after them. The ladies on ICQ had options and while they didn’t say they wanted fun – no lady wants to be labelled easy – ultimately that’s what most were after. Many of the ladies online now were from a background not much different to the ladies in the bars – the only difference was that one group had chosen to work in the world’s oldest profession and the other hadn’t. So many ladies on ThaiLoveLinks worked long hours, 6 days per week, lived in a small room a long way from their place of work, barely earned enough to pay their bills with precious left over to send something to their parents upcountry, let alone to treat themselves. Many of these ladies were often after a farang saviour.

 

 

I was teaching during the day, chatting online with ladies at night and meeting new ladies at the weekend. The column? It suffered.

I had fewer advertisers. Fortunately, I still had a handful of key advertisers who were in it for the long term, and I was still part of the Google AdSense program which was a nice earner.

One by one, websites with Thailand nightlife content were being thrown out of the Google AdSense program. This hurt because it was the websites’ biggest source of revenue.

The popular MangoSauce website was the first site to be ejected from the program because of nightlife content. NanaPlaza.com – for many years the most popular Thailand expat forum – was the next to go.

It wasn’t long until I got the dreaded email. I knew it was coming, and I had a plan. I registered a new domain name, StickmanWeekly.com. I placed all new content – weekly columns and readers’ submissions – at that domain name. People still came to the site at the main StickmanBangkok.com index page. When they clicked on a link to the weekly column it took them to the new / different domain name – but they wouldn’t know because it looked exactly the same. You’d have to really have been paying attention to spot my trickery. When Google banned a website from the program, they blocked that site’s domain name. By registering a new domain name and placing all the content there, I had circumvented Google’s ban. It would be almost two years before I got the dreaded email from Google again, banning that domain name. But for a couple more years of monthly cheques from Google, it was worth it.

 

 

The readers’ submissions section was going well, but even that gave me headaches from time to time. A contributor wrote an article that was less than complimentary about ladies from Isaan and why they favoured white men. Although it wasn’t complimentary, I am a strong believer that every one of us should be allowed to voice our opinion so I never even considered the idea of not publishing it. Someone posted a link to that article on the biggest Thai language forum where it was discussed at length. It received a mixed reaction. Some were in agreement with it and couldn’t understand why Foreign men were so keen on ladies from the Northeast. But there was outrage from some who considered the article highly disparaging. How dare a foreigner say things like that about any Thai women? That article generated a lot of emails from Thais and some threats were made. With the stalker episode still fresh in my mind, the easy solution was to take the article down. I never like to remove articles under circumstances like that but the reality is that as a foreigner living in Thailand things can turn ugly fast.

That was not the only article I was convinced to take down. I had posted a series about foreigners in Thailand, international travel and criminality. The 10-part story was a real hit with readers, I received an email informing me that while much of the series was fictional, part of it was based on true events. And it was causing concern to some people who were very unhappy about it. I was given two options, described in that email as the carrot and the stick. It was made clear that if I didn’t take the articles down, I would be visited by some nasty people and forced to delete it. The carrot involved me removing the articles for which I would be rewarded with a bonus, 100,000 baht. I received a lot of emails from crackpots over the years but sometimes you just know that this was not someone to mess with. I took the submissions down. A subsequent email thanked me for removing the articles and asked where I would like the money sent. I wasn’t concerned about that but provided my bank account……and 100,000 baht was deposited.

 

 

Juggling teaching and website work was difficult. I had to choose one or the other. There was only one choice to make – the website. I resigned at school and put teaching in the rear view mirror once and for all. The second “W” of the “WWW” had fallen.

I now had all the time I needed to concentrate on the column and build the website back up to what it had been. I was eager to get things back on track after a turbulent 18 months.

It was time for a new routine. Over the next few years, the Dirty Doctor would be my partner in crime. At that time we preferred Soi Cowboy and spent most of our time there. We’d start the night at Sam’s 2000 at 6:30 PM and get a bite to eat. Next stop was Tilac, right next door. Always early in the evening and always in the same seats. Happy hour ran through until 9:00 PM and drinks were a ridiculously reasonable 70 baht. They went up to 120 baht at 9:00 PM but before happy hour ended, staff would sell regular customers as many coupons as you wanted at happy hour prices which could be redeemed that night for full-priced drinks. Many nights it was Sam’s 2000, Tilac and back home.

 

 

Tilac was one of the first Bangkok gogo bars with coyote dancers, a concept we struggled to get our heads around at the time. What was a coyote dancer? Even those of us who wrote about the nightlife industry had trouble describing it. At that time there were a few of us writing nightlife-centric columns and one of them, Baron Bonk, invited me, Dave The Rave and Dean Barrett to put in our own words what coyote dancers were, and he would publish our thoughts in his column. There were 4 quite different descriptions!

The 4 of us got on well and I particularly enjoyed the company of Tim, the fellow behind Baron Bonk. He had invited me to lunch one day and when I arrived, he had not just ordered for the two of us, he was already tucking in! We spent most of the afternoon in that restaurant. As we walked towards the Nana area following our meal, Tim mentioned he would be doing it all again that evening with another friend. He casually dropped in to the conversation that he would be in Bumrungrad the next day for a small procedure and you never knew how these things might go, so he was eating that day as if it was his last. I didn’t like to pry and he didn’t offer any more details.

Tim called me a few months later. A new French restaurant had opened on Soi 19 and a long lunch was overdue. I arrived at the restaurant and Tim looked different. He was sporting a prosthetic leg. I knew he was diabetic but didn’t know it wasn’t under control. Unfortunately the doctors couldn’t save his leg and it had to go. Poor health meant there were often long periods between Tim’s Baron Bonk columns. He wrote well, wasn’t afraid to say what he thought, and frequently criticised the Thai government. Over the history of this website, many others have written in the same space. Of them all, I enjoyed Tim’s work the most.

 

 

Out of the classroom, I had time to do the things I wanted without feeling like I was always in a mad rush. I became a regular visitor to Pattaya and every couple of weeks, I’d drive down to Sin City.

There has always been a debate about whether Bangkok or Pattaya has the best nightlife. Each has its strengths but between 2008 and 2010, I thought Pattaya’s nightlife was every bit as good as Bangkok’s – and there was an argument that it was better. Was that peak Pattaya, at least as far as naughty boys were concerned?

I was out and about at night and there were temptations everywhere. But I wasn’t fooling around. I’d lost interest in working girls years earlier. So if you’re in Pattaya but you’re not fooling around, what are you doing there? Taking photos! I’d invested in a new camera, a Canon 5D Mark II and some decent lenses and enjoyed nothing more than roaming around at night, taking photos. A couple of days in Pattaya and I’d go back to Bangkok with several hundred images.

Digital cameras were getting cheaper and more powerful all the time. Most people had one. Naughty boys lived up their name by taking naughty photos in their hotel room of the lady they had barfined. Most ladies were willing to be photographed, unaware that their photos were being posted in trip reports on forums and seen by all and sundry.

2-week millionaires wrote detailed reports of the bars they’d visited and the ladies they’d spent time with. Many of these trip reports featured photos of ladies. Naked photos weren’t unusual and from time to time, some guys even posted photos of themselves in the act.

I was competing with the forums for eyeballs but drew the line at naughty boy trip reports. More than a few people commented over the years that the ethos of Stickman was much too vanilla for their liking. No problem, hardcore sex tourists were never my market.

 

 

Pattaya’s nightlife areas were spreading out. Swathes of the Soi Buakhao area had been a wasteland just a few years earlier, now bars were popping up all over. As mainstream businesses closed, invariably they would be replaced by a bar.

Pattaya benefited greatly from the Internet as a new generation of sex tourists was born. These guys discovered Pattaya online and it was love at first sight – with both Pattaya and the girls.

Pattaya was growing fast but it was still very much a resort town. Bangkok remained Thailand’s one and only real international city. There was no love lost between foreigners in Bangkok and Pattaya, and at times it felt like the rivalry between two football teams in the same town whose fans hated one another. Bangkok expats were never shy to joke about Pattaya, often describing it as “A city of low-class Thais and no-class Farangs”. Pattaya expats and regular visitors to Sin City scoffed at Bangkok, citing high prices, traffic and the difficulty of getting around.

 

 

Along with regular trips to Pattaya, I was also making regular trips up several floors in the condo building. The ex-Mrs and I had parted ways 18 months earlier, but we had remained in contact. We would check in on one another from time to time, and help each other out with various stuff. Spending time together caused old feelings resurface. But I think we both knew deep down that going any further down that road would be a mistake so we stepped back.

The bar industry was changing in 2009 but it took us a while to wake up to it. With the passing of time we would see there had been a big drop in the spenders, those guys who thought nothing of running up large bills in the bars night after night. Their absence was a result of the Global Financial Crisis. Thailand had long attracted FIFO workers from oil and gas, and many more who were employed in the Middle East in security. Many of these guys spent their downtime in Bangkok or Pattaya. When their contracts ended due to the economy, their trips to Thailand dried up.

Back in Farangland, property prices were crashing as interest rates and unemployment were rising. People had less money. International travel would be one of the first things to go. The bars felt it.

 

 

I felt it too. While it had never been a big money maker, investigation inquiries dried up. And those who did inquire were much less likely to pull the trigger. They wanted advice – which I was always happy to give – but when the reality set in that it could be a long, costly road, many decided that all of the time and money wasn’t worth it.

Attitudes were changing. The original iPhone had been released a couple of years earlier and while your average working girl didn’t typically have an iPhone, she did have a phone with net connectivity. And with a new toy to play with and a new way to contact customers, her mind wasn’t always on men in the bar.

 

 

I have always enjoyed driving and was out and about a lot. I kept getting stopped by the cops, and accused of doing things I hadn’t done. A few years earlier I was stopped on the Korat ring road and told I was speeding. 146 km/h, they claimed. It was rubbish. I was issued a ticket and my protests fell on deaf ears. Many cars were pulled over and we were all accused of driving at outrageous speeds. We were all fined and issued with an official ticket.

I lived in a condo at the top of Chan Road, roughly halfway between Sathorn and Rama 3 roads. The area around Central Rama 3 was a hot spot for cops. I was signalled to stop at roadside checkpoints all the time. I was always polite with the cops but firm in denying whatever it was I had been accused of. Over time it wore me down. I tried taking other routes but that’s never a good idea in Bangkok and what should be a short trip can become a long one. I started using the car less. It’s not great when you have a car but you don’t fancy using it because you’re sick of being stopped and accused of things you hadn’t done.

I called the cop I had befriended when I was teaching and asked for his opinion. His response wasn’t encouraging. “Policeman have little money. You farang have big money. He ask you only for little money. No problem!” He was right – it was only a small amount of money. But he missed the point that it was not about the money but the feeling of vulnerability. If you can be accused of something you hadn’t done while driving and extorted for 100 or 200 baht, what’s next?

Driving had become a burden. I sold the car.

 

 

Without a car, and 2½ km from the nearest skytrain station, I moved to a smaller unit on Narathiwat Soi 10, not far from Sathorn Road. From that condo it was an easy walk to the Chongnonsee skytrain station.

Internet dating was getting old. I would meet ladies for coffee, sometimes dinner, but I wasn’t meeting the sort of lady I hoped to meet. Most ladies were keen. Not because they particularly liked me for me, but because I was a white guy and they thought I would be able to look after them. I was keen to meet someone with depth, someone who could challenge me. Thailand is full of ladies who would make a great wife, but if you need someone to challenge you, it takes time to find and you’ve got to look harder.

I concentrated on the site and didn’t date a lot. The column was going well and I was back in a groove. It had taken a while but things were picking up. Reader numbers, advertiser numbers and general feedback were all trending in the right direction.

 

 

I was out in the bars every other night. 8 years earlier I had taken a year off and was studying by day and partying by night. This time was different. I was very much in control. I wasn’t drinking much at all and many nights I would stick with water. Late nights were largely a thing of the past.

Political protests had been simmering away in Thailand for years. In December, 2008, the anti-Thaksin brigade known as the Yellow Shirts had closed down Bangkok’s airports for a week causing massive damage to the tourism industry. Now there was a pro-Thaksin movement, the Red Shirts, which was opposed to the government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, a British-born and educated Thai who quite a lot of expats – me included – were impressed with. Abhisit was arguably the closest Thailand had to a Western-style leader.

Street protests came to a head in early 2010 when the Red Shirts set up camp on the streets of downtown Bangkok, and went on to occupy large swatches of downtown for several weeks. Their numbers swelled as tens of thousands of reinforcements piled into Bangkok from upcountry, camping out on the streets of the capital. At its peak, the campsite extended from the Patumwan intersection (MBK / Siam Square) to Wireless Road. They also controlled Rajadamri Road, from Petchaburi Road in the north all the way down to Rama 4 Road. They had taken over a massive section of downtown Bangkok and they built their own infrastructure to serve the tens of thousands of (some estimates were as high as 300,000) protesters with all manner of services from food, to massage to clothes-washing and everything required to live on the streets of the capital.

 

 

I was always firm that politics wouldn’t feature in the column. But what was happening was not something I could ignore. For several weeks I visited the protest site daily, wandering about, talking with the protestors before returning to the apartment to report what I was seeing. Reports of the protests – some days I wrote two updates – brought massive traffic. Visitor numbers to the Red Shirts Protests section of the site exceeded 20,000 per day.

My coverage did not go unnoticed. A friend who does security work asked if I was interested in being a bodyguard for a CNN presenter. The suggestion was almost as wild as me being asked to become Prime Minister of New Zealand. My friend is around 190 cm tall, almost as wide and built like an Abrams tank. I am not 190 cm. I’m Stickman and the name fits – I’m built like a stick. I’m no bodyguard! At the hint of real trouble I would turn around and run! Me as a bodyguard? Are you crazy?!

 

 

It turns out this guy didn’t need a bodyguard but someone to get his client, the CNN correspondent, inside the protest area each day. There had been blowback for some of the foreign networks following coverage that many Thais considered biased or inaccurate. This is a common complaint from Thais, and pretty much whenever the international media reports on what is happening in Thailand, the Thais say it’s not accurate. “You don’t understand Thai people / Thailand!” Some of the foreign correspondents who were in Thailand specifically to cover the protests found they weren’t welcome in the protest areas. The protest site spanned a large area and for the most part it was open, but in places there were gates with guards and some foreign reporters were turned away.

The encampment had reached the Rajadamri / Rama 4 Road intersection and there was concern it would move further south. Just a few hundred metres down the road was Patpong. Soldiers patrolled Bangkok’s oldest bar area, and most bars closed. Huge coils of razor spanned Silom Road and Patpong soi 1. I know it’s a cliché, but with soldiers everywhere, military vehicles, razor wire and makeshift barricades, the entertainment area really did look like a war zone.

 

 

Daily visitor numbers to the site briefly hit an all-time high, and emails were coming in faster than I could respond. My coverage of the Red Shirt occupation was more popular than all of the other content on the site. After the occupation by the Yellow Shirts for a week in December of 2008, everyone was worried that it may happen again. The question on everyone’s mind was : should I cancel my trip?

Some days I would write two updates. I’d leave the apartment in the morning for the protest site, wander around, return to the condo and write an update. And then late afternoon I’d head back to the protest site, wander around after dark and repeat the cycle. I took hundreds of photos every day. At the end of the day I would crash. It was tiring but at the same time it was energising. I felt that what I was doing was genuinely beneficial. After a couple of years where some people said they thought I was going through the motions, I felt like I had my mojo back. For the first time in years I was getting a real buzz from operating the site.

On May 19, 2010, soldiers stormed the protest site and the Red Shirts were repelled. After an occupation that had lasted several weeks during the hottest time of the year, the streets of Bangkok were reclaimed. The mess was cleaned and a few days later it was like it had never happened.

 

 

I had a new lease on life. I was taking lots of photos and the column felt fresh. I would build openers around photos like the article about Glitterman, the eccentric Brit in a gold cape who rode an elaborately decorated bicycle around Pattaya in the afternoon. More columns kicked off with a photo essay and even an article where I interviewed a bunch of ladyboys one afternoon in Gulliver’s went down well with a readership which has more than its share of ladyboy-haters.

2010 was going well. Reader numbers were up and I was enjoying writing the column more than I had in years.

But I wasn’t settled. I was living in a dark apartment that I didn’t like. I hadn’t met a lady I was keen on but more than anything I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on a treadmill to nowhere. As much as I liked what I was doing, it was the same thing I had been doing for the last 10 years.

 

 

I would meet a lady online who was different. Things developed and I moved in with her. Many years later I would write a column about our time together and how she eventually turned up in New Zealand. In The One That Got Away I wrote, “I was getting restless. While everything with Goy was great, I was going through a period when I was feeling negative about Thailand. Christmas wasn’t far away and I really didn’t feel like spending it in Bangkok. I wanted to go home. So one day, on the spur of the moment, I bought a one-way ticket to Auckland for a flight leaving later that day.”

I needed a break from Bangkok. As much as I loved the city, it could wear you down. I wanted to spend summer in New Zealand, and catch up with old friends. I departed and for a few months I don’t think many people noticed I wasn’t around. I wrote the column from New Zealand for a few months.

In early 2011 I flew back to Bangkok. It would be my last hurrah, my last 4 years in Bangkok.

.

To be continued next week…..

 

 

Mystery Photo

Last week’s photo was taken from The Landmark Hotel, looking across Sukhumvit Road with Soi 5 in the background.

This week’s photo was taken in a popular downtown area.

 

 

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

Air quality concerns.

I’ve become slightly obsessed with the air quality after having a bad chest infection in Bangkok last January. When I arrived the week before last the reading in the area of Bangkok I keep an eye on was a rather amazing 8 which was better than back in the UK. It seems I left Bangkok just in time as when I checked yesterday it was 157. Ouch!

The Golden Age.

Your mention of the prices being quoted at Camelot Castle in 2001 surprised me. Only a couple of years before that, in Nana Plaza, I was able to enjoy a barfine of 100 baht, short-time for 500 and long-time for 1,000 baht. No wonder we look back upon that time as the Golden Age.

Reasonable pricing.

Regarding bargirl prices over the years, when I was active in the bar scene between 2002 – 2010, prices were pretty standard at 2,000 baht short-time, 3,000 baht long-time. I was with 2 gorgeous young ladies this past week who I met online, both for 3,000 short-time. I think from 2K to 3K in 20 years is quite reasonable.

Odd bar name.

I’m surprised that anyone would name a place The Mafia Club. The mafia are hardly known to be people you’d want to mix with, criminals known for intimidation and violence. And that is supposed to entice you through the door?

Rubbish visa info.

Yesterday, I as a British passport holder, entered Thailand on a tourist visa for the 6^th time this year. As every other time, I was stamped in with zero questions in double quick time. I am a genuine tourist and in my 6 entries this year will have spent a total of 45 days in the Kingdom. After viewing the YouTube video you linked to, I wasted many hours researching whether I needed to rush to get a visa or cancel my trip. In the end I decided I’d rather trust what Benjamin Hart & Tim Newton as higher trust sources had to say on the matter – and was proved correct.

Navigating relationships in a foreign culture.

I think about the guys you mention, investigations and getting hooked up with prostitutes. The conflict with the Western mentality about remaining loyal and the Thais having to survive and hedge their bets. Both sides don’t know the other’s culture or thinking, nor how to play the time apart from each other.

The beginning of the end.

Funny you should mention Purachai. Personally, I trace the start of the “long decline” to him and his puritanic campaign. As you probably remember, Nana Plaza had full nudity back in the pre-Purachai days, and we all know what happened to that! Of course many other things occurred to alter the scene over time, but I always think of him as being the first step.

Moscow comes to Pattaya.

While high season is still not at full speed in Pattaya, one of the main tourist groups have arrived in large numbers, the Russians. I noticed during the past weeks that it looked like the Russians were the only ones around in bigger numbers. Recent strolls through the Wong Amat in Naklua has confirmed this. It looks like Little Moscow there. I don’t venture over to Jomtien too much, but from what I have heard it’s the same over there, especially in the outskirts. We’re talking about families and couples here, who don’t generate income for the bars.

 

 

 

This Week’s News, Views & Gossip

Word from those in Nana Plaza is that the high season is roaring! One bar owner with more than 15 years in the gogo business tells me this is the best he has ever seen it in December. A lot of people are around and there are a lot of new girls arriving to make money over the high season. There has not been anything like the same spike in trade down the road in Soi Cowboy.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that Nana Plaza is busy so Pattaya must be busy too. The Fireworks Festival saw Sin City packed last weekend but word from the bars is that it doesn’t feel like high season. Yet. Even on Friday and Saturday night, I am told that anyone roaming around will see many bars without a single customer. And in early December that’s a bit of a worry.

Back in Bangkok, Spanky’s is tinkering with their winning formula with a new music playlist and 25 new shows. This has been a major project for the owner who figured he wanted to keep the girls interested and have something new to offer high season visitors.

 

 

It’s all go at Spanky’s where energy recovering ventilators are being installed. It’s a system that exchanges stale indoor air with filtered air from outside. The owner got the idea from the Ritz Carlton which he feels has the cleanest air in all of Bangkok. He made inquiries about the hardware they were using and is installing similar at Spanky’s. It’s a lot of money but he believes it will be worth it. It will be good for customers and particularly for staff who are in the bar for several hours each night. Until now, Spanky’s has had 2 large IQ Air units but even that wasn’t enough to truly purify the air inside the bar. Very soon, Spanky’s will boast the cleanest air and some of the dirtiest girls in all of Nana Plaza.

An extensive update from Soi Cowboy on DTR, Stinking Up High Season, features images showing sewage water leaking out on to Sewer Cowboy. When the sewer water was first mentioned on this site several months ago – yes, it has been that long – some bars in the soi pointed the finger at what was then Stumble Inn Bangkok (now Hot Lips) as the source of the leak. Thais on the soi believed the kitchen in the bar was the culprit. The bar continues to deny they are the source of the leak in the face of overwhelming evidence. The photo above was taken at 2:00 AM on Thursday outside Hot Lips and clearly shows sewage water seeping out from under the patio out front. There was no surface water anywhere else on Soi Cowboy when this photo was taken, and it was otherwise bone dry. And it was exactly the same the next night when very early on Friday morning, the area out front of Hot Lips was wet while the rest of the soi was dry.

 

 

Are the Indian scammers who sell potions they claim will help regrow hair on a bald head or reduce a big belly now operating in Bangkok? A friend was approached by a squat Indian who patted his belly and described it as big. My friend was quick to tell him to Foxtrot Oskar and didn’t hang around for the sales pitch. So it appears these pests are now active on Sukhumvit Road. That said, better them than the African drug dealers.

Last week’s column featured an email from a reader who mentioned that at 49 years of age he was experiencing various health issues which he attributed to a long stay in Thailand. He asked if I had suffered similar and I responded that I hadn’t. But when I gave his email more thought, I have to note that rather a lot of people I know who have spent time in Thailand – some of whom are still; others have left – certainly do have health issues which could at least be partially attributed to their lifestyle choices in Thailand. None of us can escape the ravages of time but the number of us who spent years in Thailand and may have health issues earlier than expected does appear to be a thing.

Down in Pattaya, the new Ferris wheel is the latest in a long line of attractions in Thailand with pricing based on nationality. For Thais, a ride is 280 baht. For foreigners, 480 baht. Why am I not surprised?

 

 

Thailand-Related Links & News Articles

From The Stickman Archives comes An Afternoon With Some Ladyboys, which was very well-received when I first ran it.

Newly opened gogo bar Hot Lips is stinking up Sewer Cowboy.

Ten foreigners are arrested when police raid an illegal poker game on Ko Phangnan.

Thailand has lifted the ban on afternoon alcohol sales, for 180 days.

A Norwegian was arrested after trying to hijack a tuktuk and then assaulting a woman to steal her bicycle.

 

 

Closing Comments

I hope you’re enjoying The Stickman Story. As I wrote in the closing comments a couple of weeks ago, I am focused on telling the story of my time in Thailand and the history of this website. There’s less emphasis on bar industry news and gossip. That’s why that section is so light this week.

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick

Stick can be contacted at : stickmanbangkok@gmail.com