Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests we are discussing the, it is kind of the end of an era around here. It looks like Stickman is stepping down and look, for all you new expats out there, you may not be aware of him although many of you probably are. His reputation is pretty vast in the expat world. He has been writing about what they called the 'nightlife circuit' for years, but you can look at it however you want. Long story short, this guy is a Colossus. I mean he's just really a Colossus in the expat world; that's the only way to explain it. 

I initially thought of making this video; I wasn't aware of this until I read from Bangkok-Boy over on X, @Bangkokboy17 under: The Last Call: Why Bangkok's Most Iconic Commentator is Finally Walking Away. Quoting directly: "After 25 years of documenting the neon-lit highs and gritty of Thailand's nightlife, Stickman Bangkok hangs up the keyboard. This time it's for keeps. For a quarter of a century, he was the digital heartbeat of Bangkok's nightlife. From the smoke-filled corners of Patpong in the late nineties, to the smartphone-saturated alleys of Soi Cowboy today, "Stickman" has been the go-to chronicler for expats, travellers, and the curious. But on December 28, 2025, the man behind the myth dropped the ultimate bombshell: the column is over." 

Now you can go check him out on - I'll go ahead and throw a link in the description below to his weekly column; it is under The Stickman Story, Epilogue - and just to quote a little bit further from Bangkok-Boy, but we will throw up the Stickman article itself on screen. I found it through Bangkok-Boy. I like to credit where credit is due; both links will be in the description below. Quoting further: "It wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the site's owners. In a final cinematic attempt to save the legendary weekly column, Stickman was presented with a "dream deal": a significant pay rise and three all-expenses paid trips to Bangkok every year. It was a package designed to solve the very problem he'd been grappling with - staying "in touch" with the city's elusive vibe from his home in New Zealand. The proposal even won over his partner. "My girlfriend is furious," he admitted. Yet, the man who spent decades navigating the world's most famous red-light districts found the one thing money couldn't buy was his passion. 

A Changing City. Quoting further: "Stickman's departure isn't just about the man; it's about the era. He reflects on a Bangkok that has fundamentally shifted. The "Hello, welcome!" cat-calls of yesteryear have been replaced by the blue glow of smartphone screens. "The ladies are fixated by their phones," he notes, signaling a "real change" in an industry that once thrived on feigned - but active - interest. For Stickman, the "chrome pole bars" have lost their luster. "Honestly," he writes, "I'd be happy to never set foot in a bar again." 

The End of an Era. So why not pass the torch? Many readers wondered if a "Stickman 2.0" might emerge. But the author remains firm: the brand is the man. He argues that replacing a unique online voice is like replacing a lead singer - the band might play the same notes, but the soul is gone." 

Yeah, I can get where Stick is coming from. He's been doing it a long, long time and this place has changed, and that's really also the thrust of this video. One is a tip of the hat and a farewell to you Stickman, thanks very much. Yeah, I did appreciate, we mentioned you on the channel sometime back and got a re-mention in your column and that was a real trip for me. I mean the fact that I was mentioned by Stickman, that's up there. I mean this guy really is an icon of Thailand expatdom. I mean when I first came here in 2008, everything that was happening was happening over on the Stickman; if it was happening it was happening over on his feed basically. That was the sort of the same era of the Thai Visa era where everything was on that forum with regard to visas and things. There was all kinds of misinformation. That's kind of what started me doing initially blogging and eventually over here on YouTube. But yeah, I also, aside from doing a sendoff for Stickman, his observation is pertinent. We're in a very different Bangkok. I feel very odd in many ways.

In many ways in my life, I'm sort of a man caught between two eras and caught between two worlds. The world of the past and the world of the future and in many ways, coming here to Bangkok when I did was me trying to hold on to the old world longer because at time if you will, the reach of the Thai, if you think of sort of the reach of the “West”, the Western Zeitgeist, it could only get so far in Asia; it didn't really make a dent. Then smartphones happened and Stick brings up a good point. Now he's kind of looking at it from the standpoint of female attention in some of the watering holes here in Bangkok, but it's also had an impact in the overall Zeitgeist of Thailand, the fact that - COVID was a perfect example where in my opinion, a propaganda initiative that really should have stayed back in the West, managed to infect Thailand not only through smartphones and basically all these different platforms, it didn't help that the World Health Organization is led by a literal Communist who essentially changed the rules on what a pandemic was, in order to shoehorn COVID under that rubric in order to get this global, frankly tyranny, that we got for a number of years.

But that being said, all of this stuff over the years has taken its toll. It's a very different Bangkok, it's very different from when I came here. I have a very weird perspective on this place. I'm either a really young old guy, or I'm a really old young guy. Because I came out here in '24, '25 and stayed ever since, nearly 20 years, so I've been here. So the guys that come out and sort of retire and are older, they may be older than me physically in terms of age, but I have been here longer and so it's kind of a weird dynamic in that respect. Then meanwhile, I'm just watching this change around me, and the place that I fell in love with, I'm not saying it's gone, but it's changed so much that it is very difficult sometimes to recognize it and maybe sometimes we all go chasing after what Bangkok or Thailand was when we first got here, maybe get out of a sense of nostalgia, I don't know, but you do feel the difference. I can see where Stick found himself in a position where he just didn't feel like he had his finger on the pulse of things the way he did before, not out of anything he did, just the way everything has so thoroughly changed in this new Bangkok we are now living in going into 2026, here in the Kingdom of Thailand.