With roots dating back to the 1990s, The Peep by Dundee — one of Soi Cowboy’s longest-running bar bloodlines — changed hands today and will reopen this weekend as a sister bar to Vicky’s Secret.
Better known as just “Dundee”, the name it went by from 2002-2019, The Peep is located a couple doors down from Vicky’s Secret and now shares its British-directed management.
No immediate changes – including the The Peep name – are planned immediately other than a deep clean over the next few days. John Walker, the lead partner, said plans call for reopening on Friday.
While Dundee traces its roots back to the 1990s when it operated as the Dandy Bar and, briefly, Honey Moon, the go-go has been struggling for some time with rent reportedly not paid for the past year by the Thai owner. When Vicky’s opened last year, the building owner approached Walker, seeing if he was interested in buying it.
Dundee’s Long History
While The Peep’s lineage is clearly decades long, its exact ownership path is a lot murkier, moving between at least two Thai owners this century.
As first pointed out by Stickman Bangkok more than 15 years ago when this old video was posted on YouTube, Dundee (and the beloved and now defunct Cactus) stubbornly refused “to join the neon race” on Soi Cowboy.
“(They) are two of the smaller bars that have not entered the neon war. Both could do with some baht spent on a spruce up,” Stickman wrote in 2010, following up two years later with the observation that “things have progressed to such a point that it can no longer be called a war. Fancy neon in Cowboy is the new standard.”
The bar stayed that way for another seven years and became known for one of Soi Cowboy’s best happy hours – if you sat on the patio. The Thai woman running it back then was well-known and well-liked, even if she looked surly in the Digital a-Go-Go photo from 2012 below.
The drinks may have been cheap, but the barfines were not. Stickman wrote in 2015 that the price to spring a girl from there was an eye-watering (at the time) 3,000 baht.
“What I don’t get is that whenever a customer is told that the barfine is 3,000 baht and responds with the inevitable rolling of the eyes or exclamation, it is almost always followed by the waitress saying exactly the same words: ‘Our dancers are special.’
“I can only guess that the owner or mamasan must have coached the service staff to say that. Special in price only, I would say,” Stickman mused.
But the failure to keep up with the Neon Joneses eventually caught up to Dundee, with the bar closed (and sold? It’s unclear.) in May 2019 for a three-month renovation and rebranding. It reopened in August 2019 at The Peep by Dundee, with an all-new, modern-go-go interior. The refit, however, still eschewed big neon frontage.
Dundee, Honey Moon & Dandy
Dundee began operating under that name in September 2002. “abruptly” changing names from Honey Moon and, according to Bangkok’s oldest nightlife chronicler, Bangkok Eyes.
“Neither a gain nor a loss, this was just a name change,” he wrote that year. “It looked like business had picked up substantially. So, what’s in a name?”
Honey Moon, just a drinking hole, hadn’t been around that long. Before June 2000, it had been Dandy Bar, which might explain how the go-go became Dundee.
Online references to Dandy date back to April 1996, so Honey Moon was the name only for about two years, under the same ownership. Then “Dandy” became “Dundee”.
There are two competing theories on the naming. First, that Dundee, the go-go bar, was opened by a Scotsman from Dundee. That seems unlikely.
The more plausible story is that the folks behind Dandy filed for a license for the Dandy go-go bar and a Thai clerk mistransliterated the name into English as Dundee. The error went unnoticed by ownership, but not by Thonglor police, which enforced what was written on the paper and the rest became history.
Dundee’s Next Chapter
Dundee is now getting another chapter in its storied history. Will it be the last? Right now, it’s hard to tell.
It’s not like Dundee has been outrageously successful this decade. And it doesn’t enjoy the same name recognition as Baccara, Suzie Wong or even The Dollhouse or Tilac. The Peep rebrand certainly was a flop.
Perhaps the new owners will go back to basics and Dundee will rise again. Or a new name (and properly spelled license) will take its place.
One thing that is certain is that the fantastic drink menu at Vicky’s Secret – with house spirits, beers, tequila and sochu priced at just 100 baht all-night, every night – will debut at the new bar, offering even more value on an increasingly expensive Soi Cowboy.
