Leaderboard

I’m going back to Salvador the week of Nov 8th. Flights are extremely cheap right now so I’m going to work out there for a week or two. Found a great apartment for $30/day, there are even some decent apartments for under $20/day. Let me know if you will be in town and we can hit the sauna together.

but at least they are not giving up

Tonight, Joe, the Thai boss at boyzboyzboyz announced that Boyzboyzboyz would be open every night and at 9pm, there will be a parade of bar boys. The boys were energetic tonight and there was a couple of ladyboys leading the lineup. Serene beer bar reopened tonight and will be open weekends only. Where the customers will come from is unknown and it seems very optimistic. Dream Boys and Xboys had no customers at about 10pm. Spay, a waiter at Panorama said zero customers on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

it's crazy how many of these there are. I watched episode 1 of I Told Sunset About You last weekend.

The Boyztown area has been in severe decline for years before COVID-19. The Chinese tourists kept boyztown afloat, especially Boyzboyzboyz which was filled to capacity most nights. Many older farangs bitched about Chinese women in ‘their’ bars. They are and have always been Boy bars not Gay bars. Without the Chinese women, Boyztown is fading away. Only the return of the Chinese tourists will revive the Boy bar scene. Sunee Plaza is comatose and only Jomtien Complex has a pulse.

Figured I'd start a new thread along those lines and try to keep explicit politics in the other threads this time.

From Bangkok Post Pol Cpl Wutthichai Hongsamrong holds up a banner saying, "We work like a horse but the bosses take some of the money", after his unit returned from duty outside the German embassy during the demonstrations there on Monday. Young cop made to publicly explain away banner criticising bosses Lower-ranks upset after short-changed on overtime pay A low-ranking Border Patrol policeman has explained how a photo of him appeared on social media holding up a banner accusing his superiors of not passing on the full payments due for overtime worked during the Covid-19 lockdown. "We work like a horse but the bosses take some of the money," declared the banner held up by Pol Cpl Wutthichai Hongsamrong on Monday night — and the picture went viral on social media. Pol Cpl Wutthichai, of the BPP Second Command based in Surin province, displayed the banner when his unit returned to the accommodation provided for their overnight stay after being assigned to guard the German embassy on Monday. His display of the banner and its blunt message coincided with complaints by low-ranking police across the country that they did not receive in full the promised payments for the extra duties they were assigned during the coronavirus lockdown. They alleged their bosses siphoned off deductions from the money they were due. Each police officer was supposed to get 60 baht per hour for working overtime, up to a maximum 420 baht a day for seven hours. The Royal Thai Police Office is looking into the complaints, which were made in about a dozen provinces, including Saraburi, Nonthaburi and Phuket. Pol Cpl Wutthichai was sitting alongside police spokesman Pol Maj Gen Yingyos Thepchamnong when he explained his action at a media briefing on Friday at police headquarters. The chastened police NCO said he had no intention to make a protest or cause damage to the police force over the issue. He did not intentionally show the message to the public. "I was taking the banner to dump it in a trash can, when a friend of mine who had not seen it asked me to show it to him. So I held it up for him, before I threw it in the bin," he said. He also denied he was punished for his action, but said he was ordered to write a report to his commander. The police spokesman said the issue was not over. He believed there were attempts to put the issue in the public limelight. Banners with similar messages were found in all buses taking police to and from the embassy on Monday. Pol Cpl Wutthichai promised he would not do anything like that again, and offered an apology. "I would like to apologise to all commanders and my unit for doing something that could damage the police force," he said. "Next time I will throw it away, right away," he added.

From Pattaya Mail By Barry Kenyon Nobody is quite sure where the term Boyztown originated. One possibility is the 1938 movie of that name, but Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney were hardly icons of the gay civil right movement. There is a town in India’s Kerala state called Boys Town but it is apparently famous only for its herbal gardens and cucumber sandwiches. There is a Jamaican football club called Boystown, but there’s a high murder rate of gays over there. Oh well, never mind. Pattaya Boyztown (it was originally named Boystown) was the center of gay entertainment in the 1990s and early 2000s, before competition in Sunee Plaza and the Jomtien Complex caused a slow decline. In its prime, Boyztown played host to a score of restaurants, hotels, karaokes, bars, clubs and cabaret shows appealing mostly to European gay tourists who flocked in their thousands to spend the pink pound, get sunburned, watch the eye candy and let their hair down. But in October 2020, the Boyztown district is truly deserted. For the first year in ages, Halloween will likely be a flop. In the main street, only the Panorama bar is open most evenings, but plays host to scant customers and to two bored-looking staff checking their cell phones. The two biggest cabaret clubs, Castro and Boyz Boyz Boyz, appear to be open only at weekends presumably to cater for the Bangkok crowd taking a mini-break. The once elegant Toyboys, a male go go bar catering mainly for wealthy Asian men, now has fixtures and fittings piled up outside permanently locked doors. Flamboyant drag stars Eggz Benedict and Aggie Glitterbug, not actually their real names and currently unemployed, said that Boyztown’s decline wasn’t sudden. “From about 2010, the number of European tourists began to fall off as Thailand began to get expensive and eastern Europe opened up for the first time,” said Eggz. “It’s really been downhill since then,” adds Aggie, “although the shows were packed in recent years by Chinese tour groups who have also disappeared thanks to coronavirus.” In its heyday, Boyztown businesses were also significant fundraisers for various charities, especially aids-related and orphanages. Annual street cabarets and parties could haul in hundreds of thousands of baht for worthy Thai causes. The Bangkok Post gossip columnist Bernard Trink (who died earlier this year) always refused to mention gay venues, but even he did once congratulate the Pattaya Gay Festival committee for handing out free condoms to the male prostitutes who might need them. He then ruined the positive effect by complaining that the owner of the Amor restaurant in Boyztown had tried to poison him with a tarnished shrimp cocktail and a stale carrot cake. Will Boyztown recover its former glory? Eggz and Glitterbug think not. “Pattaya’s future lies in a different direction with literally millions of Chinese tourists waiting in the wings,” muses Eggz. “It’s not only Boyztown,” complains Aggie, “nobody is making any money these days.” Both of them point to social media apps, such as Grindr and Hornet, which have replaced gay bars and clubs as meeting places. “But what will come back after the virus are the cabaret extravaganzas,” predicts Eggz, “because you don’t have to be gay to enjoy a good drag show.” Can’t argue with that.

Link 3 pic.twitter.com/k1VgBNbMkG

https://t.co/dtyzP6DOms Moonlight models from 00:54

Link https://t.co/iF6xqSdLqK

Its probably as simple as few high power socialite controlling the rules of what can and cannot be built in the area.

The pandemic will not last for ever. Mass tourism will restart - the Thai economy demands it, including gay tourists eager to resume inter-action with Thai boys. The dating apps do not provide the full experience. The Complex is a better location for gay oriented facilities. Sunee will become increasingly part of the Muslim zone and BT could be developed by a luxury hotel and shopping area like Terminal 21 attracting Chinese Visitors with money to spend. The Jomtien Complex would be complete by the addition of a couple of gay gogos. Maybe a revival of the gay beach ?.

From The Thai Enquirer Opinion: A rich Thai socialite just killed a pedestrian in a hit-and-run; the legal double standards are shocking Meet Akarawin “Jimmy” Taechaubol, a young, prominent Thai businessman, socialite, millionaire heir to the JC Kevin Development real estate empire, and police captain working as a sub-inspector at the strategic division of the Narcotics Suppression Bureau. On the morning of October 22, Akarawin struck his friend’s BMW into 49-year-old Udom Saengkaya, a lukchin (fishball) vendor who was on his way home from work. Udom died on the spot, with his body faced down on the ground, head bloodied, and limbs broken. Khlong Tan police chief Col. Ruetee Pandum, was asked [Ed: We have now bolded, struckthrough, underlined, and italicized the previous link so people won’t miss it] whether Akarawin will ever face a prison sentence, reportedly laughed nervously and responded, “that’s up to the court.” These will most likely be the only charges against him. Almost a week later, and it’s almost as if the case has been dropped, with hardly anyone or news media talking about it. This is not the first, the fifth, nor the last time Thailand will see this happen. The culture of impunity is so glaringly obvious, yet so normalized, ignored, and celebrated even, by mostly those holding onto power. We’ve seen it happen before, most recently and notoriously with the Red Bull heir case: eight years later, and Vorayuth Yoovidhya still hasn’t been held accountable for killing Wichian Klanprasert. His case was almost dropped back in July, if not for public outrage. Akarawin Taechaubol, no matter the intention, family background, or wealth, should face the same consequences and prosecution within the Thai justice system. Akarawin’s story, like Vorayuth, are merely symptoms of a disease that is far more problematic — and that is the Thai judiciary system. The privileged Thais, those in power, and people like Akarawin should not be put on a pedestal and made to feel that their lives are more important and worthy than others, merely because they have more in superficial and material gains.

Barry Kenyon is the former British vice consul In Pattaya, who wrote a very entertaining book about his experiences of dealing with the difficulties and disasters of the British expat community over a number of years. So he certainly speaks with authority about the current situation. I’ve looked at a few YouTube videos of Covid Pattaya which show many girlie bars open for business (although customers are very thin on the ground), particularly in the Soi Buakhow area where many retired expats reside in cheap rooms. I have the impression that gay expats do not favour that area but instead live more in Jomtien often with their boyfriends. Perhaps the Complex bars are surviving better with their custom.

Sunee is no better than Boys Town if not worse. Only JC is barely surviving thanks to the ex-Pat community.

Because BoyzTown could successfully attract legions of foreign tourists perhaps, its beer prices were significantly higher than other gay venues such as Sunee and Jomtien Complex. Now that gay establishements are largely having to try and survive on the ex-Pat community, is it really any wonder that it is Sunee and JC with their cheaper beers that are keeping their heads above water (just), while BT looks like a ghost town? One of the long-standing boys at Toy Boys tells me that his boss has effectively mothballed the place until there is a significant upturn in tourists, a sort of survival-mode hibernation. Whether the same is true of other B T bars I cannot say.

Im good at airing the problem but lousy at offering solutions. I agree wholeheartedly with z909 about the quality or lack thereof of candidates. but then who selects the candidates? Political parties. As long as you have parties and first past the post, you have division and a large chunk of each constituency not represented. My parents generation accepted this because they sincerely believed that whoever was elected would represent all the electors. Now politicians beholden to a party have to tow the party line, however that represents the views of the electors. Over the weekend I was been reading of the recent case in the UK of the excellent Manchester United soccer player, Marcus Rashford. At the age of just 22 and from a single parent underprivileged background, he led a successful movement to persuade the UK government to continue school meals for kids from poor backgrounds during the summer vacation. Johnson's party had vetoed the idea and then had to do a hugely embarrassing U turn. A few days ago an opposition party tabled a motion that kids from poor homes should again benefit with meals during the half term and Xmas vacations. Johnson forced a party line and it was defeated. Instead of bitching about it, Rashford and his team set about talking with cafes, restaurants, other suppliers and even local councils to try and ensure decent meals for the kids. A petition signed by 2,000 pediatricians stated that ensuring young kids have enough nourishment is one of the most "basic human responsibilities." The huge outpouring of support in the country has yet again totally shamed a government that has wasted vast amounts of sterling in its increasingly hopeless attempts to control the corona virus. A fraction of that could easily provide nourishing meals for kids from homes where their parents now just don't have the money to buy enough food.. The excuses put forward by some allegedly intelligent MPs were disgraceful in the extreme, as a result of which they have had to apologise in the face of massive public opposition. One ruling party MP took to social media linking free meals for kids with"crack dens" and "brothels". Utter idiocy! It seems as though Johnson's government will once again have to do another even more massively embarrassing U turn thanks to the passionate humanitarian efforts of a humble young 22 year old wise beyond his years. If this is the result of democracy, there is something rotten about the present system of governance.

Hmmmmmmm, thanks for the advice. I will upload them all next weekend. Stay safe!