Travellerdave

Why would the coowner buy wine for your boyfriend and get him drunk ? Some sort of connection between them ?. Asian guys are not used to wine and underestimate its potency.

Ladyboys + 4am = big danger

I’ve done sogkran once about 15 years ago in Pattaya and recall it being fun, but I wouldn’t book that period again. When contemplating a trip in March/April I check the songktan dates so as to avoid it.

Macaroni you have nicely described the Dongtan Gay beach as I remember it in my first few years visiting Pattaya (about 2002 to 2005) when many of my afternoons were spent there, enjoying the sun, sea , the ambience and the boys, (especially the boys. ). Sometimes it was difficult to find an unoccupied chair especially when accompanied by other farangs or boyfriends. There were maybe 10 or a dozen obviously gay orientated concessions where few women or hetro couples were to be found and several nearest the toilet block always seemed to be 100% gay. Happy days !

Is there still a recognised gay section ?

Of course if you like the combination of a boy plus sand and sea there is sometimes the option of taking your off or boyfriend to the beach. Whilst staying in the Complex I’ve taken suitable boys for a late morning breakfast and then for an hour or two at what’s left of the gay beach. Once last year I had a boy accompany me into the calm sea where we had some fun swimming and splashing in the warm water. Lovely memory which deserved the promised enhanced tip.

Why is the shortening quaint and colonist ? I can’t work that out.

Coco is definitely the best gym in Pattaya. When in Pats I go most days in the late morning. These days I prefer to use the treadmills after weights rather than do dawn runs.

Still a lot of gays go in the afternoons to Dongtan to socialise but few boys. Unfortunately females have infiltrated in recent years.

Now ? Just down to 3 visits per week to the gym. When in Pattaya I go to Coco on Beach Road.

I’ve come across this problem many times particularly a few years ago when I was into fitness big time. Offed Boys found my desire to leave them in bed for early morning runs incomprehensible and not once did one take up an occasional invitation to try a little exercise, even though most had hard fit young bodies, usually from a previous life of working in the rice fields. Walking from the hotel in the Jomtien Complex to the beach or from Sunee to the Ambience was not at all what they wanted to do. The incentive of a present failed to persuade one boy to walk with me to Soi Buakhow Market from Boyztown.

Boy69>………../ i do agree with a lot of what you say above but would add the following: - the unsavory reputation certainly impacted on me, but maybe you are right that overall perhaps it’s a minor factor - Yes Thailand has become less of a bargain destination but that does not seem to have affected the booming str sex/drinking scene. Estimates of about 40,000 female bar girls/ gogo dancers/ masseuses in Pattaya currently. Plus hundreds of ladyboy prostitutes. How many boys servicing us gays ? Maybe several hundred only. Jomtien Complex 250, Boyztown/Sunee 150, Freelance 100. Total 500. Just guesstimates. - Agreed that Thai guys have many more opportunités for earning a living and I mention the result at the end of my post. I would add that boys from Cambodia/Laos have to an extent replaced the missing Thais in Pattaya.

I first visited Pattaya in 2001 in company with another gay friend. That was just before the internet and websites like this one took off and due to scarce information we had no idea where to stay and where to find the gay scene. However we quickly found our feet one way or the other and enjoyed the exotic (for us ) atmosphere, the amazingly low prices (72 baht = £1), the food and hotels, the bars and gogos (took us a few days to find Sunee) and of course the boys . Especially the boys !. Since then I have visited Thailand numerous times, mainly Pattaya, but also bkk and a few other places. On return home from the first few trips friends and family were very interested in hearing all about my travels (my accounts varied according to the audience). This was before many people became active on the internet and only a few commented about the racy reputation that the country was beginning to acquire. That changed around the mid 2000’s, especially when accounts of under age sex started to appear in the tabloid newspapers and everyone started surfing the internet. I started to play down my visits and even lie occasionally as to where I spent my holidays. The gay friend of my first visit stopped going. Advance a few more years to the 2010’s and the Pattaya gay scene began to thin out, especially in Sunee which previously contained maybe 10 gogos plus a good number of bars. Contrast that with the booming str night life available to non-gays with girlie gogo’s opening all over, adding to the numerous beer bar complex’s. Visitors from non-farang countries, who don’t visit the gay bars greatly increased. The gay scene much reduced compared with the earlier period pre 2005 (the good old days ?) and gay visitors have become an even smaller minority than previously.My theory is that the unsavory reputation as regards sex and drinking has impacted more on the gay communities. There are other factors of course: the decline of the $ £ Eur against the baht and the.perceived less attractiveness of available Asian male prostitutes.

Insurance fraud attempt ?

Yes it would be interesting if there was a list of places attracting gay visitors. Before I discovered Thailand in 2002 I was a regular to the Spanish island of Gran Canaria and the resort of Playa del Ingles . Days posing and flirting on the beach, sex in the sand dunes and the night life made for a great holiday. But no Asian boys (not in those days anyway) unfortunately.

Reading Mack’s well written blog, made me slightly nauseous when getting to the appalling part about the girlie ping pong show. I think if I was str, a visit to such a performance would kill off any sexual desire for a while.

What’s the difference between “coyote dancing” and “dancing” ? I once had two boys doing the latter for me in my hotel room.

Foolish - inefficient aircon at the Tarntawan is not something I have experienced. You have to take these reviews with a degree of skepticism. See Londoner’s post - he’s stayed there many times and no mention of poor aircon.

My trips are normally based in Pattaya for 2 or 3 weeks, but I usually include a side trip to BKK for a couple of nights where my hotel of choice has been the Tarntawan, which was recommended to me as a gay hotel in 2002 when I made my first visit. I’ve never thought of staying anywhere else (bit boring I suppose).

Yes the gay scene in Pattaya is now just a shadow of what it was when I discovered the place in year 2000 and 2001, when it offered a proliferation of bars and gogos. I just hope it lingers on for a few more years to cater for myself and other gay sex tourists and our liking for Asian boys.

I would recommend reading Barry Kenyons book relating his role as the British Vice Consul in Pattaya, when a big part of his job was helping “Brits in the Shit”. The book also,covers the Bridge Club arrests, when the bib noticed a small amount of money on a table (very suspicious). It turned out to be members contributions towards the purchase of tea and coffee consumed during breaks in play.

When I was involved with a raid (3 times maybe) the BIB did not differentiate between single guys and those whose hands had strayed to playing with boys cocks. The one occasion I was in the latter category I was relieved to be waved on my way.

During the years 2004 to 2010 I remember raids by the bib were fairly common particularly in Sunee. If you were present the routine was to divest yourself of any boy with you and sit quietly while they checked boys I’d cards and possibly performed drug tests. Normally you would be allowed to leave without difficulty early in the proceedings.

I agrée with Vinapu regarding the merits of the hourly airport bus. However at busy times, as at high season, a snag can be waiting some time at the airport for a bus to have free space. Often passengers get off at one of the Sukhumvit Road stops and fall prey to the rip off merchants offering high priced transport to their accommodation. My advice when asked for is to stay on the bus until the terminus at Jomtien and use a baht bus from there to Pattaya. Many times I’ve pulled my wheelie bag over the last few hundred yards of rough ground from the Jomtien bus terminus to my hotel in the Complex to thankfully complete the 24 hour journey from the UK. I much prefer the bus over taxis - Thai driving scares me.

I did the Phanon Rung trip from Korat about 15 years ago in company with a friend and our Thai boyfriends, both of whom came from the area. It’s a rather impressive ancient ruined temple complex. We got to the site by taxi and after making a self-guided tour we found there was no hotel accommodation nearby, necessitating a return to Korat in the back of a local’s pickup truck.