macaroni21

Eh? As ASEAN citizens, don't the Burmese get into Thailand visa-exempt? Or are these guys looking for longer term visas, in which case why didn't the reporter say so?

It's very hard to visualise how much labour and skill went into building these monuments and sculptures. It's no easy thing to shape stone and rock into these complex forms.

Someone mentioned to me that the owners of existing shops believe that all they need to do after any new legislation is to hire a pharmacist to certify every sale as medically necessary.

Haha, that is an age-old tradition.🤣

Hang on.... I have seen from time to time over the years mention of a toilet block. I know only one (a hexagonal or octagonal one) which scent can be detected from some distance. But my memory is that the gay section isn't near it. It's at least 200m further on, almost to Rabbit Resort. Have you guys been sitting at the wrong part? The nearest toilets to the gay section are found in a white building with rooms to let, formerly known as White House (don't know what it's called now) Much cleaner facilities.

The gay section was predominantly farang. It was supported mainly by the winter exiles from Europe and North America, who would stay two or three months each time. Their headcount was never that many, but because they were temporarily resident, they could make frequent visits and so the gay section looked well patronised. On a typical high season day, there might have been 10-15 gay farangs per concession stand at any one time. Multiply that by about 6 concession stands, and there would have been 60-90 gay men on the beach at any one time, many with twinky companions from Sunnee as well. That was what made the scene. Of course there were also those who made shorter trips to Thailand (like me) and spent a few days on the beach, adding variety to the mix of clients. Short visitors also helped during the middle of the year when the winter exiles returned home. However, because of the rainy season, the crowd was always thin between May and Sept, perhaps 3-4 clients per concession stand at midday. So even back then, it looked half dead some months of the year. So, what happened? Well, some of those farangs have since gone over to the big beach in the sky. Others, and potential replacements of a younger generation, no longer find it affordable to stay 3 months in Thailand. Costs in Thailand have changed considerably. Thailand has, over the past 20-25 years seen the rise of the gay Asian tourist. They have different tastes from the gay farang. Asians are less into sun and beaches and they're mostly not into fem twinks either, so Pattaya and Sunnee held little interest. But most important of all, they do not stay 2-3 months. They make short trips instead, and stick mostly to Bangkok. Paralleling the decline of the numbers of long-stay winter exile farangs have been the decline of Sunnee and the Chiang Mai tourist scene (which got life from the side trips that the winter exiles used to make to break the monotony of staying in Pattaya). There are plenty of retired Asians. Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China and Singapore are aging societies. Besides the non-interest in beach and fem twinks, I have explained in previous posts additional reasons why retired Asians don't mirror the same pattern of spending winters in Pattaya. Three reasons: these countries don't have generous pension schemes like in the West; their winters are relatively mild (or like Singapore, no winter) so less need to flee; don't speak English.

As @omega says, there are still several flying the rainbow flag and these stands have more gay clients and straight. But it's true that they're not exclusively gay. They never were but where in the old days there would be perhaps one woman in ten clients, now there are probably three.

The Space Hair boys are yummy. But we need some definitive reports of successful in-room rendezvous to be confident that they are really available. Who will volunteer to do the research 🤓 ?

After a short ride, I think about 5 minutes, the shuttle train arrives at another shockingly sterile station on the satellite terminal end. Go up the escalators. Once up, the first thing that you see is a phalanx of duty-free shops, But of course. Actually, they're not that many. Perhaps more will open when passenger traffic increases, but.... Here's a map of the satellite terminal. The commercial spaces are coloured in tan or dun. As you can see there are not that many spaces earmarked and most of those lots in the middle part of the terminal are already occupied. So I don't think there will ever be many more of these duty-free and brandname shops. In any case, I have long wondered who the heck goes to airports to buy fancy brand merchandise. But then, Thailand has long been a bit behind in its thinking, still catering to glamour travel when the age of mass travel (complete with football yobs) has been upon us for decades. They did learn from the mistakes when the main terminal was first built- which for some mysterious reason had next to no toilets for the public or passengers. In the main terminal, they went totally overboard in allocating spaces for commerical use (RENTAL INCOME!!!) such that basic amenities like toilets and sitting areas were totally sacrificed. Looking at the map above, the toilets appear to be plentiful in the satellite terminal. The floor above the concourse level has lounges. Or maybe just the one lounge "Miracle Lounge". As members of the board may know, I don't fly business class (waste of money, and not being plus-sized, no need for larger seats) or care for lounges, so I didn't go up to explore. There were only four F&B outlets in the staellite terminal. Fortunately, I was flying on a full-service airline. If one were on a low-cost airline that does not serve meals on board (other than instant noodles, etc, at ridiculous prices) and needed to eat before boarding, options would be limited to McDonalds, Burgerking, Ginger Farm Kitchen and Koh Hup (which also serves burgers + some Thai dishes). The airport authority does not look very smart in its choices of F&B; they could have had a wider range of food. Another difference from the main terminal is the way the gates now do not come with them own designated waiting rooms. It's open-plan now. There were few flights out of the satellite terminal, so it was mostly deserted. Another proof as to how behind the curve the airport designers/authority are lies in the provision of charging points. These are few and far between. You would think that every row of seats should be equipped with them, but no, only about one in five or six rows. So that means roughly one set of outlets for every 50 seats. I tried to charge my phone just to test them out (I really didn't need charging, but just wanted to try) and guess what? There was no juice. The electrical outlets, even when installed, had no electricity! I tried another one. Also dead. In this picture, notice how only the front row has charging points. The rows behind do not.

On a related note, I departed Bangkok last month via the satellite terminal. Here are some pictures I took, which should give you an idea of the shiny new addition to the airport. The gates for the satellite terminal are numbered starting with the letter "S", as you can see from the sign hanging from the ceiling in the main terminal. Follow the signs and they will lead you to a set of escalators going down deep into the basement. More escalators, but this time there are staff to make sure that you're headed in the right direction. Then you're down into an utterly sterile space where you wait for the shuttle train. To be continued.

You've only noticed it now? I've been saying this for years now. It's also been there in the official tourism statistics for over a decade. Asian tourists far outnumber westerners in both the general as well as gay traffic. And here I qualify that I am not using "asian" in the UK sense where it means indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi, but I mean the oriental Asian (what a quaint term).

Thank you @dscrtsldnbi. Good to know the rates that you found and the rates I found (a year earlier) are roughly in the same ballpark, though mine was more "institution" based and yours more freelance, if I'm reading your notes correctly. I wrote 400 - 500k IDR with one example of 600k. You wrote "A massage session with extras would be IDR 400k - IDR 750k." (I think your 750k instance was a sample of one too, right?) @floridarob who always seems good at getting the best deals wrote "300,000-400,000 seem to be the norm, I paid someone 500,000 last november."

Two quick comments: 1. Beware artist's renditions - rooms may be smaller than they look in the pictures. 2. The thing that struck me was the tiny window. Surely it was possible to have a bigger one?

Only one hour? Count your lucky stars. I've experienced much worse.

Here's a new video on Youtube touching on Malaysia Hotel and the Ngam Duphli/Sri Bamphen area. Interesting bits of information.

I have been to Negombo twice, both times because I wanted to be near the airport in the days before departure. As @fedssocr said, there's really nothing that would make Negombo an attraction in itself. The beach is difficult to access and is nowhere as nice as the beaches beyond Galle. Negombo is not even in a convenient location for accessing other attractions around Sri Lanka, which are mostly inland and in the mountains (other than the beach towns beyond Galle). I did have a massage once in Negombo that included a handjob, a so-so experience. I cannot now remember what the name of the place was, but it's not something I would want to make a trip for. I just happened to be in the town with nothing better to do.

Spot on! One evening last week, 8:20pm. Mack and friend walk past two doormen for a gogo bar, on his way to Foodland. Doorman 1: "Boy bar, gogo bar," making arm movement to invite entry into his bar. Mack: "It's only 8:20. You're not even open." Doorman 2: "Have many boy." Mack: "And I have many hungry. For food." Doorman: 1 "Come back later?" Mack: "Maybe. We'll see." Doorman: 1 "Tip?"

Let me hazard a guess: the Pattaya city council or whatever they call themselves is obsessed with making their city a family friendly destination, and they are ultra sensitive to any marketing effort that still makes it look like sin city. Bangkok is more relaxed because the majority of tourists it gets are 'morally upright' visitors anyway, whose primary interests are temples, malls, food, chatuchak, malls, food....

Oops, bad typo. I meant "I have seen this with my own eyes in bars quite a few times."

I have seen this my own bars quite a few times. The two most recent incidents (2022 and 2023) were in Toy Boys Pattaya and Fresh Boy Bangkok. In the Toy Boy case, I was in the bar pretty late. A dressed boy came into the bar, and the first thing he did was to hand over a wad of notes to the papasan. He was probably returning from an off from earlier that evening. A similar thing happened at Fresh Boy, except that it was quite early in the evening (only 9-something) before show time. A dressed boy came in and handed money (don't know how much) to the mamasan. He was probably off'd the previous night. And that's what drives me nuts about how the businesses conduct themselves. If offing is what brings in the money, then why do they make such a bad job of marketing the boys? Instead, over-concentrating on the shows?

I am pretty sure Banana Bar pays a much higher rent than the Patpong Soi 2 places. But as @spoon pointed out, it is almost all cabaret now, with ... which is fine if that's what the location and traffic wants. Won't surprise me if they decide to be a mini-Tiffany and drop the rent boys part of the business altogether.

True for me too. Here's my two cents' worth (again). IMHO, it is important to distinguish the Bangkok scene from the Pattaya scene. They have been bifurcating for a long time. The Pattaya scene depended heavily on winter exiles from the Northern hemisphere, and we know where the trend is heading. Pattaya has never managed to be much of an attraction to the gay Asian travellers. The Bangkok scene is a more complex story. Its three parts: gogo bars, massage, and social-and-dancing locales, are going on separate trajectories. I believe the social-and-dancing venues are doing fine. Business is robust, not just on Silom Sois 2 and 4, but also in places like Fake Club, etc. Bangkok attracts the Asian travellers. To the farang, it may be difficult to tell a Thai apart from another East or Southeast Asian, but eavesdrop on the language they use and it will be clear how much the Asian traveller is contributing to gay scene tourism. The massage business looks relatively healthy too, though, as with all massage businesses around the world, there is always considerable turnover, i.e. shops exit the business, new enterprises start up. I credit this to the fact that the shops outside of the Silom-Surawong area continue to depend largely on local custom as their bread-and-butter clientele. Tourists are icing on the cake. The shops in the Silom-Surawong area are more tourist oriented, but because of the healthy flow of Asian tourists, they're doing OK. More importantly, the massage shops continue to attract young men as workers. Understanding why they can attract young men into the industry whereas the gogo bars struggle to do so helps us understand the strategic mistakes the gogos bars made over the years. The Bangkok gogo business: A part of me thinks their days are numbered. I would say that they are being killed by two things: the tea money and the horrible strategic mistake the market leaders made to expose themselves to the general public through relying on the non-sex-buying customer. Let me elaborate. Tea money: While I don't have the insider figures, I think this is a key factor in the exorable rise in prices for drinks and offs. Of course, high prices limit sales volume. Tea money may also be the factor holding back gogo bars' reinvention. They don't seem to be able to try anything new, and I suspect this has to do with the terms of the tea money deal. As soon as bar tries to experiment with the business model, the tea-money-collectors will want to charge more. Exposure: When the gogo bars began to welcome hordes of straight tourists, they basically put a jinx on their staff recruitment. It gets harder to recruit when the gogo boy is expected to put himself on stage for people to gawk at them, even worse then he is expected to be part of an explicit show. The calculus is like this: The boy will do it if there is a high chance of an off. But if the great majority of the audience are only there to gawk, the boy earns little for "shaming" himself. So recruitment falls off a cliff. Here's something to observe when you're next in a gogo bar. Look at the ages of the performers in the Big Cock Parades or other explicit show items. They are the older ones. Dream Boys', Sol's and Tawan's stable now have a significant number of guys in their 40s. I doubt if they get off'd. So why do the bars keep them on their roster? Because they're the ones more likely to be prepared to show cock. The young ones won't do it. There is another strategic mistake the gogo bars made. They have left too much of the management in the hands of gatoeys. I think some bars are run as employment-creation platforms for ladyboys. The mamasan's primary objective seems to be creating jobs for her fellow ladyboys. Shows with fancy costumes and lip-sync don't attract the the boy-offing customer. They attract the gawkers, which then reduces the boys' chances of getting off'd, which then exacerbates the shaming the boys have to endure for working in a gogo bar. Yes, the economic progress that Thailand has made, the rise in wages, have generally made it less attractive or necessary to work in the sex industry. But the massage parlours have no difficulty recruiting. Only the gogo bars. So, economic progress does not explain everything, which is how I came to the view that the the factors unique to the gogo bars - exposure, gawking, ladyboy acts - are the real killers.

Despite statistics showing a recovery of tourism arrivals - there were over 27 million in 2023 which is roughly similar to the annual numbers of 2013 (26.5 million) - the traffic in Hotmale last night was pretty bad. At about 11pm while the show was in progress, there were only 10 customers. Earlier, on my way in, I noticed that their outdoor bars had just 2 customers.

@floridarob's map location was clear enough. It's as he described - a single shop unit in a small road parallel to Second Road. The only difficulty some may have is his description of "green awning". Colour descriptions don't always work for those of us who are colour-blind. The restaurant that @thaiophilus indicated is a totally different one, on Second Road itself, known as "Pakboong loy fah" a.k.a. Flying Vegetables Restaurant. I don't know if they do the flying vegetables act anymore. It was quite a thrill.

Read the full article. The reported used five different ways, one of which cost $400, and yet "In total, Victor found 17 out of 27 cameras — not a bad result, but not a great one either, especially given the time he spent locating them." I can only hope that whatever anyone manages to film of my body in a hotel room has absolutely no marketable value.