macaroni21

There seems to be some nastiness in the Thai language forums. I translated a message from Apollo's Line feed - it's one of several - and this is what I saw: "Don't believe anything too much. Follow the massage shop review group. It's a matter of confusion, competition, and lots of bangs. attack each other We also help each other. The store doesn't care. Customers who come to use our services will know everything well. We do not compete with anyone, do not care about anyone, do not interfere with anyone. We live like this and are most comfortable. Providing good care services for our customers as always. Our customers are the most important. Other people, we let them pass." I have no idea what it's all about, but we can read between the lines, I suppose.....

I have data to prove you right, at least with respect to first drink prices. Last year I wrote about this on my blog. There is a graph too. See Bangkok gogo bars: 15 years of price rises

They have a massage wing too (can't recall the name right now) which we hardly have postings about on this board. The last time I heard someone talk about it (pre-covid) I remember he said he felt out of place because while the place was busy, all other customers were Thai. I didn't understand why he felt that way, since the boys would have been there for the money, so what did it matter if he was farang? But your comment above reminded me of that guy's comment. Maybe the absence of postings about this massage place has something to do with the ethnic profile of its customer base?

Hah, it's mid twenties with lower than average humidity in Bangkok.

Yes, like others, I have seen the young Asians in the gogo bars, including some who offed dancers. I have also seen young Asians in massage places. But there are more older Asians in both places, though by "older", I don't mean geriatric. I mean something like 40 - 50. In the days when Hero was at its peak, and that place used to have, at nearly all times, customers in the lounge looking at the glassed room - and Hero was very popular with the Asian crowd - there were opportunities for overhearing their conversations and forming some idea of the demographic profile. Most, I believe would be from non-English-speaking countries, a conclusion I could make from overhearing - therfore unlikely that they are on this board. However, I could hear some of them speaking among themselves in English. So these guys are English-speaking Asians (probably Singapore and Malaysia). They were younger than the average farang, but not that young. That's the constituency I am thinking of when I speak of Asians on this board.

@PeterRS Misunderstanding alert! I don't imagine the Asian participants in this forum to be young. In my mind, I picture them as folks mostly over 40, with sufficient disposable income and an interest in places that trade in sex, like most others here.

Thank you. Makes sense now. They've had three addresses, not two; that was what stumped me.

Trying to figure out its current address. I see two on various media. One is 375/5 Pracha Rat Sai 2 Road. Its on their latest LINE burst. This address seems to be directly beneath Bang Pho station. The other is 365/4 Prachatrat sai 1, stated on its weebly.com website and Instragram. On Oct 15 last year, @reader reported that it was "Located directly below the Bang Pho Station on the Blue line". But then reader reported yesterday that "it has just relocated to new quarters not far from original location." Logically, this seems to mean the address is not any longer under Bang Pho station but instead at 365/4 Pracha Rat Sai 1 which is about 1km north of Bang Pho station. Yet that contradicts what it is saying on its LINE burst. Knowing the poor ability of Thai small businesses to maintain websites, I find it hard to believe that the weebly.com wesbite is current and the LINE information is out of date. @reader, based on your most recent visit, which is the current address?

Am trying the method suggested by @Marc in CalifCaCalifCaCalifCCalifCaCalifCaCalCalifCaCalifCa pic attached. it's from Jey Spa, though, not Apollo.

I don't recall seeing Nordic Idols or Iberian Vikings, but I certainly saw a lot of unwashed homeless in downtown Curitiba. Attractions-wise, there is not much in the city either. The only cute guy I saw there was the hotel clerk who checked me in. He was smallish, with a rascally Italian look.

@Marc in Calif yes, that should work. Why didn't I think of it? Apollo hasn't really thought through its sales and marketing. It's sending a few pictures, always in aggregated sets, with no info about physique or expected tips. Hardly the most user-friendly set-up.

When it comes to the LINE app, I'm a technical klutz since I have no reason or opportunity to use this app unless I am in Thailand. So, here's hoping someone can help me out here. I have the friended Apollo Massage on Line. They sent me a mosaic of boys pictures all with Thai names, no English names (see attached) All the pics are in a single image file, not separate image files. I ask them how do I choose and tell them whom I have chosen. They reply to say Capture a picture What does Capture a picture mean? How is it done? I think maybe it means screenshot (am I right? perhaps I'm wrong making this assumtpion) but to do that on a single face, I need to able to zoom massively to only have one face on my screen, but the composite photo will not zoom sufficiently large. I must be doing something completely wrong. Can anyone advise me on this?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67422663 Red alerts have been issued for almost 3,000 towns and cities across Brazil, which have been experiencing an unprecedented heatwave. Rio de Janeiro recorded 42.5C on Sunday - a record for November - and high humidity on Tuesday meant that it felt like 58.5C, municipal authorities said. More than a hundred million people have been affected by the heat, which is expected to last until at least Friday. Officials have attributed it to the El Niño phenomenon and climate change. The city of São Paulo saw average temperatures of 37.3C on Tuesday afternoon, the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) reported. (continues at link)

I think I can see where the "problem" is. You're approaching this question through trying to know the nationalities of individual members. I wasn't doing it that way, since that is simply not possible. Instead, I was observing that in recent years, a significant number of trip reports refer to short trips of a week or even less. My guess was that maybe a quarter or a third of trip reports seem to be of such length. Usually this means the person is coming from just a few hours' flying time away, i.e. from the region. It's similar to the way Europeans from Hamburg or Stockholm hop over to Barcelona, Benidorm (!), the Greek Islands or Rome for short trips. No doubt there are exceptions. Vinapu, for example, has reported on one-week trips even though he's more than 12 hours away. Or there are others from outside the region who, though spending only a week in Thailand, also go on to spend another week in, say, Manila or Hanoi (I've done that too). But in the main, I think my observation about how lengths of visits indicate origins is on to something. As I write this, I am acutely conscious that I am speaking of Asians on this board as "them" - as a subject of discussion, and this can be alienating. This is the complete opposite of my intentions. My apologies if I come across that way. Let me reiterate our welcome; you're part of "us". Your contributions are valued.

On the question of security and/or fear-mongering, I don't want to come across as saying there's nothing to worry about. Below, for example, is a picture of an entrance to a condominium, albeit one in a good-class district. Notice the cage-like double gates. There are few cities in the world that will go this far. And this was only one of several condominiums with such a feature. To me, it shows that the problem of security is a real one; not to be laughed off. The locals do seem to know a thing or two. Maybe I was just lucky that I did not experience any incidents. But it is one thing to take precautions, it's quite another to be paralysed by fear.

Via Paris, the same way I went.

For those of us with home bases in East Asia, Southeast Asia or Australasia, South America is a pain to get to. Hardly any wonder that the last time I was in Brazil was 15 years ago if not more (so long ago, I can't even be sure). This year, I had reason to be in Europe for a month, mostly for family reasons, including attending a heterosexual wedding. Partly to recover from the trauma of that, but also because Brazil is more accesible from Europe, I decided to add four weeks there before flying all the way home. Beginning with this post Virgin Mary and the money pouch, there will be reports over the next few weeks about my time there. In case you're wondering, my habit is to post reports on my own blog because I prefer to write long form, and it takes the better part of a day to draft a post - not something compatible with a discussion forum. Contributors to the Brazil threads on this site have been an immensely helpful resource - thank you very much - and I hope my reports are interesting in their own way.

We may not be comparing apples with apples. I think I know which sites you're referring to in Hong Kong and Singapore - those are gay-scene sites. This one is ... not quite. This site is an M2M-sex-buyers site. Nor am I pessimistic about this site's future. Precisely because it is an M2M-sex-buyers site, it will age well. Given human nature, the trade will never disappear, though it may move from place to place and price point to price point. That's not to say that this site has not evolved nor continue to evolve. One day, even when there's AI and sex robots and businesses supplying them, I'll bet there will still be plenty of things to talk about. When I first participated here, the Pattaya threads were as active as the Bangkok threads. Not any more. This seems to reflect, as others have pointed out, the decreasing number of Western retirees spending their golden years (and pensions) in Thailand, with Pattaya being the seaside town of choice. But I don't think the overall traffic to this site has reduced. It may even have grown, though I have no access to site statistics over the long term. So, if traffic has grown, it must mean that enough new members have come in over time too. This, in turn, is the other evolution that I can discern. More and more members are Asian. It's hard to put a number to it, but perhaps one in three or one in four of the active participants may either be Asian or expats living and working in the region. My guess is that there is a growing number of Singaporeans and Malaysians here, partly because these nationals (particularly the former) are comfortable in the English language. I thought there might be more Hongkongers for the same reason, but I don't see evidence of it. I have noticed the increasing number of short trips reported on this site. It indicates they're from the region, and thus able to do a weekend or just a week's trip, rather than travel across multiple time zones to escape winter for three months, which used to be the dominant pattern in years past. In time, as their disposable income rises, we may see more Filipinos and Indians on this site, for many of them too speak English.

The internet has been a boon though it is true that sites and technologies change with head-spinning speed. But I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the Spartacus era. Guide sites are very different animals from forum sites. I am not surprised that they struggle to stay relevant and up to date. It begins with user expectations - that what they see on a guide site should be authoritative, up-to-date, accurate and also comprehensive, covering all the available attractions of a place. It requires a lot of work to maintain a site to meet such standards. Look at the Guide section of this very site (gayguides.com). It has very little that's useful. The write-ups are undated, and for we know, the information about any bar or hotel may be 10 years old. It gets worse when the guide site owners hope to make money or at least recover costs through advertising. There's even more work involved doing sales and keeping up with customer service. Then there's conflict of interest. Do you play down or omit an attraction just because they decline to advertise with you? If you omit, then you're failing the user who expects a comprehensive site. If you don't omit, then those who have hitherto paid to advertise may wonder why they should continue paying. Forum sites depend on the wisdom/intelligence of the masses. It has its pros and cons, as no doubt we all see all too often on this very site (e.g. recent bust-up about antisemitism). But if there is enough participation and contributions, a forum site can go quite far in producing the comprehensive, up-to-date and accurate information that users desire. "Enough participation" means the "network effect" must operate, where users gravitate to a single site and leave the rest in the dust. The more the participation is centred on a single site, the more informative and comprehensive it gets. And, except for the heavylifting done by the moderators (thank you!) it's done free. Seen in this light, the evolution of the online space is only following a natural path.

I was just looking at room bookings for the usual Jomtien Complex hotels for the month of December. Many dates are sold out, to the extent that I may have to completely rework my plans. For the boys and the bars, this high season may be looking good.

I don't see them using the term "straight". They use "gay" and "man". Depending on the business establishment or context, "gay" suggests either someone who is effeminate to some degree or other, or someone who bottoms. "Man" means straight-acting or someone who does not bottom. The term won't tell you much about his sexual orientation. The Thai way of seeing things is to describe gender behaviour, not attraction.

I have used Booking.com quite a fair bit, and I've noticed that many hotels listed there state "Payment handled by property", meaning that the credit card details are only to guarantee the booking, (or sometimes, to pay only for the first night). If a hotel is unhappy about delayed payments from Booking, perhaps they will amend their listing to "Payment handled by property"? Then the money will first flow to the hotel, and it is for them to send the commission onwards to Booking.com. Of course, it may well be that in such a case, the commission that Booking.com charges may be higher than one where the payment is handled by Booking.com itself, so there is a deterrent to hotels handling payments. I have an inkling what the problem at Booking.com is though, I must stress, I am just making an educated guess. It's a very, very common problem, yet one which few people pay attention to. It is this: a large state-of-the art company creates a business ecology that also involves consumers or smaller businesses that are far from state-of-the-art. The large company goes whole hog with IT, with fancy software accompanied by a determined push to reduce headcount (costs). In theory the software mostly works (but sometimes doesn't and there is no one to fix it). In practice, the consumers or business partners find it hard to navigate and fulfill the requirements of the software to get anything done (picture this: a dentist's wife who runs a bed-and-breakfast, struggling with the IT submssions requirements of a major IT company, maybe in a language foreign to her). The reduced headcount at the big company means calls are unanswered and issues left unaddressed. Meanwhile frustration grows among the business partners and consumers... but they can't even get a reply. In my line of work, I have seen this again and again.

You are twisting my words. @scott456 understood me perfectly. What is a right amount depends on circumstances, and we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that 150 - 300 baht is wrong. That's all I said.

My thought exactly. In these mixed places, quite often the masseur gives a handjob while standing beside the massage table without him taking off his clothes. I don't think it's worth the same as in one of the Saphan Khwai places when it's body on body. We need to take context and all the facts into consideration before jumping to conclusions.

Despite having been to the US many times, I am still amazed at this practice and the amounts involved. On the other hand, I have seen Americans get all flustered in Asia when service providers refuse their tips. Once incident I remember: I was once travelling with an American colleague to a secondary city outside Beijing. We were going up to our hotel rooms after check-in, and a bellboy was helping us with our luggage. When we reached our rooms, he offered a tip to the bellboy, who refused it, saying something like "I'm only doing my job, sir." The bellboy's accent was difficult to understand (though I would credit him for speaking in English at all, and in a secondary city too - how many American bellboys in, say, Cincinnati, can speak Chinese?), but I knew what he said. However, my colleague (ike so many Americans) had a hard time dealing with foreign accents, and didn't know what the bellboy said, only that the chap wouldn't take the money. My colleague looked at me and asked in a whisper, "Is it too little?". Yes, that was what crossed his mind! I am much, much happier in countries, like in Asia, where tipping is not expected. Thailand is actually one of those countries. The problem is that the gogobars and massage parlours mis-use the word "tip" to mean service fee. Thus causing much confusion.