macaroni21

Croom. I'm not 100% sure but its lights were on and it looked open the week that we were in Bangkok last month.

No, I don't. I have a serious problem with political correctness. In my circle of homo homies, we think life and language would be colorless and humourless if we didn't have hags, yobs, paddies, blackfellas, trannies, geezers, dumbblonds, gerontophiles and fatsos among us. Nor do we need to look far to see rice queens, potato queens, curry queens... And don't forget muscle marys.

The "system" in Japanese massage businesses is not always consistent. They vary from one shop to another. I don't know what your experiences have been, so it's not easy for me to explain how different Thailand is compared to your Japanese experiences - in other words, what's your baseline to which one should compare? Washing the client is indeed common in Japan - but that is really a manifestation of the Japanese concern about cleanliness; it is rarely done erotically. My experience in Japan is that some places have boys who can actually do a massage. Others use the term "massage" to mean something else. And some shops offer a service that is sort of in-between. Therefore I am not sure what you have in your mind as the Japanese style of services. However, your mention of body to body perhaps indicates the latter. Ditto, in Bangkok there is thai massage, there is oil massage, there is sort-of-massage, there is "massage", "four hands massage" and there is "Oh my God, massage!" The service style varies hugely from one shop to another. The quality of facilities also vary hugely, and in fact, most Thai facilities (and Vietnamese) are better than Japanese, though the Japanese facilities are still a thousand times better than what one finds in ("shouldn't this have been condemned by the Fire Department?") Kuala Lumpur or Manila. My blog has numerous posts describing many of these places and the "system" that comes with them. Some do not end in sexual activity. Regular visitors seldom realise how complicated the Bangkok scene may took to new visitors. So, let's get you better advice. But to begin, pick a category that most interests you and then the regulars on this board will guide you where to go. 1. Professional quality massage by trained and certified therapists. They remain in their clothes throughout the session. They ensure that your private parts are always covered and there is no touching. 2. Near-professional quality massage by trained therapists. They remain in their clothes, but may be prepared to give clients a handjob, after negotiating the rate (done in whispers) inside the room. 3. Near-professional quality massage by trained therapists. They remain in their clothes, but may be prepared to take them off and do considerably more, after negotiating the rate inside the room. 4. Hand movements that look a bit like massage, but are often directed at the nether regions in order to elicit arousal. The boy (I don't call them 'therapists' from this point on) is dressed or semi-dressed and may negotiate the rate inside the room if the shop's minimum tip rate is set too low. Once an agreeable rate is mutually accepted, the clothing tends to be flung off and he would likely climb onto the massage table (or floor mattress, if it's a low-budget kind of place) 5. Shops that make a clear a minimum tip that is higher than the "course" fee or room fee. The boy moves his hands to mimic a bit of massage (some boys don't even bother with this much pretence of a massage), but are often directed at the nether regions in order to elicit arousal. The room is likely to have a bed instead of a massage table. The boy begins the session either minimally dressed or totally nude. There is no in-room negotiation unless the client asks for something unusual - though more likely the boy simply says "cannot" to unusual requests, rather than negotiate. Body-to-body is not as common in Thailand as in Japan, Vietnam, Kuala Lumpur or Manila (where it is called "Nuru massage"). In Bangkok, you may get it in category 5 places. Another thing about Thailand is that categories 4 and 5 have wide pricing differentials, even if two shops offer similar services. The pricing differential is traceable to the several factors including (a) standard of facilities, (b) boys' physiques, (c) whether in tourist areas (thus aimed at tourists) or in more local parts of the city.

Eh? A few months ago, I walked past. It had two hags on duty, one of whom was manicuring herself (i.e. sharpening her claws). Not one boy in sight.

I am assuming you mean the bars and massage places on the Silom Surawong area, and not the massage parlours further out, e.g. in Saphan Khwai or Onnut. If I were in your shoes, I would definitely move to a hotel in the same area, for one big reason: it's so much easier to pop back to the hotel room to wash up or pick up more cash before hitting another place, whereas depending on taxis or rides will put you at the mercy of Bangkok's notorious traffic. Even if you learn to use the light rail system, this system stops slightly before midnight. This map shows several hotels in the area : https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2023/12/07/map-of-silom-surawong-area-december-2023/

Thanks for saying the obvious. If one is running a business, one should be constantly trawling social media and elsewhere (plus getting feedback from customers) for ideas. One should also be looking not just at what other bars locally are doing but what bars in other countries are doing. I did give unsolicited advice to Paul when he was running the now-defunct New Twilight. Told him he should get his basics right: Aircon too cold. Music too loud. LCD screen too bright rendering his gogo boys into silhouette rather than showcasing the boys. Send his doorman further out to give out leaflets, and not just hope to pull in passersby (there were none to pull in, since they were located offside), etc etc. Needless to say, suggestions were not welcome.

@Olddaddy Be creative. You don't need a liquor licence to succeed. Have a special on the menu that offers tea. Customers are invited to a closet space behind the bar where their cuppa will be made specially for them. Boys tie the string of a teabag to their *ahem* little brother and jiggle the teabag in hot water by gyrating their hips. All your customers will become teetotallers in no time.

The thing about automation is that while it is possible (but not cheap) to buy/install it, the hard part is having the skills to maintain the hardware and software. That's the invisible difference between the West, China , Japan, Korea on one side and places like Thailand or Malaysia on the other side.

Most of us knew Sol Club wasn't going to survive. It had no imagination. Also, in its brief existence, did it even invest one baht in advertising and marketing? Even that huge column could have been turned into an asset if they knew how. I described a different floorplan and business model last November. https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2023/12/13/how-to-take-in-that-massive-thing/

Not sure I understand what you mean by "2 to 6+". Could you speak in terms of %, like what % of Chinese or Chinese-looking customers who walk through the door decide to turn around and leave? And are these more male or female?

Are you forgetting India and Kazakhstan? And if latest reports about bars being full of Chinese tourists are any indication, China too.

You could be on to something - Thai ways can be a total mystery to us outsiders. That said, to a western mind that relies on this strange thing called logic, I can't imagine what boundaries are left to be imposed by the cops. After all, the gogo bars already have full on f**king acts on stage, plus the conjoined couple then circulate among the audience, often with one partner on a customer's lap while the other partner pounds away. As @bkkmfj2648 mentioned a few days ago in this same thread, a good bar "creates customer participation in the bar and can allow for you to get up close and personal with the bar staff". I have long spoken about the need for smaller, more intimate environments, options for lap dancing in private booths (or at least curtained-off corners) and more joke-y performances that either pull members of the audience onto the stage or the performer(s) go down to a lucky customer. I have also spoken about the need for more exclusive male environments (as opposed to one with screaming girls in the audience) though such a suggestion makes @reader go apoplectic about discrimination. Instead, these bars think they ought to copy the success of Tiffany or Alcazar (and badly) or Fake Club. They don't for a moment realise that their could-be-loyal audience is completely different. Then when customer numbers fall, they raise their prices to make up. And wonder why customer numbers fall further. OK, the last bit about prices can be traced to the need for the police superintendent's wife to acquire jewellery.

I assume @sydneyboy1 was referring mostly to gogo bars when he wrote "bar crawl of all the usual haunts" and finding them "very quiet and dispiriting". When I triangulate his report with those of others - more positive sounding - the picture I get is that the gogo bars are their own worst enemies unable to attract customers despite increased foreigner traffic into the country. Now, why am I not surprised?

Dubai is not the kind of place one would go to look for any kind of gay entertainment or personal relief, but it's a business city where business people find themselves having to go to. I was one of those, though not lately. Naturally a certain percentage of business people swing "the other way" and thus there's a market for providers of solace and comfort. I have been tempted, but between being too busy (I never wanted to stay in Dubai any longer than absolutely necessary) and too conscious of the capriciousness of security people, I never tasted the offerings available there. I did hear from a business acquaintance about a raid on their office premises looking, not for cooked books or other evidence of fraud, but for pornography. Why pornography? No idea. The teller of the story had a theory that a business competitor was behind it. For a moment they were concerned about the stash of alcohol they had in the office - either they'd face consequences or the bottles would be seized and their vintage assessed personally by the raiding officers in the comfort of their own homes. In the end, the officers pretended not to see the lot.

To the best of my knowledge, Tokyo Kids does not have a bar. The member saying he had drinks with the boys might have taken the boys (more than one???) out to another bar.

Since these shops largely use freelancers, do you think any part of the shop's charge whether 350 or 550, goes to the boy? I have a suspicion that it may be the other way around - the the boy may have to part with some portion of his tip as "commission" to the shop. I saw a quick transaction recently at OneSpa where a boy passed at least one red note to Barbie. The boy wasn't the one who serviced me so I wouldn't be able to say what the context was. Maybe he had to pay Barbie a commission. An alternative explanation might have been that he had just done an outcall and was passing on to the shop what the customer had paid as the shop fee. All I knew was that money went from boy to Barbie. And that got me wondering....

@jeremy What time of day were your hookups? I ask because several years ago I was in a hotel (can't remember the name now) where the first two times I brought a boy back (late afternoon, early evening) they weren't a problem, but the 3rd guy whom I tried to bring in close to midnight, they wouldn't let him in. I had a bit of an argument with the security in which they said something about daytime OK, night not OK. I am just wondering whether I was just unlucky in my choice of hotel or it might be a more general policy among Manila hotels.

I just copied those links from the caption/description below the Youtube video, so folks here can find out more if they wish. I have no business connection with the ferry and am not trying to promote it.

Was there last month. Thus the new map.

He says the departure time is 2 pm. So that means it arrives Koh Samui 12 noon the next day. Sounds convenient for check-in into hotels on the island. Sea Horse Ferry Official : https://www.theseahorseferry.com/en/ Book Sea Horse Online on Facebook : / fb.theseahorseferryofficial Sea Horse Ferry Port in Bangkok : https://maps.app.goo.gl/NorMBmNmTtqRA...

Too many bars in Thailand rely on an old (gatoey-heavy) formula for entertainment. They also need to rethink the "showtime" model, trying to pull the crowd in at a specific time to watch a tired third-rate "show". Especially for a small bar like The One (Tawan) with a stage no bigger than a single-bed, trying to do a "show" is a challenge. Nor is there any point trying to pull in a "crowd" when there aren't enough seats for a crowd. A rapid turnover of customers/seats all through the evening is better revenue than a crowd at a single time. It is possible to entertain customers with fairly frequent acts throughout the entire evening, but management needs to come up with fresh ideas that do not need much space. Some suggestions I have would be: 1. Every drinks order also gets a lucky draw ticket. When ten or twelve tickets have been issued, a gogo boy comes onto stage dressed in two shirts (one an undershirt), jeans/trousers, two underpants and a condom. Six lucky draw numbers are called in succession. Each lucky customer goes on stage, gets a kiss and a hug from the gogoboy and gets to remove one item of clothing. The sixth lucky guy gets to remove the condom! Then wait for ten or twelve other customers to come in buy a drink and a new round follows. 2. Chair dance. Gogoboy gets onto stage, invites 2 or 3 customers in sequence onto a chair gives each a one-minute personal dance. 3. Juggling act. Maybe in the nude? Customers watch the balls 🤪 4. Bronco ride. Customer invited to ride pillion with a gogoboy on a bronco horse. Customers clutches gogo boy tightly for dear life for 60 seconds. 5. There are some plastic balls that stick when thrown at object. For 100 baht, customers get balls. Throw at underwear'ed gogo boy on stage. Three hits on his underwear from, say, 2 metres away (Strike!) and the underwear is lost. Gogoboy then gives a personal dance to the winning thrower, jiggling his assets in the latter's face. 6. As in midpoint of this video, gogoboy gets hot and sweaty doing a dance in front of a customer in the sitting area (not on stage). Customer gets a cloth to wipe off sweat. Plus many more ideas I am sure members of this board can come up with. All that's needed is for management to be open to new ideas.

I can see that @reader has answered your question, but in case it's of help to anyone else, there's an updated map of the area, with nine massage shops shown, at https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2024/06/05/map-of-saphan-khwai-and-sutthisan-winitchai-area-may-2024/

I never knew that! And so many have opened bars despite this? Out of idle curiosity, do you know if the Sunnee bars had/have liquor licences?

I have always stayed in District 1 and didn't think it to be a problem. In fact that's where the tourist- friendly cafes and restaurants are. Outside of it, you may find it difficult to even get an English-language menu. I have been into District 10 a few times and I agree there are a number of massage parlours there. But I wouldn't want to stay there. It's an ugly part of Saigon (roads with no pavements, repair shops for bicycles and home appliances, etc) with few allowances for foreigners. If I need to go there, I get a Grab car in and a Grab car out.

Based on what you described as the the activities for your February visit and what you seem to be looking forward to, then I think you are right in deciding on two shorter visits of about 10 days, within a year. The sights are seldom as much a wow thing the second time compared to the first. In any case, there aren't enough sights (not in Bangkok, anyway) to fill three and a half weeks. There's an endless supply of sex, but my experience is that desire will peter out after a week or so. The thrill wears out, it becomes a routine and soon enough, a boring one. And yes, you should try the massage offerings. But let me give you a bit of advice here when venturing into this area: There are roughly three kinds of massage parlours and it is hard to tell them apart from appearances. 1. Places that offer real massage and no sex (at most, if you are lucky, a handjob) 2. Places where the management pretends it is a real massage place, but most of the boys don't know the techniques, and are more interested in selling sex for big tips. 3. Places that have "massage" or "spa" in their name but are basically brothels. You may get a simple, reasonably satisfying massage or the boy merely goes through the motions (or sometimes don't have a clue how to perform a massage) and you need to think of the "massage" more as foreplay. Depending on which brothel you're patronising, the expected tip can vary tremendously. To make matters even more confusing, there are no hard and fast boundaries between one type and another. There are places kind of in-between. However, I find it easier to think in terms of these three types and classify the various places accordingly in my mind. Why? Because the business transaction operates somewhat differently depending on whether it is 1, 2 or 3, particularly the tip (or what I call the service fee). Closer to November when you are ready to dip your toe into Thailand's gay "massage" business, maybe you can ask for more information about how to navigate ths confusing sector. By the way, are you heading to Hanoi or Ho Chi MInh City in August?