When did Bangkok have its ‘good old days’?

[reader]

They didn't think to ask PaulSF, but if they did I think I can hear him say "any Saturday night on Soi Twlight."

From The Thaiger

When did Bangkok have its golden era? Of course it depends on when you were visiting, how long you were here, where you stayed, and what you were doing at the time. But the city has certainly had some ‘eras’ in the past that people nostalgically and whimsically recall as ‘special’. Here’s a few of the responses about when Bangkok really hit its straps, when we asked people on The Thaiger Facebook page.

Everyone falls into the trap of remembering the ‘good old days’, but was there a time when Bangkok really did have a golden era?

Denny says that it was definitely in the 1970s when he first came to Bangkok with his wife. He said his friends thought it was a ‘very exotic’ choice at the time. Denny, from Massachusetts in the US, returned in the 1990s to live in the Big Mango but says it had lost a certain visceral appeal and was beginning to be ‘moulded’ as a tourist destination.

“Whilst I stood out in the 1970s no one really took much notice of me. By the 1990s some of the ‘ugly tourists’ had already made a reputation and we didn’t feel quite as welcome as we used to. Whilst in the 1970s there were still plenty of bicycles’d been completely replaced by the 1990s by the ubiquitous ‘motorcy’.

‘Simone’ said… “Late 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s, when the highest building was the Dusit Thani and the first disco was The Palace. You could just put a Motorola phone on a table at The Bubble and all girls were yours while the DJ was playing ‘One night in Bangkok’. You can write a book about those times.”

Another writer ‘Retire’ thought the golden era was a few decades earlier.

“I think Bangkok really came to life in the 60s when it started developing it’s own pop culture style in clothing, furniture, music and cinema. It sort of regressed into a bad version of everything western later or. But there was a bright, glimmering decade when Bangkok was the hip Asian city.”

‘Helmer’ and his wife were posted to Thailand as for a large foreign company in the late 50s.

“When I first visited Thailand in the late 1950s I would stand out and people would stop me in the street to take a photo with me. It was very ‘Thai’ then and very few people had any English skills at all. It was a very difficult place to live as a foreigner at that stage and things slowly improved during the 60s until we had to leave in 1969. There was no high-rise in those days and shopping was all at local markets. The only cars driving around those days were all imported and they had just started filling in the old klongs to make new roads.”

Continues with photos and video

https://thethaiger.com/news/bangkok/bangkoks-golden-era-according-to-expats

 

[vinapu]

For me Bangkok golden days started in Nov 2001 and continued all the way to Oct 2019. By sheer coincidence this corresponds with my first and last visit.

somebody's claim in the linked article that  Bangkok in 2017 was completely  different form city in 2001 i consider nonsense but everybody is entitled to his/hers own or even better,  my own opinion

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[PeterRS]

4 hours ago, vinapu said:

For me Bangkok golden days started in Nov 2001 and continued all the way to Oct 2019. By sheer coincidence this corresponds with my first and last visit.

Reading about gay Thailand on various forums and books and considering Bangkok's physical development, I suspect most who were around at that time would say the golden era was from the mid 1970s until the early 2000s when the Thaksin Social Order Campaigns started. But vinapu is right. We can only talk about golden eras when we ourselves experienced the country.

[Guest]

Being rather slow, my first visit was in 2007.     I only decided to try this after working in another Asian country for a year & having a good time there. 

I remember walking into Classic Boys and thinking I was in some kind of paradise, with many slim and well groomed twinks on the stage.   The pound got almost 70 baht at the time, so it all seemed like very good value too.     Pattaya also had many more gogo bars than currently and in the afternoon, there would be many cute boys on the beach.  

Some of the stories of fully naked gogo bars from earlier visits sound quite interesting, but as is suggested above, we can only assess what we have seen.   

Also, our options are to either accept what will be available on our next trip or to visit another country.   Rewinding the clock back by 30 years isn't an option, so it's best that we enjoy what is available. 

Also, for everything that has declined, there are probably other things which have improved, such as the continually expanding public transport networks, which make getting around Bangkok much easier.   The internet makes it very easy to book nice accommodation anywhere in Thailand.   Also, if a city has a gogo bar, I can actually find it, due to google maps.

 

 

 

[Guest]

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[Guest]

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[anddy]

So true what someone later in the article said:

Quote

'Gordon’ was much more philosophical about the question…

“The “Golden Era” is relative to the age, gender, race, sexual orientation, income, social status, nationality and experience of the individual person. Hence, the Golden Era simultaneously occurs at all times past and present, and at no time ever.”

 

[ggobkk]

Golden era is voiced in past or future verbs...not in present tense.

[anddy]

22 hours ago, ggobkk said:

Golden era is voiced in past or future verbs...not in present tense.

generally, that is probably a true observation. However, I will say that since the 80s and 90s I have held that the era after WWII up until and including those two decades were a kind of a golden era (then being expressed in present tense) in the West. I now find myself vindicated (unfortunately) when I look at the dire state of the world.

But this thread is about Bangkok, not the West or rest of world, so back to topic! At this time, present tense is certainly not appropriate for golden era in BKK