Bangkok post-Covid, July 2022

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, fedssocr said:

maybe it's too cold for them to wear less clothing

Quite possibly.

To solve that, the bar needs to adjust the aircon temperature to a compromise level, just like other bars have been doing for decades.      People will happily sit in outside bars with no aircon.    So if it's 30 C outside, somewhere around 26~27 inside still works for all.   Preferably with the cool airflow aimed at the customers, who are usually clothed.

However, if they don't know how to adjust the music volume, I guess they might be equally challenged by the temperature control.

 

[Boy69]

11 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

• He mentioned something about the difficulty of attracting gogoboys should they insist that they strip down on stage ("Boy don't want to work here."). I would have thought that if that's the boy's position, then this cannot possibly be a vocation for him, but New Twlight might think differently.
• I tried to ask about tea money and if there were different rates for strip bars versus jeans-and-shirts bars, but got nowhere (or he didn't understand my question);

Thai people have a tendency to say they don't understand you when they don't want to answer a particular question.

It is difficult to attract boys to work in bars indeed due many reasons: Some prefer to find their customers in the apps without the commitment to bosses in bars, some don't like to rotate semi-naked in very cold air condition environment, some are to shy to expose themselves to customers in bars and the last reason I can think of is the vast improvement at the Thai economy in the past ten years making it possible to find better jobs .

[macaroni21]

There's another possible reason: the manager and mamasans were all wearing suits. Part of the "higher class" look that they're aiming for, perhaps? They won't feel the cold, and think the airconditioning is just fine, while the boys and customers freeze their male-tits off. In a sense, one can say, even in the simple matter of temperature control, the (misguided) business design has closed off a feedback loop.

[colmx]

16 hours ago, z909 said:

I'd be really surprised if finding gogo boys prepared to strip down to underwear on stage were that difficult.  

Quite a number of my Pattaya friends that used to work as Gogo boys don't want to go back to wearing their pants again after such a long hiatus. Seems that they are happy to be fully dressed host boys and to use their charm to snare customers 

[Londoner]

I think you may be right. I remember guys I met in host-bars saying exactly that. 

[macaroni21]

There may be something to the post COVID angle. Some might have put on the kilos and know they won't look good in tight briefs now.

But the bigger picture is this: pre or post COVID, the vast majority of people won't be caught dead gyrating away on a stage in underwear, so gogoboys has always been minority vocation. Each cohort in turn had suffered the ravages of age and moved on, to be replaced by the next cohort. Maybe the question is why the new cohort is smaller than the previous. Rising prosperity?

[macaroni21]

Host boy is not as easy as it sounds. It requires language (English, Japanese, Chinese) and conversational skills.

Just last night, I saw a bunch of women call a boy down from the stage only to discover within 5 minutes that no conversation could be had and sent him back.

They probably tipped him and he'd get his 100 baht from the boy drink, so he didn't do too badly out of that, I suppose, 😛

[macaroni21]

K-Man Spa sent me loads of boys’ pictures over Line. I knew that they couldn’t possibly all be there and waiting for customers and that I was expected to pre-book. So I assiduously went through all the pictures and shortlisted four. I Lined back and asked which might be available at a certain time. It took no more than 10 minutes for the reply that one of them was, and so an appointment was fixed.

Although I gave myself 45 minutes to get to Saphan Kwai BTS station, the BTS ride, including changing trains at Siam, took only about 20 minutes. Adding in walking time from Raya Hotel to Saladaeng station, it took me just 30 minutes at most.

K-Man Spa was just down the stairs from Saphan Khwai at the southeast corner of the station; it took no time at all to get to its front door.

The chosen – let’s call him Teyko – was waiting. After the brief protocols in the reception where the manager asked me to choose the aroma oil and where I was served some cold water, Teyko led me to the third floor (i.e. fourth level) where the room was. Based on a quick glance, they seem to have assigned the first floor as a waiting area for the boys, and the massage rooms are all on the second and third floors.

Anyone with difficulty with steep stairs might want to think twice.

The room had a massage table, with a perfectly serviceable face-cradle occluded by a bed sheet. This practice is so common in Thailand, I am no longer surprised. It didn’t come with an attached shower. This was down the hallway. 

Teyko commenced the massage in his towel – which wasn’t a good sign, but after about 15 minutes, it was dropped without any need for me to tug it away. 

He began with dry presses before proceeding to oil. He knew quite a few different strokes, which means he’s been through proper training, but his pressure was on the light side. It is not easy for masseurs to know how much pressure a client likes, and so it is important to tell him. Still, he had a tendency to revert to his usual, relatively light pressure a little while each time after I told him to increase it. 

Although I had booked a 90-minute, I was disappointed too with the coverage. In 60 minutes, I don’t expect the massage to cover much more than the basic areas: back of legs, back and shoulders. In 90 minutes, I’d expect attention to more areas as well, such as the arms, front of legs, and chest. Teyko didn’t seem to have a clearly defined programme that distinguished between 60 and 90 minutes.

The afters were enjoyable enough though. He was easily hard. That said, I don’t think I am a demanding person and should be easy to please. At this point, some readers may be hoping for a blow by blow account, but sorry, it’s not my style to get to that level of detail. What I can say is that Teyko was an S2 according to ShamelessMack's "famous" classification system.

To round off the session, he offered to shower with me - an offer gladly accepted.
He was sweet and good-looking but unfortunately, he spoke next to no English and there is only that much one can do through Google Translate. So, much as I’d like to, I found out very little about him.

In total, I spent about one hour 25 minutes there. K-Man Spa’s pricelist showed 60-minutes to be 500 baht for oil massage (550 for aroma massage) and 600 baht for 90-minutes. The manager mentioned something about a minimum tip of 1,000 baht. Their advertising mentioned something about promotions, but either I was outside the applicable time period or it was conveniently forgotten in my case.

Overall – would I go back to K-Man Spa again? Yes. Would I choose Teyko again? I think so. 
 

[Guest]

9 hours ago, colmx said:

Quite a number of my Pattaya friends that used to work as Gogo boys don't want to go back to wearing their pants again after such a long hiatus. Seems that they are happy to be fully dressed host boys and to use their charm to snare customers 

5 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

The vast majority of people won't be caught dead gyrating away on a stage in underwear, so gogoboys has always been minority vocation. Each cohort in turn had suffered the ravages of age and moved on, to be replaced by the next cohort. Maybe the question is why the new cohort is smaller than the previous. Rising prosperity?

Whilst I don't believe MBs would be unwilling to dance on stage in underwear, when there are alternatives such as host bars or the apps, I very much see why some of them choose those instead of gogo bars.    Quite a few app boys don't even work in the host bars and those that do seem free to come and go as they please.

There are a couple of obvious ways for gogo bars to solve this:

(i) Pay the boys more.   I remember reading a blog, probably Stickman, where the author was chatting to a girly gogo bar owner and a couple of young ladies came in and asked for jobs as nude dancers.   They wanted the nude jobs, because they pay more.  

With the exception of Winner Boys, every gay gogo bar in Pattaya charges 200 or more for a drink.  In Bangkok, I think it's 350~500.    The gogo bars need to spend some of that extra gross margin on entertainment to lure the customers in.   If they are greedy and try to keep too much of that gross margin, they will struggle to get customers & deserve the inevitable business failure.

Incidentally, pre-covid, customers could see full on nudity in Pattaya girlie gogo bars with drinks from about 120 baht.   I think they make that work due to the volume of customers and rumoured higher off fees, hence they can pay enough to attract staff.

Also, when observed from a distance, all the girlie host bars in Pattaya seem to be staffed by ladies who are carrying more weight and have been around for a few years.   
I suspect the girlie gogo bars are paying their staff more than the host bars, in order to attract those in their prime & get their clothes off.  I expect the boy bars to do the same. 

 

(ii) Cast the net wider with recruitment.   Whilst Thailand might have near full employment, I doubt the economy is doing too well in Myanmar, for example.  

 

5 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

Host boy is not as easy as it sounds. It requires language (English, Japanese, Chinese) and conversational skills.

Theoretically.

There was the Scorpion bar in Soi Twilight which had host boys who relied purely on their appearance, with zero conversational skills in English.   Admittedly, I went there just the once and never repeated the mistake.

I bought a boy that I know a drink at a host bar in Jomtien.   Now whilst he can proficiently ask if you want a drink, his English skills run out pretty quickly after that.  The only way to communicate is phone translation and even then, he needs the output as Khmer audio.   Written Khmer, Thai or English isn't good enough.

Admittedly, the majority of lads that I meet know more than enough English for their profession.

[reader]

5 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

Overall – would I go back to K-Man Spa again? Yes. Would I choose Teyko again? I think so.

I visited K-Man on two occasions and each time made my selection from a tablet. Both guys arrived in a reasonable amount of time and both were "T & B" who lived up to their descriptions. I consider this shop the most reliable in BKK at the moment.

K-Man is sponsored by the same folks who run KK Massage.

[emiel1981]

On 7/19/2022 at 4:26 PM, Boy69 said:

Thai people have a tendency to say they don't understand you when they don't want to answer a particular question.

... Or to say they understand you (or just say "yes" to everything) while in fact they didn't understand you at all... Or am I the only one with this expierence more than once...? 

[emiel1981]

10 hours ago, reader said:

 I consider this shop the most reliable in BKK at the moment. 

 

16 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

In total, I spent about one hour 25 minutes there. K-Man Spa’s pricelist showed 60-minutes to be 500 baht for oil massage (550 for aroma massage) and 600 baht for 90-minutes. The manager mentioned something about a minimum tip of 1,000 baht. Their advertising mentioned something about promotions, but either I was outside the applicable time period or it was conveniently forgotten in my case.

Overall – would I go back to K-Man Spa again? Yes. Would I choose Teyko again? I think so. 
 

So K-Man is definitely on my to-go list for my September trip... Thanks for the review. 

[macaroni21]

Two doors from the soon-to-reopen Senso Massage was a restaurant that billed itself as a place for Isaan food. Named Somtum Der, it served provincial cooking in a chic setting. I flipped through the menu on a stand at the streetfront and noted that the prices were reasonable, but it was only a little past six and a tad too early for dinner. Should I or should I not?

Then two twenty-something guys came from inside to their glass door to invite me in. 

"Oh," I said to myself half-jokingly, "what are the Senso guys doing here?" The guys looked deliciously like some of the staff we remember so fondly of Senso.

All resistance crumbling, I went in and chose a strategically located table with a good view of the bar and service counter. I particularly loved the woven rattan (or bamboo?) baskets overhead. My guess was that these were inspired by the baskets Isaan folk use to catch fish in rivers or perhaps to hold chickens on their farms.

It wasn't a long menu - a good thing - and my order came quite quickly. It turned out to be a wonderful meal. There was a larb salad with generous amounts of fried catfish in flakes. I asked for it to be medium spicy and it was just right for my non-Thai palate. The spring rolls with pork filling were crisply fried, yet very light on the oil. Yummy. 

The raw vegetables on the side apparently accompanied every order; I didn't have to ask for it. 

Finally, there was sticky rice steamed in a small woven bamboo cylinder. This is a standard part of an Isaan meal.

The total bill came to 285 baht, which included a 10 percent Service Charge. But, feeling very satisfied with the meal (and the scenery), I still added a small amount as extra tip.

Although it looked like a small place, there were quite a number of tables. There was a terrace that might be perfect during the cooler season, and there was also a mezzanine floor inside.

On the glass front were a number of Michelin decals. I don't know much about such things, since I'm one for the simpler things in life, but this may mean something for those in the know.

[macaroni21]

I went twice to Fresh Boys on Patpong Soi 2 within the same week, but what a difference the hour makes. The first visit, I arrived at about 10pm and stayed for the show. The bar was more than half full. The second visit, I arrived after the show (I can't remember what time exactly) and there were only three other customers there.

At 10pm, I counted 18 customers, filling up the two rows of benches facing the stage and as a result, I was shown to a side bench. From that vantage point, I could see that five customers had six boys sitting with them. The total number of customers increased to 25 - 28 by showtime at 10:30pm. However, the bar saw well more than that number of customers because throughout the evening, there was quite a lot of coming and going. The mamasan helpfully moved me to a better seat when a customer left.

There were 25 - 30 boys, rotating 10 to 12 at a time on stage, all shirtless and in white shorts. Sitting with customers were 5 - 6 boys. Most were S2 and S3R with the occasional S3M or Q2. In short, "medium twinks".

It's a small space, and customers are close to the stage. When off the stage, the boys often sit in a section that faces the customers and eye contact is easily made. That compensates somewhat for the bad choice the bar made in choosing yellow and white for some number tags. The contrast between the two colours is so low, it is virtually impossible to make out the boy's number from anything more than a metre and a half away. This annoyed me because the one guy I thought best-looking had a yellow tag and try as I might, I just couldn't make out his number. Fortunately, he walked by a few times and smiled and we connected.

The show could well be the "best" in Bangkok in my estimation, for the simple reason that it had no lip-sync katoey items. These numbers put me off, not least because they also tend to turn up the volume for the song. Undoubtedly the acts were amateurish, but I wasn't here for slick and polish. There were only six items, all performed by the rotation crew. Five out of the six items had engorged appendages on display. The second last act had three guys with stiff members whacking a metal pole, after which they circulated among the audience for gropes and tips. This was followed by the finale that had two guys in coital positions.

I didn't off anyone that night. My WhatsApp kept distracting me with messages from home, and with a small crisis brewing, I felt that a longish voice conversation was being expected from me in the following hour.

A couple of nights later, I was back at Fresh Boys, timing it for after the show since I was intending to take a boy out. I had no clear idea which boy that would be but since I had the impression from my first visit that quite a number of boys from Fresh were within my acceptability criteria, it was probably the place with the best chance of a good fit.

Wow, there were only three other customers post-show. More importantly, there were only about 12 - 15 boys. Assuming that the bar had started the evening with the usual complement of 25 - 30 boys, that meant that about half the boys had been taken, a pretty good "off" rate.

I shouldn't have been surprised. The other night, amongst the coming and going, I saw three customers leave with new-found companions within the 30 minutes before the show began,

Yellow tag was among the less fortunate ones that night. He had not been taken and was still there. I called him down from the stage and resumed our conversation from where we had left off the previous night. Unlike the last time when, because I didn't want to raise his hopes of an off from me, we talked only about his family and his home town, this time we went quite quickly into the specifics of what he would do and what he'd rather not do in bed.

He leaned over and sort of whispered into my ear. "I can bottom," he said. I hadn't expected that, as he looked straight to me. Nonetheless, I did not let my surprise delay me. My reply was ready. "And I can top."

A few minutes later, the bill was called. At Fresh Boys, each drink was 350 baht. The off fee was 500 baht.

[jason1975]

5 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

He leaned over and sort of whispered into my ear. "I can bottom," he said. I hadn't expected that, as he looked straight to me. Nonetheless, I did not let my surprise delay me. My reply was ready. "And I can top."

Lol!

[macaroni21]

Just as I was about to reach the slab block that housed Sabaidee Massage in its carpark floor, I noticed to my right a number of fire-damaged houses. It had been reported by @reader in https: // www.gayguides.com/forums/topic/37924-many-houses-destroyed-in-bangkok-blaze/#comment-335550, and there's even a photo of the blaze there from the Bangkok Post. I had read about it then, but didn't realise how close it was to Sabaidee's block. At its closest point, it would have been merely 4 or 5 metres from its back door.

It's been a month since the fire and the houses have not been demolished. In my picture, the peachy orange wall on the left would be the boundary wall of the slab block.

I tried to engage the Sabaidee manager on the disruption (if any) the business suffered as a result, but all he kept saying was "no problem, no problem." Perhaps he didn't realise I was asking about the past, and thought he needed to assure me that business is back to normal.

He had sent me a ton of pictures via Line, but the photos of his masseurs had neither name nor number, and I didn't know how to specify which ones I was interested in should I wish to message back. So, without any prior booking, I showed up. He explained that I should have Lined back the pics of my shortlist and he would then tell me more about them. I hadn't thought of that, but surely, it can't be much more work to attach a name or number to each picture in the first place. It would have saved me (and probably other customers) a lot of puzzlement.

Anyway, he then showed me five guys on his tablet which he said were "available". Four clearly worked out in gyms, one of whom was a definite W4M. Not quite competition standard but close. The fifth was an S3R- not much muscle - but he had the sweetest face.

I told the manager W4M was my first choice and S3R was my second. 

He got onto the phone and managed to reach W4M immediately, only to be told that W4M was on his way to another appointment - one which the Sabaidee manager didn't know of. This suggests a considerable degree of fluidity in staff management. The boys are in fact freelancers who may work for other massage shops or have their own advertising.

So S3R it would be. He was in the back of the shop and appeared within seconds. Let's call him Sucho. 

He led me up one floor to the next level which had about 8 or 9 massage rooms. I don't know about the other rooms, but the one assigned to me had an ensuite shower. It wasn't a fancy room, but not cramped either. There was enough space to move around the massage table.

Sucho showered with me right at the start - that made a good impression already.

His massage technique was average. There was a good deal of vigourous rubbing. Although he clearly knew several other strokes, he wasn't putting them to good use, or at the right spots. The exerted pressure was good and strong.

As for coverage, it was originally not extensive enough, focussing mainly on the back of legs, back and shoulders. When I asked him to not forget the chest, arms and front of legs, he happily obliged. He knew what to do, but I guess bad habits of omission in a gay-sex kind of place quickly degrades a boy's standard programme.

Although he was nude from the beginning, what was noticeable was that for a gay-sex kind of place, there was virtually no brushing during the massage. He wasn't skilled at the arts of seduction in that regard.

That didn't deter me and we soon proceeded to Part 2. Nothing much to write home about but I left satisfied.

He showered with me in closing. For a 90-miniute oil massage, the manager had earlier indicated a tip of 1,500 as expected. The house itself asked for 1,000 baht for "the room". Looking at the clock on my phone, I noticed that I had spent about 1 hour 35 minutes inside.

One last point. When I asked Sucho which day of the week was his day off, he replied that he only worked at Sabaidee Spa 3 days a week. Apparently, the place has a kind of roster. I tried to ask Sucho where else he worked, but I couldn't quite understand the reply. He did volunteer that even on those days where he was "with" Sabaidee, he only got on average one customer a day.

If this is the business model, I wondered if that meant that most of the numerous photos that Sabadiee Spa sent out might not represent actual availability on any particular day.

[garylim88]

From my limited experience with the massage scene in Bangkok and with my communication with my regular boys, some of the boys work as freelancers. They would share their photo with what they call as managers or what we commonly know as mamasan. 
 

I was initially very confuse when I noticed there were duplication of the boys images in some of the line chat group of the massage shops. But soon I was educated by one of the freelancer that he distributes his photo to the various shops. 
 

Some of them can also be found on popular apps such as Grindr so you may contact them directly.

Earlier this year due to the pandemic it is normal that all the boys ‘work from home’ and are only activated when there is a booking. There are some of the boys who also hold a full time job and will only be activated when they do have a booking.

There are some boys who are exclusive to a shop but there are quite a percentage that are also butterflies (not just us). 

[macaroni21]

Thanks for the intel, @garylim88. This explains the impossibly large number of boys pictured in the Line advertising of some shops. 

[macaroni21]

I found Numazu’s analysis of Tawan’s branding most insightful. Indeed, there is a certain “time stood still” quality to our experiences at Tawan. The bar’s format has hardly changed. Even the newer premises are just as basic as the previous place. As Numazu put it, “Going to it nowadays is like getting into a time machine, harkening back to a Bangkok that was grittier, dirtier, and maybe more fun…”

Numazu's analysis can be found at thread title “Bangkok Trip Report 2022: The wait is over. What was I waiting for?”, 24 July 2022, 9:59am.

I had a similar thought when I walked in last week. I liked the familiarity of it, even though I am no muscle worshipper. I liked the easy-going character of the place where the guys just come up to you and say a few words without a mamasan swooping in to throw the “buy him a drink?” spanner at me. 

That said, Tawan does make a few concessions to modernity. The front-of-shop lighting is now more “dynamic”.

There were about 15 guys in briefs except two in jockstraps. Most of the guys were in great form. It looked as if there was a competition they were preparing for, but the papasan said there wasn’t. When off the stage they might put a T-shirt on, but most of them stayed shirtless all the time. 

There weren’t many customers in the bar at about 10pm when I entered - perhaps ten (all Asian) – but because the bar is so small, barely 3 metres wide, it still looked active.

At any given time, there were about 3 or 4 muscle guys on stage, which was no bigger than two dining tables placed end to end. The guys mostly just stood there and did nothing in particular. This was the part I thought the management should give more thought to. It’s not interesting enough for customers. But it’s always been like that, so I guess one could say why fix what is not broken?

I was not bored, though. The papasan sat with me and we had a good conversation about the long shutdown brought on by Covid-19 and how everyone had to find other ways to survive. He shared a story about a Japanese customer (who had visited only the night before) who was stuck in Tokyo while his business in Thailand floundered. Discretion prevents me from repeating the details, but there must have been many small-time foreign investors in the same predicament.

It made me think: As much as we might complain about being unable to visit our favourite destination(s) for two years, others with deeper financial stakes must have been tearing their hair out.

On a different note, the papasan volunteered information about why they moved to the new shop, which is just across the street from the old one. Apparently, the landlord (of both the old Tawan bar and Sun Massage which were adjacent to each other) did not want to renew the lease for any of his tenants. The whole row, he said, now stood empty. Perhaps somebody is sniffing redevelopment potential, but frankly, with so much overbuilding in Bangkok, the property market already looks like a glut.

At 10:30pm the show began. Once again, it was a throwback to the past. The first three items had cross-dressers doing lip sync numbers. Each was solo; there were no backing dancers because there simply wasn’t enough space on the stage.

Then 3 guys came up to demonstrate some flexing. Two had outlines of hard-ons beneath their briefs. The third guy expertly positioned his dick to leave little to the imagination, with the glans peeping out over the waistband.

There might have been one more act, but at this point, I wasn’t paying much attention to the show. I was more interested in making eye contact with one guy sitting quietly two metres from me. He seemed lost in his thoughts, and it proved unusually difficult to get his attention.

I could have asked a papasan to tap him on his shoulder, but right when you needed one, no papasan could be found. Where were they?

Through the corner of my eye, I noticed that the next act was the big cock show. About 6 or 7 guys came onto the stage briefly and then circulated among the audience offering a grope for tips. The trouble was that as soon as I tipped one (after a careful assay of his member with my hands), all the rest came to me like vultures to a carcass. I felt attacked. The fourth guy had my last 100-baht bill and I had to plainly tell the rest that there was no more money. Which was a good thing, because I had to get them away from me as soon as possible before the quiet guy left his seat. They were obstructing my line of sight with the object of my lust. I knew neither his name nor number, so it would not have been easy to tell a papasan who to summon for me should he disappear somewhere into the back of the shop.

But he was still there after I shooed away the vultures, and finally, he noticed me beckoning him.

“You not do show?” was how I opened my conversation with him.

“Last time I do the jack-off show,” he replied. “But now, I don’t want to do anymore. I shy.”

This is intriguing. I can understand the progression from shy to not-shy, but in the other direction? This is going to require a more extensive interview, and we made a pact to do it in my room.

Drink (for customer or for boy): 400 baht. Off fee: 500 baht. Music volume: comfortable.

The papasan also informed me that they had two short-time rooms upstairs. I forgot to ask about the charges but in any case, looking at how basic the bar is furnished, I’d have only the lowest of expectations for the rooms.

In the daytime (not sure which hour to which hour) Tawan uses the rooms for massage services. “Some boys”, said the papasan, would be here to provide massages, but not all. He pointed to a guy near where I was seated as one of the usual masseurs. Bad move. That was the one guy who probably used the gym least. All of the sudden, I lost all interest in coming back tomorrow for a massage. That said, there might be others who would also be present in the day for massage, and who might be true hunks, but the papasan didn’t point them out to me.

[macaroni21]

Once again, I find myself in admiration of the way Numazu expresses his thoughts, when he wrote in his 12 July 2022 post (in page 1 of thread: Bangkok Trip Report 2022: The wait is over. What was I waiting for?):

Quote

You have to admit, that Patpong 2 is a poor substitute for Soi Twilight. Yes, thank goodness that a lot of the refugee bars from Soi Twilight found a home on Patpong 2, but the Soi is bookended by girlie bars, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site Foodland ™ was smack dab in the middle of all the action. Gone are the days that most of the gay bars were concentrated in a focused strip of a street, with touts manhandling you to compete for your attention as you make your way through the Soi. A bit of that still happens, but it's just not the same. Perhaps, it is just following a world trend that has done away with gay neighborhoods, and welcoming a more integrated world. We are the victims of our own success. We demanded for visibility and equality, and once we've achieved it, we became just like everyone else, sandwiched between girlie bars.

He gave me an idea then, but it's taken me a while to get it done. In addition to creating a new map of the area showing gogo bars and massage parlours that are open post-Covid, I have also retrieved some old posts that illustrate what Numazu was saying about the contrast between what there is in Patpong 2 and what there was in Soi Twilight. As with most of the my reports, I record the prices too, and some might find it interesting to see what prices were 13 or 14 years ago when Soi Twilight was in its heyday.

www.shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog

The specific post with the new map: https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2022/08/01/memory-lane-and-a-new-silom-surawong-map-july-2022/

 

[forrestreid]

Enjoyed those trips down memory lane to 2009 Shamelessmack.

I think that map of the Silom bars in 2022 merits its own thread, too!

[pong2]

On 7/20/2022 at 9:50 AM, Guest said:

 

There are a couple of obvious ways for gogo bars to solve this:

(i) Pay the boys more.   I remember reading a blog, probably Stickman, where the author was chatting to a girly gogo bar owner and a couple of young ladies came in and asked for jobs as nude dancers.   They wanted the nude jobs, because they pay more.  

(ii) Cast the net wider with recruitment.   Whilst Thailand might have near full employment, I doubt the economy is doing too well in Myanmar, for example. 

@I: the ´wages´ if paid at all are laughingly low compared to what guys COULD earn by what they are there for.  Most bars instead offer free meals, regular outings//´pahtees´ etc to keep up the common club-spirit. Which in fact is pretty common for many other bisnis in TH too.

@II: that has been done since many yrs-and in the lower graded Thai establishments which I used to visit -till covid struck- at least 50% of the guys were from there + Laos and even more from Khmerland=Cambodia. But many of them were forced to go home in covid and have not yet re-appeared

 

The MAIN reason that less and fewer Thai come there is simply demography: every year fewer births, half of them are guys, and thus the pool to fish in gets smaller and smaller. The once so common 5/even10+ kids in an Isan family-all gone.

And I just read that as tourism is rebouding-Thai HTLs struggle with finding staff- a same-same sign.