I need some history lessons about early Pattaya

[abidismaili]

On YouTube I saw a video showing Pattaya in 1979. Walking street was a gravel road and it looked to have mostly normal shops in stead of bars to get ladies for sex

This made me wondering :

1) Since when became massage places with happy ending a thing in Pattaya?

2) Since when are they all over the place? I mean they are really everywhere now. I assume it started with 1 or 2 such shops and then a few years later it’s everywhere. 

3) Since when are there massage places with  guys doing the massage and providing happy ending?

4) When did gay beer bars and go go bars first appear ? Already in the 70s? Or gay sex tourism started only late 80s or so ?

5) From that old video it looks the sex bars where not so in your face as they are now. Maybe more hidden back then? Less obviously visible ?

[vaughn]

Can you share the youtube video?

I can't answer any questions though, it was all before i was born

[Londoner]

Not directly relevant, but I have two books which provide some background to  the Pattaya gay scene of the past; Michael Burchall's "Boyztown", fascinating stories of the early days of our favourite area, and Dennis Dessnap's "What's sex got to do with it?" The first was privately-published, as far as I can see, while the other names The Syden Press as its publisher.   

You may be lucky and find second-hand copies.

Regarding Youtube, there are  clips  of road trips through the city on a split-screen, one from circa 1980, the other from about 2020. 

[Olddaddy]

54 minutes ago, vaughn said:

Can you share the youtube video?

I can't answer any questions though, it was all before i was born

Still a young gun?

I feel old now 😭 

 

[vaughn]

1 hour ago, Olddaddy said:

Still a young gun?

I feel old now 😭 

 

depends who you ask haha, i'm still in my 30s but doing my part to continue the legacy of gay pattaya

[macaroni21]

Perhaps @abidismaili was referring to this Youtube video?

 

[macaroni21]

This other one is also informative:

 

[macaroni21]

I can't answer any of @abidismaili's questions with facts, but from what I have read over the years (and largely corroborated by what's said in the two videos above):

It was a small fishing village up till the early 1960s. The US military presence in Vietnam and Thailand built up gradually in the late 1950s and that was about when Pattaya came to the attention of the US officers as a beach escape. Even then it was just a trickle of visitors and visitor numbers would not have been enough to support entertainment outlets.

Everything changed from 1964. US forces surged into Vietnam. Where formerly the US military were predominantly regular officers (and a few thousand at most) sent to train VIetnamese and Thai militaries, now the US presence was mostly made up of young GIs, keen on drugs and sex. Numbers hit a peak of over 500,000 in 1969.

Because these were conscripts often involved in brutal infantry combat, the US organised an R&R rotation. The men generally had a week's leave a year (?). As the above video says, the men had choices: Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, even Sydney. Every one of these cities developed a Vietnam-GI entertainment industry, but because these were big cities, the entertainment ghetto remained just one small part of a city, the way Patpong is just a ghetto.

Pattaya was the only R&R option that was not already a city, so the GI-centric type of entertainment quickly became the town's dominant character. That said, the videos say bars (with girls, naturally) only appeared in the early or middle 1960s. It makes sense - that's when there came a critical mass of customers, the GIs by the thousands.

Around 1966, the US moved into and expanded U-Tapao airbase. And thousands more US Airforce, maintenance and logistics people (predominantly male) moved into the region, not as R&R short-term visitors but based there for months or years. So that was another boost to the entertainment business. 

@abidismaili's first question was when massage places with happy ending a thing in Pattaya. I would guess that it came very quickly after the bars were established. Bear in mind, massage is indigneous to Thai culture, and locals too look forward to happy endings. Even if no US GIs had come to Thailand, there would still be a sexy massage massage scene, like you would find in the provincial cities where few tourists venture to.

His second question was "Since when are they all over the place?". I'm not sure if "they" meant bars or massage or both, but I'd guess that the moment US GIs came in large n numbers (mid 1960s onwards), bars AND massage became the main business of Pattaya. 

Rather than see the sex business as arriving into an already family-friendly beach resort, it's the other away around. Pattaya first went from fishing village to a boomtown of sex, drugs, human trafficking (girls needed to work in the shops) in a matter of a few years, and then, ten years later, after the American retreat from Vietnam (1976), there began valiant attempts to make it family-friendly. They needed to do so to fill the empty rooms left behind by the Americans.

Unfortunately/fortunately, by then the glorious reputation of Pattaya had been well established, and even as the GIs vanished, more and more civilians from Europe, Australia and the US continued to come to Pattaya, keeping the sex businesses alive. And growing.

I can't answer your 3rd and 4th questions. What I can say however is that by 1989 or 1990 when I made my first visit to Pattaya, there were gay sex options available. They seemed well-established by then, so they must have been there for several years already. Perhaps others who made their first visits before me can say more about the pre-1989 period.

[Keithambrose]

I can't comment on Pattaya, as I have not yet been there. In Bangkok, where I go frequently, there was no gay area in 1978, my first visit. You relied on Taxi driver, or concie to find the action. I am talking about sex effectively, though perfunctory massage was often involved. Action there was, I had an excellent  gay threesome, but it was out of sight.  Slowly bars began to develop, though my memory is not great, again word of mouth. I remember being ushered into places, where boys suddenly appeared, cocks out.  Then Soi Twilight started, Barbiery in Surawong? I think the soi 6 scene had also started then, Golden Cock et al. Ditto Silom soi 2. So, by the late 80s, sex in all forms was available!

[macaroni21]

9 minutes ago, Keithambrose said:

Pattaya, as I have not yet been there

What??? How can you be a card-carrying whore-hunter if you've never been to Sodom-on-sea?

[Keithambrose]

2 minutes ago, macaroni21 said:

What??? How can you be a card-carrying whore-hunter if you've never been to Sodom-on-sea?

Terrible I know, but I always came to Thailand  on business, hence Bangkok! My first case led to me meeting a lawyer, David Lyman, of Tilleke & Gibbins. David is American, but built the firm up to be the largest Thai law firm. I developed  business  for my firm with his firm, and we are still meeting after 46 years! He is now 88. Now I am retired, I hope to put my toe in the water in Pattaya, and perhaps other appendages, in November! I have taken advice from Vinapu  on the subject!

[Keithambrose]

7 minutes ago, macaroni21 said:

What??? How can you be a card-carrying whore-hunter if you've never been to Sodom-on-sea?

Incidentally,  thank you for your interesting blogs!

[brall3]

Any suggestions on how to attach a video to this site?

[abidismaili]

Sorry. I was at my job and can only give you now a link to the video. Search YouTube for the video with title “Thailand, Pattaya attractions in 1979”

It looks we don’t have many older members anymore. I had hoped by now I had answers to my 5 questions.  
 

Update: User Macaroni published the video already. Going over his reply now 

[Olddaddy]

2 hours ago, abidismaili said:

Sorry. I was at my job and can only give you now a link to the video. Search YouTube

 

Surely we are more important than your job.

[vinapu]

5 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

Now I am retired, I hope to put my toe in the water in Pattaya, and perhaps other appendages, in November! I have taken advice from Vinapu  on the subject!

I hope you manage to utilize my enlightened advices in November as planned. As consolation  take  a heart , you are not only one long standing member who never visited that family friendly destination.

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, Olddaddy said:

Surely we are more important than your job.

+1

[khaolakguy]

6 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

 In Bangkok, where I go frequently, there was no gay area in 1978, my first visit. 

Silom Soi Four was already in operation by 1972/73 with Apollo, Tomboy, Lonely Boy + +

[10tazione]

6 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

I hope to put my toe in the water in Pattaya,

That's the only thing you shouldn't do in Pattaya!

[Olddaddy]

Did Sunee Plaza start in the 1980's?

 

[abidismaili]

5 hours ago, Olddaddy said:

Did Sunee Plaza start in the 1980's?

 

This is the stuff I want to know also. How and when did it start. When the first massage places with guys giving massage? Etc. Etc. There must be some members left who can say at least in say 1985 it was all there already. Then we have an upper limit. 

[Olddaddy]

There was a few books written I believe about the history of Sunee Plaza 

Was it a Michael Burchell author ?

[Keithambrose]

9 hours ago, khaolakguy said:

Silom Soi Four was already in operation by 1972/73 with Apollo, Tomboy, Lonely Boy + +

I must have missed them. Pre Internet,  finding things out was not so easy!

[Londoner]

19 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

What I can say however is that by 1989 or 1990 when I made my first visit to Pattaya, there were gay sex options available. They seemed well-established by then, so they must have been there for several years already. Perhaps others who made their first visits before me can say more about the pre-1989 period.

Michael Burchall writes about his first visit to Thailand in 1985. At least one bar, Gentleman's Club was operating then but  Boyztown itself wasn't.  Jim Lumsden and his partners were its architects. And it grew quickly.

[abidismaili]

2 hours ago, Londoner said:

Michael Burchall writes about his first visit to Thailand in 1985. At least one bar, Gentleman's Club was operating then but  Boyztown itself wasn't.  Jim Lumsden and his partners were its architects. And it grew quickly.

Could you get a massage in 1985 from a guy in one of the many massage shops?
 

In 1985 were there already so many massage places like we have now? It feels like there is at least  one on average for every 100 meters or so in our own time.