PeterRS

Great link spoon. Thanks for posting. I have never before heard of Roxy Fin Club. Same with the title "duck shop". I agree the boys there look a cut above those in the regular gay go-go bars. From what I can make out it often has live music and theme nights, including nude nights. Exactly what that means I have no idea, but Id love to know more. Since it seems more for gals to off the guys, I guess it a bit more like the escort clubs with handsome young men on offer for rich ladies in Japan. If only 20% of offs are for men, does that mean the off fee and tips will be a good bit more than in the usual boy gogo bars? I hope someone can visit and check it out. The article has clearly been translated (not very well). I assume from the various Chinese characters that it is from Chinese. Fo you know if the article is this from a Chinese website? I love the poster for a Military Evening tomorrow

It seems it was forced out of business due to major cash flow problems. That probably means there were a lot of debts. With no work from Purple Dragon for months, will their guides still be available? Would anyone actually buy a small niche travel company in that state? Would it not be better to start a new company? I realise the one asset the company will have is a list of past customers. But there were only 5 visitors a day to the website and at least some customers were left with lost deposits. That does not seem the ideal way to restart a specialised gay travel business nowadays. There are two more issues. Competition from the increasing success of Moses company siamroads. This concentrates on provision of specialist guides and local transport around the region. I expect they would also recommend hotels. Then there is the fact that gay tourism from the traditional western markets has been declining and now overtaken by the new Asian market whose language skills and travel habits will be different. If I was starting up a gay travel company, that is the market I would do all I could to tap. https://siamroads.com

The whole point of Japanese guys going to their clubs and pubs after work in their country is to get drunk and as a result lose all their reserve and inhibitions. I am sure the stripping Japanese seen in Hotmale were drunk or close to being drunk. I really doubt a Japanese would do that without the influence of a lot of alcohol Also most dont hold their drink well. It usually only takes a couple of beers before they are flying. Personally, unless they are young and very cute, Id prefer they remained covered up.

If you are considering islands or beach breaks, remember to avoid the 10 days before and after Easter. Thats one period when families from the west flock to Thailand.

Anyone know if any of the boys in any of the Bangkok bars sport natural erections? The ones I have visited all have their assets tied off at the base to ensure constant hardness. For some reason, this is a big turn off for me. Thinking back to the threads about the old days, I cannot remember such tying off being used then.

Many thanks for the map daydreamer. It certainly brings back memories. I could never work out why the random numbering system made it bit difficult to read. I remember many of these types of map not only from Dreaded Ned but also from other sites (Nickys) and the various free publications we could usually pick up in the bars and in Dicks Cafe. Despite all the effort by the compilers there were always little errors and omissions which pissed some readers off. In this one, the Swiss Lodge (now Le Siam - very nice hotel) is on the other side of the road. LOL Very minor issues but I remember an extended discussion on this Board some years ago ago about incomplete listings and wrong positioning. Thailand OUT (I think that was the name) came under criticism. I actually thought that it was an excellent magazine. It was published by an expat based in Chiang Mai who replied pointing out the difficulty of getting someone to assemble maps in the first place and then keeping them up to date. He even got an exclusive interview with Sir ian McKellan. His series of Bangkok maps were pretty good I thought. Then one day he had to leave Thailand very suddenly and the magazine died.

All live and recorded music performed in any public space has to be covered by a licence from Music Copyright Thailand Ltd. There is a sliding scale of rates. Not sure of the capacities of The Venue and Castro Bar. If between 60 and 100 seats the fee is 20,000 baht per year. Above 300 seats the fee is 100,000 baht. Royalties are also payable in go-go bars and for places like music in hotel lifts. Whether the enforcement agency actually makes the bars pay, is another matter!!

Its been found. https://gaybuttonthai.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9781

I think we have Mack himself for providing the heads up LOL

Well said spoon! Difficult to understand how anyone could miss a topic that has been written about quite extensively on all three main chat rooms. Mind you, I have read posts before and totally forgotten about them a few minutes later. Sign of age, no doubt.

The news has been on all 3 chat room boards since the new blog appeared almost a week ago!

Somehow I cant see westerners and retired expats being able to live on anything like 30K baht per month in Bangkok. Perhaps up country. The minimum wage may be one third of 30K but these workers will generally be living either with family or with a group of others in very cheap rented accommodation. Meals will be either self-cooked or bought from street stalls. Most Thais are eligible for the governments universal health coverage of 30 baht per visit or night in hospital irrespective of the nature of the illness. Visitors are not, I understand. How young teachers get by on 30K baht I have no idea unless they share a cheap apartment, have some form of subsidised meals at their schools and subsidised medical care. So as z909 points out, it IS possible. But very, very hard in my view. Its a government regulation that those on retirement visas (available to anyone after age 50) must have 65K baht coming in from overseas each month. Im like traveller123 in that I own my own apartment. I dont bother with a car and my healthcare costs a bit more (as I expect I have higher limits). I find 800K baht annually covers all that for me and allows enough within that sum for a bit of travelling and the occasional luxury. I really doubt if I could do it for even that amount if I had to rent an apartment. Aside from apartment rental, medical insurance will be the highest single expense, and that increases dramatically as you get older. As for getting round the regulation about remitting 65K from overseas to your bank account per month, a recent tightening of the regulations now make avoiding that all but impossible.

I dont recall any other gogo bar on Rama 4. I hope others can enlighten us.

I suspect that must have been My Way which was located a few yards off Rama 4 between Silom and Suriwong. Usually it had great dancing with lots of athletic boys doing their thing on 2 or 3 floor to ceiling poles. Only thing is I cannot remember shows there. So I may be wrong.

A fair suggestion. But both are in Pattaya. From reports Sunee Plaza is almost a dead zone now compared to ten years ago. Winner Bar has twinks, Nice Boys is popular and there are at most one or two more gogo bars. Also from reports, most of the boys in the many Jomtien bars are from other countries. And Jomtien has no gogo bars.

Thanks for your comments. I have singled out the two main issues for i believe there are two simple reasons. Economics being one. Failure to adapt being the second! Because for decades, well - at least two and a half decades, the bars survived well using one business model, they failed to adapt as their traditional customer base declined. This is a point you made some years ago. This model depended on lowish drinks prices and a goodly number of offs each evening/week. As has been stated on this forum before, until the early 2000s that base was largely a mix of westerners and Thais. From my observations, the Thais were the first to drift away, followed much more gradually by some of the westerners. I cannot pinpoint exactly when this occurred. Perhaps it was during the first Thaksin era Social Order campaigns in the early 2000s. As a result, the number of offs started to decline. To make up their revenues, owners started upping drinks prices. I believe this was the first time red flags were waved about the gogo bars perhaps facing long term trouble. Soon after this, the number of tourists from neighbouring Asian countries began to increase dramatically. Some obviously were gay guys wanting to sample Thailands gay scene. The ethnic customer balance began to change. From my occasional observations, the first of this group appearing in the bars were either solo travellers or small groups of friends. Most came from the richer countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan etc. For them higher drinks prices was no obstacle. Their objective seemed less in finding a boy to off. It was to experience the gogo scene and have a bit of fun. Many of these guys preferred to hit the increasing number of gay saunas and the massage spas, have sex there and then move on to the gogo bars later in the evening just to have a drink or two and see the shows. After one or two shows during their visit, the bars are forgotten in favour of the dance clubs like DJ Station. From other non-Thai chat rooms it is obvious that saunas, massage and clubbing remain of far greater interest to the solo/small group gay Asian travellers. So the number of offs dropped even further, other than perhaps at high season weekends. The result was that off income declined further. Instead of experimenting with different business models, most of the bar owners resorted to the traditional remedy. Bar prices had to be increased yet again. Fast forward a few years and mass tourism from Asian countries begins to flood Bangkok and Pattaya. A large percentage of this lot is on group tours for whose members gogo bars are a new and different experience. As spoon rightly points out, their home societies are more conservative. So even for the women, the sight of scantily clad boys and a few enviable erections is an excitement they can enjoy and talk about with all their girlfriends back home. Gay guys are probably also part of these tours. For them going into a bar with others from their group can mean their sexuality remains hidden. They are just enjoying a night out with their friends. Will they come back again, this time on a solo tour only to spend time in the bars? I think this is unlikely. For the future, I believe the gogo model is unlikely ever to return to what it used to be 25 years ago. The bar owners have to make money. They have been caught in a spiral of their own making. They have no choice but to cater to the new customer base. In my view that will continue, at least In theory, to depend on Asian guys and Asian women. This is the group with cash for whom it matters little if the off price is 1,500 baht short time or 3,000 baht short time. It also matters little if the boys up there on stage are Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese or Lao because an off is not the objective. It is the women flashing 1,000 baht tips for the flash of a smile and some gentle attention from the boy of their dreams in Moonlight 2018 that are likely to be increasingly seen in bars. The danger then is the gogo bars become much more like the women only male escort bars in Japan. But that is a different topic. The one unknown I cannot fathom is: what happened to the western gay tourists? With the total number of tourists to Thailand having expanded humungously over the last quarter century, there should, again in theory, be far more solo western gay tourists coming to Thailand for the first time for whom the traditional gogo bar model ought to remain a key part of their vacation. Has word got out that the bars are just too boring in this era of much greater gay freedom? Or has a vacation in Thailand become generally too expensive? Or do we yet again place the blame on the apps?

Quite superb writing! I hope there is a novel or a travelogue - or even a series - lurking somewhere on your wish list. (I would have said bucket list but am sure you are not yet at that more advanced age.) It is so good to have you back! Yet the tales of your visit do make for rather alarming reading, in particular what the bars are offering in their new locations, the types of boys available and the lack of customers. We have known that over the last 15 years or so both the dancing on stage and the customer base has changed dramatically. Same for the introduction of boys from neighbouring countries who are often more fussy about what they will and will not do compared to the Thais who strutted their stuff years ago. O tempora! O mores! I remember in your earlier incarnation in a thread about the changing nature of the gogo bar business, you gave a splendid description with a detailed diagram of the type of bar you believed should not just be considered but would be a success. If my memory is correct, this involved breaking bar areas down to much smaller sections, each with a different type of activity. For a supplement customers could enter a room with boys dancing naked as they used to do aeons ago. With the increasing Asian customer base and its different male to female balance, I wonder if you think this might still work. Or has the market changed too much for that business model to work? I do hope that at some time in the near future you will consider an article giving us your thoughts on the differences between those times and the present, as well as offering your predictions a to how you see the gogo bar business evolving over the next few years.

I am sure others must also have complained and I certainly would not claim any credit! I suspect security were kept so busy trying to keep the bar girls and boys out of the rooms that they finally gave up! But one large cocktail would be a great and unexpected pleasure.

I cannot be certain of the year but I think the early 90s. All I remember is that the GM was named Bill Black.

I am sure you know your Bacardi as well as I know my Grey Goose and Belvedere vodka. I cant think why King Power would sell something that is not original but I do not doubt your observation. All I know is that their Grey Goose and Belvedere are the genuine article. But they are still more expensive in Thailand Duty Free than most other airports in the region!

Lovely report, thanks. You are correct. It probably was The Peninsula on Rajadamri. Now the Anantara it was built near the end of the 1970s as part of Hong Kong's Peninsula Group. Thats one reason why the lobby looks very like the lobby in the Hong Kong flagship. But bust quickly followed that economic boom and so the Peninsula management sold on to The Regent International Hotel Group in the early 1980s. Later it was then sold on to the Four Seasons. During the Regent era, there was a policy of no joiners. I once took a nice boy from the bars back to the hotel. I knew there was a security guard at the lift lobby and se we waited until he was otherwise engaged before sneaking in to one. I had forgotten about security cameras. About 3 minutes after we arrived at the room, the phone rang. I did not answer. It rang about 4 more times, and than thankfully ceased. But then came the knock on the door. I quickly realised this was security. I told my guest to be silent and did not respond. The knocking continued for about 5 minutes, after which we were finally left in peace. But I was furious! I checked the hotel regulations. Nothing there about not taking guests to the room. So I wrote an angry letter to the GM. He responded with a major apology and the offer of a free week-end. I made sure to book for two people!

King Powers website has the airport price at 680 baht per litre of Bacardi Rum. No idea about Vietnam prices but I expect they could be roughly the same. But that assumes they sell alcohol on arrival. If it was me, Id definitely buy on departure and take it with me rather than risk not getting it on arrival. https://www.kingpower.com/category/foods-and-beverages/beverages/wine-and-spirits/liquors?availability=dutyfree&lang=en&page=1&brands=bacardi&categories=liquors&priceMin=300&priceMax=2100

I do think thats unfair. Yes, the Court gave the government two years and yes, the government used up all but a few days of that time. But I think we must remember how historic this vote is. There was a lot of opposition to gay marriage in Taiwan. This was borne out in the referendum towards the end of last year when an official national referendum found that 72% of voters rejected gay marriage. Although only an advisory referendum, inevitably the result created far greater problems for the ruling party. The fact that it still pressed ahead and that the parliament as a whole elected to pass the most liberal of the three bills before it last week, the only one to mention 'marriage', has to be a huge credit to the government. Enjoy the Pride Parade. Hope you can post lots of photos.

Six weeks to upgrade the bathrooms in ALL 75 rooms? That is surely typical Thai optimistic man pen rai. It would take far more than 6 weeks elsewhere and would be undertaken on a floor by floor basis so that the hotel could continue to have guests during the renovations. But then the upgrade may merely mean putting in new shower curtains!

The Taiwan law is for Taiwanese citizens and for Taiwan citizens who have a partner from an overseas country which itself permits gay marriage. You cannot just go to Taiwan and get hitched!