PeterRS

I feel I must mention here a superb post made by @macaroni21's predecessor quite a few years ago. There had been a lengthy discussion about the fact that go-go bars were becoming somewhat boring in that all seemed to adopt the same model and lacked the entertainment value of earlier bars like Barbiery. He outlined his idea for an updated go-go bar which included various sections, one being where the boys would always dance naked. Entry to this part would obviouly be more expensive but the essence was that a bar which offered a variety of different types of experience could perhaps rejuvenate the bar scene. I thought it was brilliant!

I wonder if there is now some sort of ban on nudity. As you may know from posts I have made before, nudity was common in the early gay bars in the 1980s. At Apollo go-go in Soi 4 and the original Twilight go-go (later Hotmale), around 9.:30pm the briefs would come off and all the boys - and Twilight had at least 60 of them - would strip off and parade in the nude for the next couple of hours or so. It was obvious in Twilight that some of the boys were less happy being naked, but the others and all those in the much smaller Apollo seemed perfectly happy and gleefully played around with each other.

Thanks @gerefan. Given the existing clients, on the basis of @macaroni21's theory below, this could suggest that the Complex days will also be numbered. I have no idea of the average age of customers there, but if I recall correctly Sunee's customer base when I was last there was not especially old - absolutely not all 60s and 70s. I remember a good sprinkling of 40s and 50s. But for some reason they gradually disappeared. Can Jomtien Complex continue to thrive if the average age of customers is somewhat advanced and there are few if any of the new breed of Asian customers? What is your view? Just curious!

As a patron of many gay Thai massage spas in more than 25 years, I have never heard of a naked line up - sadly!

Not really! Whenever there are major raids, one or other top politician will usually be there to ensure his photo is splashed in the media. I believe when Babylon was raided in the early 2000s, the minister which had implemented the Social Order Campaigns, Purachai, was seen in all the media photos and videos holding up a used condom. It was, he claimed, proof that there had been naughty goings on inside. One comment somewhere claimed Anutin was a fool as the Minister for Health should have praised Babylon for the fact that patrons were actually using condoms and not indulging in bareback sex! After all, this was still a time when AIDS was on many lips. Agree that Anutin is dreadful. His aim is to become Prime Minister and I believe he will do all possible to achive that.

Fair points. But my impression is that the pedophilia issue had all but disappeared for all but a very few by 2010. It was certainly front and centre around 2000 but ten years is a long time and memories can be relatively short if what is on offer is attractive enough. Having visited so infrequently, I am hardly one to comment, but I did rarely see any Asian tourists in Sunee. Mind you, my last visit was close to 10 years ago. I am sure your third point is correct. As I have written in several posts, on the basis of what I read on other Asian-based sites and on what I hear from Asian friends, their gay interests are primarily on massage and discos. One reason perhaps is that the majority of Asian tourists like to travel in small groups and spend time doing things together. Bangkok offers much more. One other Pattaya question from me. I hear that Jomtien Plaza is doing very good business. How many in the customer base there is Asian? My expectation would be very small.

Since they have largely been treating most of the public in this way for quite a few years, I imagine an increase will not prove too much of a drain on the tax revenues given the country's increasing prosperity. Plus even in private hospitals, treatments and procedures are very substantially lower than in western countries. In pubic hospitals, I have had MRIs which cost 14,500 baht each and a Professor of Retinology to thoroughly check my eyes and previous retina damage for 2,000 baht. My abdominal specialist's fee is 200 baht with the hospital taking a 50 baht facilities fee! My expectation is that as tourism increases, the larger and richer private hospitals like Bumrungrad will just put fees up yet again to cover the cost of treatment of Thais.

Revolutionary, but the apps were certainly not the first and only way to find guys on line. gay.com and gaydar were just two of the websites which had a wide selection of guys from all over Asia. fridae, the Singapore-run site, was for its first years a major way of finding guys and it listed many tens of thousands around Asia. There was also at least one Thai site mostly in Thai but a good way of meeting young cute Thai guys. I certainly used it for a while. Perhaps more important surely is the rather sudden availability and spread of cheap mobile phones. Soon came grindr and the other gay daing apps. But if that was a reason for Sunee Plaza relatively quickly downhill after 2010, how is it that other gay areas in Pattaya and Bangkok have not collapsed so quickly?

If this was not Thailand, the mind would boggle that any pub could remain operating for three full years without a licence!

When Thaksin introduced the original healthcare plan, it was universally praised - except by the hospitals, even the much cheaper public ones, which would in future have to perform expensive cancer and other comlicated surgeries for the same 35 baht it would cost them to treat a cold. It took about four years but a large group of hospitals complained that they could be forced to close. Within a few years the government realised the scheme needed rethinkiing. So it removed the 35 baht charge and much healthcare became basically free for Thai citizens. Since then hospitals have been reimbursed out of general tax revenues. The new policy seems to extend benefits to greater numbers.

Many thanks @Marc in Calif. It's a very scenic part of the world especially at that time of year, despite clouds and occasional mist. I was unable to see the Northern Lights on the ferry due to low cloud in the evening. I had to wait until i got to the far north of Finland before getting some amazing photos.

I'm glad @a-447 mentioned these bars because it does rather give the lie to the view that Sunee basically died because it was a fem-type boy area. I have no doubt there was a preponderence of fem-boys. But that cannot have been the primary reason for the area's quite rapid decline. I always enjoyed sitting at Yaya's bar and people watching as I did at Dick's in Soi Twilight. There then seemed a considerable number of farang sitting at various beer bars, drinking and chatting, although we were never sitting there long enough to check if the customers offed boys. Clearly some did. But the fem-boy argument and the underage argument surely cannot have been the only reasons. Re underage, on an early visit in the late 1990s we did enter a bar in Sunee - close to where #22 Memories Beer bar is on the map. We were both shocked and disgusted that some of those sitting at the side of the stage were clearly under age - some even considerably underage. But I understood this problem with Sunee was cleaned up early in the new century. Certainly we never saw a similar bar on future visits, thankfully. I recall one of the regular posters on this Board used to have weekly meetings with several friends over drinks at a Sunee bar. Admittedly it was quite a few years ago, but there seemed no major problem with the area at that time. I do recall being informed that the owners of Krazy Dragon and Happy Boys (the latter being in a lousy location) just gave up because of lack of customers. But again I come back to the question: why did the customer base that could clearly sustain so many gay bars and go-gos in 2010 all seem to vanish with most closing pre-covid?

I am sure you are correct, although clearly there were exceptions. We popped in to Krazy Dragon precisely because the boys there were not the typical fem-type twinks. Quite the opposite in most cases. It was a pleasnt change from Happy Boys.

Found this map of Pattaya's Sunee Plaza dated 2010. The gay go-go bars are marked in blue. I can see 13 - and this was before Winner Boys opened. Of the rest, I think only Nice Boys continues to exist. I was only rarely in Pattaya but did sometimes enjoy walking through the Plaza and stopping at Yaya's bar for a drink before popping into two different types of go-go bars - Krazy Dragon and Happy Boys. I really wonder: how did it all disappear so quickly?

Given that @Moses owns and runs SGT, I am also confused. Why does he post here and get into quite a few argumentative discussions which he hardly ever backs up with background links when with very rare exceptions he does not post such threads on his own site? Is it because he knows SGT gets so few posts these days and most are specifically related to Pattaya? Yet SGT does have a Gay World forum where this and other posts he has started making here could easily be added. Then again, given that that World forum has had all of a mere 12 threads during the course of the last 12 months, he must know that if he posted there most of the readership would likely ignore them. I suggest he should try - and then see what happens. I may be completely wrong - but I think not

You also have to add the montly envelopes handed over to the BIB. I have no idea what the rate is in Pattaya or the present rate in Bangkok. But some years before Soi Twilight closed, I was chatting with a mamsan I had known for years. He informed me that for an indoor go-go bar, 160,000 baht was the expected monthly payment. For a beer bar on the street, 40,000 baht. Following covid and the closure of Soi Twilight, I expect these payments must have been considerably reduced. Mention of bar ownership, it was often claimed that Classic Boys at the end of Soi Twilight was owned by a member of the army. We know, too, that substantial payments are made on a regular basis to the BIB by the owners of the girl bars. Thanks to an arrest made by police in one jurisdiction some years ago, the man taken into custody had specifically made substantial "contributions" over the years to those in another juriiction to enable the police to build air-conditioned police boxes at traffic intersections. He created an almighty fuss and I believe the case swiftly disappeared.

Thanks so much @daydreamer. Trying to remember that name has been haunting me since I wrote the post. Sorry I cannot recall what the mamasans wore. I was much more interested in what the boys were not wearing 😵 I recall that on one of our quite regular visits, I was pissed off that one customer had hogged a table and was buying drinks for the 5 cutest guys. Fair enough! We should have arrived earlier. What annoyed me more, though, was that he and a couple of the boys were smoking, as were a couple of other customers, this despite there being two large NO SMOKING notices. Eventually I walked over to him to point out the notices and politely ask if he and the boys would cease smoking. A few moments later he came over to our table. I was a bit concerned he might want to provoke a fight. But he was very pleasant. He was, he told us, the co-owner of the bar. Since we were regulars, we knew that they never had many customers and the bar was not making profits. It was for him an interesting sideline. But if he stopped customers smoking, he'd lose half the existing customer base and have to close down. It was a very fair point and I thanked him. He offered us a free drink, but in view of the bar's financial situation we declined. I almost said I'd prefer to take one of the boys sitting at his table upstairs, but managed to restrain myself! Thanks again.

SInce you started it, you will be aware - or you certainly should be - that the thread is about DEATH! Totally unnecessary deaths! Don't dare mention derailment of threads when you are a master at it! With respect.

Yes, we do agree. It's a pity that you were never able to attend the original Babylon in the building at the top of that soi where it joins Sathorn Soi 1. Perhaps ironically it's now the home of the French restaurant Le Bouchon that for decades was located in Patpong Soi 2! The original Babylon which opened around 1987 I think was clearly more than just a gay sauna, for someone had spent a great deal of money on it - antiques in a tall glass case in the lobby, for example. The smallish restaurant on the first floor was always packed at weekends and the owner would usually engage a classical guitarist or flautist to play gentle music. Much of the music piped into the sauna area was itself quiet classical - rarely pop. I was aways told that it was created basically for gay professional Thais to give them a private space to relax and unwind. Certainly on Friday and Saturday evenings there were always queues to get in. Then the owner expanded it by taking over the next door premises. But by the end of the 1990s, he decided to move it all down to its location in the much larger premises on land which I believe his family owned. When a Thai friend told me about the original Babylon not long after it opened, I admit I became a regular. Every visit I made to Bangkok (several a year) included one evening at Babylon. Happy memories indeed! To begin with I liked the new premises, although for my taste they were too large. The pool, gym, restaurants and bar were great. But it became perhaps more like Hua Lamphong station rather than the niche little Hua Hin station. But that's progress. I was aware of other saunas opening. Heaven down near the river (opened around 1995 I think) was very busy for a time and I believe is still on the go. Chakran quickly became my favourite, though. Once the Skytrain had opened, getting to Soi Aree was so much easier. And with its Moroccan theme, its small pool right in the middle, the bar where you could sip Singhas or cocktails on loungers as you watched the many boys in their towels descend the stairs on the other side - it almost eclipsed the oriignal Babylon. Somewhat oddly, as Babylon had became so much more popular with foreigners as well as Thais, Chakran slowly moved in the other direction - Thai for Thai/Asian. But as you @reader have often said and perhaps I have not given you sufficient credit, time marches on. Some things change. I had a favourite sauna in Singapore named Rairua. It opened in 2002 and was out of the city centre. Like Babylon, it was very well decorated and laid out. It introduced SIngapore's first nude nights. These became so popular that other Singapore saunas had adopted the theme within a year. The clients tended to be better off, cute young Singaporeans - very few foreigners like me! Then virutally without warning it closed its doors in 2006. Now that building happens to be the Singapore branch of the gay Pulse Clinic which started in Bangkok! As I have written before, I was very much a regular at Bangkok's gay go-go bars for decades. When I moved to live here, I discovered that a gay friend from my Hong Kong days also had bought a condo here. So on Sundays we were regulars for dinner somewhere followed by a go-go bar or two. We must have visited almost all of them, even though we returned to our favourites. Our last outings were amost always to a bar whose name I am ashamed to say I cannot recall. It was on the same street as Nature Boys and on the corner just down from Mango Tree. It was not popular in that we rarely saw more than a handful of other customers. But drinks were cheap, some of the boys were great fun and the short time rooms upstairs were always clean. When it finally closed, we'd occasionally chat with one of the mamasans who had opened a small host bar on Soi Twilight almost next to Dick's Cafe. The other more efficient mamasan had earlier gone off to Pattaya to work in Dick's Cafe there. My reason for not attending bars now is simply because I have no desire. Being partnered with a Thai whose only experience of gay nightlife had been a quick visit to Balcony Bar with his cute gay friend, we both prefer to meet our friends for quiet dinners, drinks and chat. Mabe we are lucky in that he really enjoys my friends and I his. On the other hand, I have free reign when I am away from Thailand. But that's another story!

China rightly gets a bad rap on this and other forums for a number of issues - mainly poitical and human rights. But as one who has visited the country dozens of times, may I just add that it has some extraordinary sights for inbound tourists. And I don't just mean in the main cities of Beijing and Shanghai - although a visit to the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall are as memorable as any anywhere. For those who might consider China, I would definitely suggest they try to visit Harbin in the far north east during the spectacular month-long Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in January/February. I know there is one in Sapporo in Japan, but frankly it is not a patch on the one in Harbin. Here there are two parks: the ice park involving dozens of mega-ice scuptures which are lit from within at night (and so a daytime and nighttime visit are essential); the other the snow park where smaller but also some huge snow scultures can be viewed. Near the snow park is the famous Siberian Tiger Sanctuary. Harbin itself is a fascinating city. After the Russian Revolution, many white Russians fled to Harbin thanks to the trans Siberian Railway and a spur down to Harbin. For a while it was more Russian than Chinese. In its centre there is a now decommissioned Russian Cathedral and all major streets are named in Chinese, English and Russian. Russian restaurants abound - and there is also a gay bar! The one problem during the Festival is hotel accommodation. I was lucky in that even though I booked at relatively short notice I got a room at the Hoiiday Inn which was in an ideal location. The parks and the Sanctuary are on the other side of the frozen river, but there are virtually no hotels there. So you need to take a tour or one of the plentiful taxis which will wait for your return after your visit. With evening temperatures in the region of -25 celsius, the last thing you want is to be stuck with no transport! Another area hugely worth visiting is Yunnan Province in the south west not far from Tibet. Getting from Bangkok is relatively easy as there are flights from Bangkok to the capital Kunming. Keeping this travelogue simple, I will mention only two of its many towns and other attractions - the old cty of Lijiang and the amazing Ganden Sumsteling monastery which is reputed to be the finest Tibetan monastery outside Lhasa. The city close to the monastery has been renamed Shangri-La - but it is just another Chinese city and the main reason for visiting is the stunning road between Lijiang and Shangri La and various monasteries. I stayed in a lodge just behind the monastery. Watching the sun set over the golden rooftops while sipping ginger tea on my little patio was quite magnificent.

And with Thais not requiring visas for Russia, this is why Russians can enter Thailand without visas! Yet when I went to Moscow some years ago, as a UK citizen I required a visa. Since I would be travelling on to Europe after attending a Conference in Moscow and then returning via Russia for a few days sighseeing and to get my flight home, I applied in Bangkok for a double entry visa. Not possible, I was gruffly told by some Russian official days after the form had been submitted. I'd have to get a new Russia visa in London. When I replied that I would be nowhere within 400 miles of London, he just shrugged! But I absolutely had to get back to Moscow! What that incompetent did not tell me is there is a Russia visa issuing office in Edinburgh where quickie 24 hour visas can be issued - at a massve cost. So my brother-in-law drove me a considerable distance to Edinburgh one day and back the next.

China is now getting its come uppance for Xi's attempt to take pver much of the world. It's not just its opaque pricing and high interest rates for the loans it dishes out. Many countries cannot repay those loans. Sri Lanka is going through its worst financial crisis for 7 decades. There have been street demonstrations, runs on banks and rollng electrical blackouts. China lent it US$7 billion to construct a new port seen as a key to east/west trade. It has been negotiating a bailout loan from the IMF for US$2.9 billion. In the meantime it has borrowed a further US$4 billion from the Import-Export Bank of China to help repay other loans - many from China! In addition to the Columbo container port, Sir Lanka's port of Hambantota became key to China's Belt & Road initiative. Despite its necessity being questioned, China poured vast loans into the country to have it fully developed. The intention was to make a small fishing village into a major shipping hub. The debts incurred to China could not be repaid. So Sri Lanka gave China a controlling equity in the port and a 99-year lease on its operations. Infrastructure projects are a key element of the Belt & Road initiative. And the fear is that China is happy to provide mega-loans in the reasonably certain knowledge it will soon be in a position to control these projects. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Sri-Lanka-crisis/Sri-Lanka-says-deal-with-Chinese-bank-covers-4.2bn-in-debt

A great less expensive way of seeing the Norwegian coast and fjords is the daily Hurtigruten ferries. Take the amazing train ride from Oslo to Bergen and then stay on the ferry right up past the Arctic Circle to basically the top of the civilised world if you wish. The only problem is that the cabins are very small. But I thoroughly enjoyed my four days November trip some years ago.

You and I will always be on opposite sides of this discussion. With respect I have never advocated the closure of gay go-go bars. I certainly would be delighted if present and future generations could enjoy the go-go bar scene as we did decades ago. What I have done is report what I "believe" will happen and why. How many gay go-go bars existed 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 30 years ago? Many more than presently exist, for sure. I beieve that the shows in those which remain in Bangkok are often quite full. Great! But how many attend the bars to see the go-go dancers beween the times of opening and the shows? No bar can exist financially if it only makes money for drinks during the shows and some off fees. Now I read somewhere recently (perhaps in this forum) that one bar I believe in Pattaya is charging 800 Bt. as the off fee. The point is that the customer base continues to fall off and the new customers, especially those from north and south-east Asia, are either women or are generally much more interested in the sauna and disco experience. I can't see how many gay men and women around the world will be attracted to visit Thailand only because it has a "lock on" a gay go-go bar experience that is, for a multitude of reasons, slowly dying.

Correct. And I agree the "offer side" (supply) is dependent almost exclusively on demand. And if the demand reduces to the point where profits cannot be made, those go-go bars which depend on them cannot continue. Of course not all are dependent on profit. Notably the one gay world-class facility where profit was far from the motivating objective and which Bangkok enjoyed for almost 30 years was Babylon sauna. It was conceived, designed and looked after by a very wealthy Thai from a very wealthy family who wanted a place for gay men - initially gay Thai men - to congregate. It was widely reported that it did not operate to make money. It closed, as I understand, only because he moved to Chiang Mai. But I do know that that large plot of land, which included at least one other property, in one of the most expensive parts of the city has been sold. Sad!