macaroni21

Then I got smarter. And still Google Calendar tricked me. After the earlier incident I put departure time in the title of the Calendar event, e.g "depart Bkk 17:20". So even if my phone changes time zone, it won't change right? It didn't, but the newer version of Calendar has AI. Zuts alors. What I recently discovered was that it reads my event title and sees that I had put in a time in the title. It then populates the time field without even asking me. And once I move into another time zone, it adjusts the time field. But this time I could see a discrepancy between the time of departure I had entered in the title (unchanged) and the time of event Google figured should be the case (adjusted for time zone).

Twice, I was almost "tricked" by Google Calendar. I would enter my flight details in Google Calendar, including flight number, departure terminal and departure time. Years ago, I didn't fully realize that how Calendar worked and I simply entered the time of departure without noting the time zone. E.g. , for the return leg of Bangkok-paris-bangkok, I would enter 21:00h when the booked flight was scheduled to leave paris at 9pm. I was almost caught out. After as several weeks in France, I could not remember details of my return flight. No problem. That's why I had put details into Calendar. Except that, the day of my departure, it showed 15:00h. I cancelled my lunch appointment to rush to the airport but once there I realised it was still departing at 21:00. Google had converted my departure time from 21:00 Bkk to 15:00 Paris!

The only date mistake that cost me money, at least as far as I can remember, was a hotel booking I made for the day after my arrival. The mistake stemmed from sheer carelessness on my part. I was flying from HK to the US and I simply assumed, because there would be a period of darkness as the flight crossed the Pacific, that I would arrive on the following day. Wrong! I arrived on the same day which, with a bit of logical thinking, was what one should expect! So I had to book another hotel for one night. My own hotel was full.

Jakarta also has much more Islam. If a boy is seriously looking for this kind of work, he would either go to Bali or Kuala Lumpur.

This seems to be the pattern lately. Some bars lively and well-patronised; other bars dead. Sometimes, the bipolar contrast is the same bar on different nights. @sydneyboy1 reported a nearly-dead The One (ex-Tawan). On another night, I saw a full house. @jason1975 saw a lively Good Boy (ex-Screw Boy). On another night, I saw zero other customers in that bar and I should have fled like @ggobkk from Hotmale. A friend just came back from Bangkok and he said Moonlight had only "fewer customers than I had fingers" during showtime, though reports here are much more encouraging than that.

@roughjock Look no further. The guy in question is here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=862076422609480&set=pcb.862076659276123

Interesting... You don't mention Thailand. Have you visited yet, 🤣 ?

This kind of business practice would make me hesitate.

Before it became GooGuys, it was Apollo Massage.

Yes, it looks like this one in the lower centre of the map, from the use of the word "masseur". Thanks.

Grand Hyatt, I think it's the one near the Erawan shrine. Latest BBC story says it's cyanide and suggests it's a suicide pact. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3g64ljwp2go

I must have missed something, but I don't seem to have a fix on where Aurora is located. From the pages shared in the opening post, I see mentioneof Ramindra (Ram Inthra), Hathairat (Minburi) and Sukhumvit, but no specific address. The first two areas are far outside our usual haunts. But does anyone know what their Sukhumvit address is?

Take the train to Phrom Phong. Jey Spa is in the area. From Nana station, Phrom Phong is just 2 stops out. Another option is Googuy. The do not have a physical shop. Instead, they have an arrangement with a short time motel in the Nana area. After you make a booking for a boy, the manager will book a short time room for you, and give you instructions where and how to meet the boy. The problem with Googuy is that they want payment transferred to them electronically in advance. I have not figured that part out.

What a disaster for the transport company 😂 The new policy has halved the number of trips the boys now need to make for their visa runs.

@vinapu has given a good reply. A lot depends on what @Kiwi306 means by "beefier". All the time we see different tastes among members of this board, and different ways of understanding what looks like similar terms. I have found that even among my own friends, they have vastly different understandings of the word "beefier", and what I have learnt from observation is that it may depend on the speaker's own size. If the speaker is 70kg, then 80 - 85 kg is likely to look beefy (assuming it's not mostly fat). But if the speaker is himself 90 kg, then an 85 kg sex worker will fall short. The beefier ones in Tawan are in the 90 - 100 kg range. Very few of the "beefier" ones in the other bars would be more than 85 kg, and when they are, it's not as much muscle as the Tawan guys. Take for example these Models (that's what the bar calls them) from Moonlight. ttps://www.facebook.com/MoonlightBangkok/videos/4976894425769483 Generally speaking, they'd be the biggest or most sculpted boys Moonlight has. Vinapu reported that their off fee is 1000 baht (I'll take his word for it since I have no personal experience). What's the tip they expect in the hotel room - 5000 baht? Moonlight has some good-looking boys in their rotation (what he calls "floor boys") but they are not quite the same standard as their Models. My estimate is that they are mostly in the 60 - 75 kg range. I can't link to examples since these guys are not on Moonlight's social media. ... just adding context to what Vinapu has said.

Thankfully free of ugly tattos, except one.

@roughjock - my impressions of Manila are the same.

While I am not in Bangkok currently, I've been to Bangkok and Thailand in July more than a few times. The scorching heat of April and May would be past, but the humidity of the monsoon season would be ever-present. When it's also warm between rains (e.g. over 30 degrees), the humidity can be quite oppressive, but other times the temperature is quite nice and one doesn't notice the humidity so much. On days with warm humidity but no cooling rain, I'd plan for daytime hours in airconditioned comfort. Either I am in my hotel room catching up on work remotely or I'm in some shopping mall wandering around or reading a book in a coffee shop. From about 4pm onwards, it should be pleasant enough to make one's way to a massage place. Temperature-wise, I don't think you will find Bangkok much different from Tokyo, but in Bangkok, it would be a good idea to be dressed for wet roads and splashing from passing vehicles. I always have an umbrella with me and for footwear, I prefer crocs (though sandals would be just as good). As you can see from these screenshots of BBC Weather for the same day (this coming Tuesday) the temperatures in Tokyo and Bangkok are similar, but Bangkok is wetter. I've also added Atlanta for comparison. Of the 3 places, it is Atlanta that has the highest peak temperature. --- Right after Covid, I made a beeline for Thailand as soon as travel restrictions were lifted. That was in July 2022. In that trip, I spent 5 days in Pattaya, and there's a report about it here: https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2022/08/30/rainbow-flags-and-rain/ It rained every day, but I remember the days to be pleasant, especially when the seabreeze came in too. I had a lovely visit.

You're on to something there. I agree that lap dances are virtually unknown throughout Asia and so it may be something Asian customers in Thai bars would not be demanding. But these things can change. After all, near-naked gogo girls and boys twirling themselves around poles also came to Asia quite late. While it is true that some bars with cabaret-type shows are doing well and their audiences seem to be majority Asian, I would be careful not ascribe it to an Asian preference for shows. After all, the offing bars - bars which downplay their shows and focus more on selling their boys - are also predominantly Asian in their customer traffic. Think Hotmale, Fresh Boy, Moonlight (and Toy Boys in Pattaya). I remember a dinner party some years ago in Singapore with a whole bunch of gay Singapore guys - friends of friends - many of whom were frequent visitors to Thailand. They dissed the cabaret-type shows and very much preferred the ambiance of offing bars; they were also very much into "massage" places. I think a better explanation lies in the hetero/gay divide. IMO the bars with splashy shows appear to do better not because they attract Asians, but because they attract heteros. I see the current gogo bars slowly bifurcating into (a) show bars and giving up the offing side of its business. A handful of bars remain as (b) offing bars. By "Show bars" I mean places like The Venue in Pattaya where taking a boy out is not on the agenda (with rare exceptions depending on the dancer). These bars may have a courtesan side to it, where the performers sit with customers, teasing and flattering them for biggish tips, and enticing customers to splash on bottles. I think that's where BoyzBoyzBoyz has gone, and the 1,000-baht off fee may be a signal that they're not interested in offs anymore (I also wonder if a different off fee applies to female customers). More and more, I see Jupiter (Bangkok) evolving in this direction. In my estimation, show bars can be very profitable, but in Bangkok with its high overheads, they will also need to be more hetero-women-oriented than gay-oriented because they need the traffic in volume. Eventually, e.g. Jupiter, they may discontinue the offing side of its business and just focus on shows and courtesans. An uncoming report in ShamelessMack, from a recent visit to Banana Room, will illustrate this transformation. Toy Boys (Pattaya) is an example of a pure offing bar - essentially a brothel that displays its service-providers in a drinking environment for customers' selection. I think A-bomb (Pattaya) is too. Hotmale is coming close. What little show Hotmale has now is entirely performed by its numbertag boys, with no katoey component. Fresh Boy, Tawan/The One, Dream Boys Pattaya are close to being like Hotmale; the drag component of their shows is shrinking and may in time disappear altogether. What performances remain after that would be amateurish dick displays -- which would be in line with a business objective of encouraging offs. Because offing bars have little appeal to heteros - we've heard again and again that the straight women seldom take boys off even when they go into these bars - pure offing bars have to remain small and therefore have to watch their costs very carefully. Like massage shops, pure offing bars can be viable though they will have higher overheads (e.g. wages to boys in attendance, rent in expensive parts of the city, tea money to you-know-who), but then they also sell drinks unlike massage shops. (Actually, they need to rent less floor space than a massage parlour). The uncomfortable in-between would be places like Dream Boy Bangkok and Moonlight. Currently, they are trying to be both a show bar and an offing bar. How long can this uncomfortable straddling of both sides last? If I have to make a wild guess, I think Dream Boy will evolve towards a show bar* and Moonlight will evolve towards an offing bar - perhaps a more respectable one without flashing dicks. *Shows don't have to be slick cabaret acts. Banana Room seems to be leading in this space. Dream Boy, if it evolves into a place that is mainly a show bar, may find itself squeezed into the niche of offering shock value freak shows to hetero traffic. It already has older performers whom few customers would consider offing, hired to perform its explciit shows.

I can't answer that question, but isn't @abidismaili in Pattaya at the moment? Also, this is best placed in the Gay Pattaya forum. There is an instagram account https://www.instagram.com/club_pattaya_legacy/ , maybe those who are more savvy can follow it and see dates of its latest posts?

Here's another video with a good time stamp 1990 -1991. This accords with what I remember of Pattaya in my first few visits in the first half ot the 1990s. It was already pretty urbanised and the main streets quite congested. The sex trade (mostly hetero) was easy to spot. Again, there are hardly any night scenes in this compilation, but a vibrant night life was definitely to be found.

I don't remember seeing massage shops in the 1990s. There must have been (with girls at least) but I probably wasn't paying attention. That said, I mention in my post above that I got a soapy massage from a boy in Adam & Eve, and the upstairs room was designed for massage. Soapy massages generally come with happy endings, as did mine. However, I detect in your question that you may possibly be holding an opinion that currently guy massages are widely available in Pattaya - and that's why you're asking when did it all begin. I don't quite agree with this generalisation. Except for the shops in Jomtien Complex, sexy massage by guys is not obvious anywhere else in Pattaya. Yes, you can see straight-looking boys outside a few massage shops around the South Pattaya Road corner, but the front rooms of these shops have foot massage loungers. To the average straight tourist walking past, they may seem as no different from the shops along SIlom Road in Bangkok, which also has very straight looking guys sitting out in front of their foot massage parlours. They don't scream happy endings.The shops that do screem happy endings along Second Road are those with girls out front. I don't think the gay gogo bars and open-front bars were more hidden. In the early 1990s, there was no internet information, and yet I could easily find Nautilus, Gentleman's Club and Adam & Eve (and probably a couple more that I have since forgotten) on my own just by walking the streets. Something about the frontages of these gogo bars must have signalled "gay" to me. As for girl gogo and open-front bars, when looking at the old videos, bear in mind two things: Firstly, they are almost all street scenes, and shot in the daytime. Even now, you don't see bar girls in skimpy bikinis on the streets in the day time with the rarest of exceptions. For technology reasons in those days, night scenes would have been difficult to film at night. Cameras would not be allowed inside the bars. So what you see in those old videos is probably not representative. In this video showing still pictures from the 1960 to 1990 period, there is one photo at 2 minutes 42 seconds of a girl in a bikini on a stage. This indicates that indoors, even in the decades before I made my first visit, the scene was as raunchy as it is today. My sense is that the street scene has gotten bolder over the years, but confined to just a few sex streets, such as Soi Buakow and Walking Street, with more girls in bikinis standing out front. But this is just the vaguest of impressions since I wouldn't have paid much attention, having no interest in the hetero bar scene. Actually, one can still have a family holiday in Pattaya withouth encountering much of the sex trade. Because we tend to frequent the gay sex parts of the city we may not realise there are huge parts of the urban sprawl that don't look X-rated.

The name "Gentleman's Club" rings a bell, but since I didn't make my first visit until 1990 or so, it must have been around for many years from 1985 on. My vague recollection is that it was in the same Soi as where X-boys is now. But I may be mistaken. I don't quite recall whether Boyztown was there on my first visit, but I am fairly sure it was by my second visit, probably around 1992, or at the latest by my third visit. I remember clearly that I stayed in Flipper Lodge in Central Pattaya on my first visit. For my second visit and third visits I stayed at Natural Inn and Cockpit Hotel - not sure now which place was 2nd visit and which was 3rd visit. But I can confirm that by 1993 or so, Boyztown was in full swing. My earliest memories of gay Pattaya (around 1990) do not have Boystown in them. Instead, the bars were in the Soi 2 area in North Pattaya. I have fond memories of the cavernous (aircraft hangar-like) Adam & Eve, and Nautilus bar. Adam & Eve had gogo boys whom one could take out or could provide services in their upstairs rooms. It was where I had my first soapy massage (could have been my only soapy massage) lying on a ceramic tiled plinth. Nautilus had an aquarium and that was where I saw my first "underwater show" to the soundtrack of Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting For You. Sunnee Plaza might have been developing in that period - first half of the 1990s or mid 1990s - but I might not have noticed. By the time I noticed (late 1990s or early 2000s) it had a bad reputation for underaged boys, and I continued to stay away from it. I can't put a finger on when Jomtien Complex became gay, maybe after 2000? Perhaps others can recall.

Indeed, we've discussed this before, but the funny thing is that such inertia is only in the Thai gogo and host bars. In the massage sector, they behave as any business would behave. They have a range of product offers as evidenced by the lengthy menu boards outside their shopfronts or on their Line advertising: Foot massage, Thai massage, Oil massage, Aroma oil massage, Coconut oil massage, Scrub combos. 60-minutes, 90-minutes, 120-minutes. Many Saphan Khwai places, in their Line feeds, spell out which boys are top, which are versatile. Their tip ranges also vary, some as low as 800 baht, others (GooGuy, for example) ask for 4,000 baht. More recently, we see discounts and packages (e.g. 5 sessions for xxxx baht)....