macaroni21

I think these are interesting times seeing how slowly or rapidly Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket recover from Covid-19. In my July visit, I noticed some instability in pricing. I saw a few instances of price reductions in bars' desperate attempts to get customers. I have a feeling that prices in September will be different from what I saw in July. If you could report on bars' prices each time you walk into a bar, it will help me assess their business recovery. Personally, I am a collector of details, but it would be presumptuous of me to expect the same of anybody else, but if you're happy to help out, we can compare notes regarding: - price of drink (there may be different prices for second drink and boy-drink) - off-fee. Most of us do make a mental note of how many boys available, but it would also be interesting to note - how many customers in the bar (need to make a note of time too) - ratio of Asians to farang; - ratio of female customers to male (a rough measure of how gay/straight the audience is) And if you could take a close look at the doors of Lucky Boys, Screw Boys and Bangkok Massage (all on Patpong 2) for any signs of re-opening, e.g. interior clean-up or remodelling. And yes, the bar with the big tank at the end of Soi Twilight was Classic Boys.

I mentioned Indonesia. There's a film called The Act of Killing (full movie with English subtitles available on Youtube) in which the killer Anwar speaks to camera and re-enacts what he did. The WIkipedia page says that "The film focuses on the perpetrators of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 in the present day. The genocide led to the killing of almost a million people, ostensibly for belonging to the local communist community. When Suharto overthrew Sukarno, the President of Indonesia, following the failed coup of the 30 September Movement in 1965, the gangsters Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry in Medan (North Sumatra) were promoted from selling black market movie theatre tickets to leading the most powerful death squad in North Sumatra. They also extorted money from the ethnic Chinese as the price for keeping their lives. Anwar is said to have personally killed 1000 people."

Not a crazy story at all. This really happened to millions of Cambodians in 1975 - 1979 after the Khmer Rouge took over. I don't see any embellishment at all in the story he told you. The horrors in the histories of Southeast Asian countries are many. Indonesia in the 1960s and again in the 1990s, the 25 years of Vietnam wars, the japanese occupation and brutalities during the 2nd World War (do visit the River Khwai bridge and cemetery), and the decades of atrocities suffered by the Rohingya and other minorities in Burma, just to name a few examples.

So true! What a waste of lovely brown skin. And that ties in with @bucky13's use of the term "peer pressure". The boys make these silly choices largely because of this. First there were silicone dicks, but many of these victims have since moved out of sex work. Then in the decade 2000 -2010, half the boys kept moustaches, but at least these could be shaved off when the fad passed. Now we're at tattoos which, like silicone dicks, are permanent. I don't know if this is really a change from before. In this oldest profession, certain survival strategies were honed many generations before us. But, to stay on olddaddy's point - how are moneyboys different from 20 years ago - let me give you one memorable incident from the early to mid 1990s. It was in Barbiery Bar ( a handful of us may remember that bar quite fondly) and one evening I was quite taken with a particular gogo boy. I got him to sit with me for a while and then asked if he was available for short time. I remember his exact words to this day: "I am expensive," he said. "1,000 baht." Indeed, that was expensive, for at the time the going rate was 600 - 700 baht. So I tipped him 20 baht and let hm leave. These figures may leave some of the newer members of this forum gasping. On the subject of inflation, I kick myself for not having kept good records of my expenses from the 1990s. But I do have notes from the period 2005 - 2010, and I am drafting a post for ShamelessMack2 showing how prices have leapt up since that period, especially when compared against Thailand's much more moderate increase in the Consumer Price Index. Coming soon....

That's not quite the way I hear it. It sounds more like "ke-lid-mart". to me, and the first time I heard it, (which was literally decades ago, but hasn't much changed) I ended up thinking the speaker was saying "climax". It was most unnerving that the speaker was a female hotel receptionist.

I watched the entire show a few weeks ago. Not once did it remind me of Magic Mike (not that I've been to see the real Magic Mike show, but I've seen videos of it). It had a combination of lip syncing putting-on-the-pounds gatoeys and (biggish) boys half obscured by tattoos and masks. In nearly all the show items in which boys participated, erect appendages were the centre of attention, not their "dancing" skills à la Magic Mike of which there was none -- by the 4th such act, it got really old.... The worst part was the screaming by the women who made up 40 - 50% of the audience, and the loooong (80- 90 minutes?) duration.

Prepare yourself... wherever you choose to sit, its not possible to be inconspicuous in a room the size of a kitchen 🤣

Ya, I too figured that Tomm42 was referring to the massage parlour in Sukhumvit Plaza, except that I couldn't recall the name of the place. Thanks, Vinapu, for filling the gap. I loved that place, though the physical line-up could be quite intimidating with up to a dozen guys looking expectantly at you to be picked. With the clue from the name "Uniman", I revived my old reports from 2009 and 2010. Reviewing the reports, the place changed hands between those two years and was called B&N before it was Uniman. As you can see, I had really happy times there. Go to www.shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog

Um, actually there is no need to factor in the duration of stay. My calculation was very simple. 11,000,000 visitors (from China) in a year divided by 365 days = 30,137 persons arriving each day. What I did assume was no significant seasonal variation. If one was hoping to estimate how many Chinese tourists would be in the country at any given time, then yes, one would have to factor in duration of stay. A week or so ago, I saw somewhere (can't remember where now) a figure of 5 - 6 days as the average duration for a tourist from East Asia. So, if we use 5 as the multiplier, then at any given time, there would be 30,000 x 5 = 150,000 Chinese tourists darting around Thailand.

Airbnb.

In 2019, about 11 million Chinese visited Thailand. That's about 30,000 a day. If we assume 200 passengers per plane, it means 150 flights a day.

In gogo bars most will not bottom, in massage parlours, about half will not. So, to avoid disappointment or unpleasantness later, it's important to settle this question beforehand. Do note that nearly all boys, even when they agree to bottom, will insist on protected sex. From gogo bars, all will do short time, but some cannot do overnight (commitments early morning, for example) so if you're keen on long-time (overnight), ask first. As for fees, some of us settle that in advance too, but some other members leave that unsaid. As a newbie, it may be better to settle that question in advance too at least until you're surer about the going rates.

@moistmango 2 more questions if you don't mind. When you reached moonlight after midnight, were you charged 250 baht or 400 baht for your entry/ drink? I saw a sign on the wall last month that said 250 baht if after midnight, probably because the show would have been over. But that sign was inside the bar, not outside, so people entering would not see it. Secondly, how many boys were left at that hour? I reckon ML begins the evening with 15 to 20 boys. So, knowing how many remain on site at midnight will give us an idea of the offing rate in a wet, low season month.

Thanks. It confirms what a Cambodian boy told me recently. He has to bus to the border every 2weeks. I thought I misheard, but evidently it's official. I wonder why the Cambodians and Burmese have the shortest periods....

Any idea where to find the list of 56 countries, for which visa exemption is extended from 30 to 45 days? If it includes Cambodia Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, it would help our boys. These chaps currently have to do visa runs every 30 days. A real pain in the ass (and cost).

@moistmango Thanks. Looking forward to further reports in the following days. A bit of a shock to hear that Fresh Boys had no one within, but what time were you looking in? Your reference to the bit in Dream Boy about the "siamese twins" attached at a strategic part suggests that this was between 11 and 11:30 pm?

And they should be naked while caged.

I agree with @moistmango but do note that he said "minimum". It also depends on whether there was any agreement to reimburse the taxi ride to your hotel separately. If there wasn't, then it would not be unreasonable to be expecting 1,200 or so as minimum.

This is a very interesting tidbit. It so happens that in 2009 (no typo, really 2009), I reported: "They have one guy (name: Rot) who always does the fuck show. He’s the top. According to Yord whom I offed from Fresh Beach, Rot does it seven nights a week, sometimes twice a night. This, in addition to being part of the big cock parade. Few people on this earth have a curriculum vitae quite like it." This paragraph is from the section on Fresh Boys in https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2022/08/01/bangkok-gogo-bars-update-sept-2009/ Might it be possible that we're referring to the same guy??? If so, has he been in this line of work for 13 years?

And all this while, I was wondering why we're being morally policed by an ethnic minority of Myanmar, the Karens! I will continue using the word "boys". Trying too hard to avoid doing so renders our speech stilted and artificial. In any case, remember the sitcom "Golden Girls"? Those girls were way older than our boys.

Alrighty, for Olddaddy, here's the revived post about the erstwhile Bondi Guest House: https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2022/08/15/beachside-hotel-if-beachside-is-really-important-to-you/ Strangely, what I remember most about that one stay in that hotel was the great fuck that I had with a boy I brought back from Boyztown. 🤣 Never mind the filth... so long as the sex is good.

I am flatterred (insert deep japanese bow). My life was not so dramatic. Yes there was a long hiatus when I couldn't travel much because I had to care for aging parents, oddly enough, similar to the very topic being discussed here. After that issue resolved itself, I found myself working flat out with little free time until I had had enough and quit. I will resurrect my report on Bondi hotel on Dongtan beach just for kicks. The hotel's long gone.

Guilty as charged. Macaroni is Shameless mack. I am not only alive and kicking but whenever opportunities arise, happily testing the bedsprings of hotel beds.

Three years ago in July 2019, it was 1,000 baht for the house. See: https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2019/08/06/senso-still-good-after-ten-years/ So price increased 10 percent. The lad I had on that occasion didn't have massage skills either.

I walked through the area. It had a buzz, that's for sure. But what struck me was that in all the re-design, they still kept to the notion that the more concrete the better - very common idea throughout Thailand - resulting a a worse heat island than Bangkok already is. With the humidity (no breeze either) It wasn't pleasant at all. They should have designed for trees and green spaces. The other thing that struck me was the amount of noise, not just in Siam Square, but on the other side of Siam Station as well, i.e. the Siam Paragon, Siam Center side. Partly, it's the result of the events they put up but I'm sure there's also the reflection from all the concrete.