macaroni21

Unless there is hidden data I haven't discovered, the rates quoted are the standard rates charged by the massage parlours; they definitely do not include the expected tips. There are no freelancers listed on this site; all masseurs shown are listed against one massage parlour. Look carefully at the phone numbers and you'll notice that they will go to the massage parlour, not directly to the boy. I'm not even sure that every boy listed is available for "home delivery", I guess it depends on the massage parlour's policy.

When you guys speak of "nude" and "natural" being appealing, do you mean nude with a softie or must it be a steelie (which usually implies a tourniquet)?

Crackdowns occur from time to time, and in this instance it does appear that they are acting on residents' complaints, perhaps due to noise, drunkenness, fighting .... I am surprised to see the mention of 12 midnight closing time, though. I thought it was 1 a.m., or maybe 2 a.m. in selected places like Pattaya. One small possibility (and I stress small) is that as Abhisit dusts off the popular policies of the Thaksin years and copies them to win votes, he might recall the Social Order Campaign spearheaded by then-Interior Minister Purachai. Don't forget, there was a large section of the population that supported the campaign then. I wouldn't want to see it come back, but I cannot totally dismiss the possibility that at some point, Abhisit might mount something similar, if probably less heavy-handed.

I had a similar experience coming in on a full-service airline (I'm almost sure it was Cathay Pacific). It parked against an airbridge, but instead of walking through the airbridge into the terminal, we were directed to walk OUT OF THE AIRBRIDGE down a flight of metal stairs into busses! Until now, I have no idea why it happened that way. Suvarnabhumi in my opinion is less an airport than a railway station. It is designed to be impressive but ultimately finds itself having to move tens of thousands of people every hour, sometimes in well-thought-out ways, other times with make-do arrangements. It's not particularly bad -- I've seen worse places (Heathrow anyone?) but it's not up there among my list of pleasant experiences. The things I hate most about Suvaranbhumi are: 1. Lack of seating. I get the feeling it is deliberate to force you to patronise a restaurant, which might not be so bad if not for. . . 2. Lack of reasonably priced cafes on the air-side 3. Long queues at immigration -- and still many booths remain closed. 4. No free wi-fi. I can also imagine that if I were not such a frequent visitor to Bangkok, I might find the airport's layout too confusing, and signage lacking. As for the satellite terminal, I think the 2015 completion date is far too optimistic. They have to build a subway under the parking apron to the new satellite terminal. Think of the chaos that it's going to cause and the difficulty in getting it done. At Kuala Lumpur, they built the subway and satellite from the start.

I doubt if any internally coherent program has been enunciated by the Red Shirts. This may sound like criticism, so I need to expand on it a little. Of the Red Shirts, one has to distinguish between what I'd call Tier 1: the leadership (of which there are subgroups, I'm sure), Tier 2: the committed organisers and mid-level activists, and Tier 3: the mass base of supporters and sympathizers. It does look as if for tier 1, you are right -- the assumption of power is the end in itself. Many of them were turfed out after the coup and banned from participating in politics from the dissolution of the Thai Rak Thai party. It is totally understandable that reversing their political exile is their chief objective, and to do that, they have to regain power. Tiers 2 and 3 very likely think like most supporters of ideologies anywhere around the world. They don't ask searching questions of their own leaders with respect to programs/manifestoes. Instead they extend their trust, believing that the leaders have their interests in mind and will do "the right thing" when they come to power. I know this sounds awfully like the characterisation made of Red Shirts by the establishment's propagandists (that Red Shirt supporters are gullible, have been duped, etc), but this same characterisation (trusting/faith) can be made of Yellow Shirts, of supporters of the French Socialist Party, of the millions of Filipinos who voted strongly for Benigno Aquino, of tea-party supporters of Sarah Palin, etc. It's just a universal phenomenon. The difference is that in a free democratic setting, there is the independent media, non-aligned academics etc, who take on the role of asking searching questions and critiquing party programs. Having to respond to them is the chief reason for politicians explaining themselves. The trouble with Thailand now is that that space for a non-aligned independent free media is much reduced. The tenor of the times forces everybody to take sides. Censorship closes more doors. The politics of civil debate have been squashed leaving only the politics of megaphones and the street. Nowhere in the world are manifestoes explained clearly in the politics of the street. Thailand is no different. It may well be that there are intelligent, serious people among the Red Shirts organisers (tier 2) who are asking precisely these questions - so what shall we do after we have won? - but they probably feel that open debate among themselves might give the impression of disunity at a time when they are facing daily threats. So either the discussion is held behind closed doors or it is postponed till after they have gained power. Again, while it may sound like criticism, let's be fair: Is any US presidential campaign all that different?

Oh dear, I wasn't intending to open a whole new discussion on China when I made the brief mention of the Empress Dowager What I really wanted to do, but I guess I was too subtle and so the message was lost, was to point out that one has to be careful when thinking about royal succession. One cannot assume that when a king passes on, a crown prince fully takes over. Bob for example, said in a different thread that: "Perhaps someday there is a new monarch who for whatever reason wants to promote his own agenda - which might even be a surprising turn to more true democracy and reduction of rampant corruption." History never totally repeats itself, that is true, but the twists and turns of other people's pasts can remind us there will be twists and turns in the present and future. History itself can suggest the different possible outcomes should we find ourselves in an analogous situation today. One outcome that Chinese history has suggested is that it's the dowager who may be the more important person to watch as the linchpin of the future, than the crown prince. Empress Dowager Cixi totally overshadowed her own son, the new Emperor. She maintained control of the state; he was neither interested nor capable of doing so. And yet, maintaining control of the state is not the same as getting one's way. Taking on ruling powers means taking on all the problems of ruling a country. Even the Thai army knew this: Look how quickly they wanted to relinquish day-to-day control back to a new constitution and elections after General Sonthi Boonyaratglin seized power in September 2006 -- elections which backfired when it returned a pro-Thaksin government. What I also wanted to suggest by mentioning Empress Dowager Cixi's example, was that there are forces of history greater than any government's control. This is especially true when a palace faction seizes power with the intention of resisting reform. Whereas in Japan, the Meiji Restoration launched a reform process that created the first Asian industrial economy and military power that could stand up to the encroaching Western powers by the turn of the 20th Century, the contemporaneous rule of Cixi, resisting reform, only led to the further weakening of China. The outcome was greater misery for its people and a more violent series of revolutions as history caught up. Khor Tose said in that other thread that: "economics, while still an important factor, is not the principal motivating issue behind the democratic movement.. What I see is the real core of this democratic movement is a strong desire to have a real voice in their government, and greater control of their lives." Exactly. There are forces in motion that too many upper-middle-class Bangkokians don't seem to be fully aware of, as can be seen by what Fountainhall has reported -- that in Bangkok, all he hears are slanted viewpoints. Well, that was all I wanted to suggest by mentioning Chinese history: that nothing may change even if a new king emerges and thus the stalemate can continue for a long time. And yet at the same time, change continues -- in the form of pressure building up inexorably until it blows. Like in China. Like in Imperial Russia of the same time period. Like in Iran 30 years ago. Like in Nepal very recently. Or then again, not. Has it blown in Myanmar yet? In North Korea?

Did the mamasan mean packed with boys or packed with customers? Were you in Hero on a Sunday? If you were, one possibility I can think of was that both boys and customers avoided the Phloenjit and lower Sukhumvit area because of the Red Shirt demonstration planned for the same day. My experience too, and perhaps the chief reasons why Hero is doing well. Business can be very simple, but many places forget these basics - integrity, reliability and value-for-money. Hero's priorities are correct: dominate a niche, maintain staff discipline and hygiene of the premises. Instead, some massage parlours go overboard in designer chic interiors or flashy websites and then neglect the basics. Hell, Hero doesn't even have a website. I thought it was 600. Did they reduce the normal price or did they give you a discount because you booked two boys?

Exactly. Like newspapers giving away content for free on the internet and now unable to make money on their print editions, the bars have given away so much nudity they debased the value of it. The problem they face: how to get out of the pit they stumbled into and go back to the tease model.

In the major Chinese cities and in Singapore (I'm not so sure about Hong Kong), the state funds the construction of mass transportation systems, though the actual day-to-day operations are the responsibility of a corporation. The result is that the state has control of master-planning and connectivity, and through arm-twisting bus companies, have implemented common ticketing systems. While I haven't fully understood the systems in Bangkok, Manila and Kuala Lumpur, just by looking at how things are run, one suspects that the model being applied is vastly different. In these three cities, it looks like the state awarded projects completely to commercial parties to build, operate and run (but doesn't the govt of Thailand have a stake in BTS and MRT?) and these commercial entities did their own route planning and construction. Rather than working synergistically with each other and bus companies, they compete against each other, unlike in the more authoritarian states where through the "guiding hand" or "master planner" that is the state, they work synergistically. I know that in Manila it was a huge scandal when the company awarded the right to build and run the MRT-3 line went bankrupt. The company had to bear all the cost of construction and operations, but the government (to please its voters) controlled ticket prices. When the company went belly up, there was a real risk that the trains would simply stop running, and so the government had to nationalise the company and take over all its debt. Needless to say, the now-govt-owned MRT-3 line loses money every minute a train runs. The stations are filthy, the ticket-dispensing machines don't work, the queues in front of ticket windows stretch 50 persons long during off-peak hours, and the trains rattle your bones throughout the journey. Bangkok, KL and Manila are characterised by the absence of good connectivity and lack of through-ticket systems. It is the result of a political decision to put as little government money as possible into urban rail projects; which in turn means the government has little planning control and little leverage when it comes to getting all the companies to work together.

It's gotten worse than that. The wasteland has since been sold and is now a huge construction site all boarded up. So commuters arriving at KL Sentral on the airport express and wanting to get to the monorail (why?) have to take a long detour around the perimeter of the construction site. Going across the wasteland as in the old days, on hindsight, seems so much better!

Whatever happened to the Airport bus service? From Don Muang, there were 3 or 4 express bus services, to Silom hotels, Sukhumvit hotels etc. When Suvarnabhumi opened, I vaguely recall there was the same bus service, but have they been discontinued? Eons ago, I used the service once - it took forever to reach the hotel I was in, having to wind its way through several hotels before mine - and never used it again. But I used to see the airport buses coming down Silom Road or Sukhumvit once in a while. I guess the service has stopped?

It's very typical in Thailand for big decisions to be made not so much from first principles, but conditioned by existing realities or tactical imperatives. Indeed, in many other cities a project like this would, at the drawing board stage, adopt a more holistic perspective. In this case, the project was given to the State Railway of Thailand (SRT). Once that decision was made, it collapsed a lot of other decisions. The SRT did not have a lot of land in the central areas of Bangkok, and I suppose acquiring land was way beyond its means, beyond what was absolutely needed for its viaducts and Phaya Thai station. The only large area that SRT had outside of Hua Lamphong Station and yet within the city was the old siding yard at Makkasan. Being close to Petchburi MRT Station must have been the clincher. I don't think anyone seriously evaluated or modelled other possibilities. Yet, from what I can see, despite its proximity to Petchaburi Station, the SRT put Makkasan Station on the opposite site of the existing ground-level railway tracks. I do not see any plans to provide smooth pedestrian connectivity, with shelter from sun and rain, between Makkasan and Petchaburi.

You might begin by looking up the wikipedia entry for the Empress Dowager Cixi. It may be totally irrelevant to Thailand, but I think it is always helpful to look at other Asian examples of political contestation and transition. Here was an Empress Dowager who took control of an imperial household and country (through a coup d'

Barbeiry? I liked Superlex too. Not-pushy waiters, nice, preppy-looking boys. But the distance from table to stage tended to be a bit far, unless one was lucky enough to get one of the three front tables.

Lonelywombat's description of Twilight was spot on. Like him, I remember the place with great fondness, as Fountainhall and, I am sure, many others do too. The interesting question is why do we hold it with such fondness? I'm unable to answer it, even for myself. Was it simply because of the novelty factor in its time, now augmented through rosy memory? If an identical bar opened today, would we shrug "been there, done that" and not give it a second look? Was it because we were younger, with more libido and less jaded? Was it because the crowd-feel was different from today's crowds? Something tells me that what I miss most is the intimacy where the boys come up to you uninvited and lets you have a feel -- no obligation to buy him a drink -- or where the boy dances near the pillar barely an arm's length away from one's stool. I do think that the days of the "spectacle"-type shows are nearing an end, i.e. the idea of a big central stage, with customers sitting quietly a distance away. It's too detached. The Wow factor made up for it, but it's wearing off fast. That said, two years after they end, others will reminisce achingly about the glory days of the shows and diss whatever will have replaced them. ---- I ask myself, if I were to launch a new bar, how would I do it, bearing in mind the economic trends? Etrend 1: Boys expect to earn more as cost of living rises. Etrend 2: Good-looking, good attitude boys may be scarcer, so trying to stock a bar with 100 boys (like Dream Boy today) would be unrealistic. Perhaps 30 - 40 boys would be max. Etrend 3: The "arms-race" of doing ever more elaborate shows that need to be re-engineered frequently to keep them fresh costs an arm and a leg. Etrend 4: Audience numbers will be flat until the great wave from China materialises. . . Etrend 5: Even then, the Chinese may never be all that keen to off (reasons explained in the other thread Holiday Sunday Numbers Seem Down), but will likely be prepared to pay a small premium for small shows and nude dancing, something they don't get in their home country. --- How will I address these issues? Perhaps I would hypothetically build a bar with a layout like this: The operational model will be rather different from current, in response to each of the 5 economic trends mentioned above. But first, I'll walk you (as customer) through the bar: 1. No women, no Thais under 20 years old, allowed. 2. No smoking inside the bar. 3. You enter and receive a number tag from the cashier (like in a sauna). All purchases made inside the bar will be charged to that number; you settle the account on departure. Perhaps a cover charge (200 baht?) can be paid on entry if the competitive environment allows it. That prepaid cover charge can be consummable, i.e. it is set off as a credit against purchases of drinks. 4. In the main salon, you will see several boys dancing in their briefs on the stage behind the bar. You are free to just sit at the bar, but you are obliged to order your first drink. 5. You may call a boy over, buy him a drink (or not) and sit with him in the sofas, and if the brief conversation works out, you off him. 6. Every hour on the hour, the captain announces "Showtime now. Anybody interested?" 7. Let's say 13 customers are interested. There are two more who are here to off a boy and aren't interested in the show; they continue to sit in the main salon, where boys continue to do their rotations on the stage -- in other words the show should not inconvenience these customers. 8. The captain opens two private rooms and splits the 13 customers into two groups, putting six in one room, seven in the other. The charge for the show is 200 or 250 baht per customer, which includes a second drink. 9. The show thus takes place in a more intimate setting -- a room no larger than a small bedroom -- where the boys dance a mere arm's length from the seated customers. 10. The boys either dance nude or dance in a manner that strips to nude. The etiquette is NO TOUCHING unless the boys invite you to lay your hands on them briefly. Naturally, the boys are encouraged as part of their routine to invite the customers by turn to do so from time to time, in order to up the thrill quotient. 12. The show is mostly done on a small, low podium/stage that is 2 metres by 2 metres (the size of a king-sized bed, enough space to allow for acts of sodomy if that's what the show requires). 13. In each room, the show involves about 6 boys (or maybe 8 boys if the cost structure allows it). In the first half, each boy does a 5-minute dance solo, either (i) coyote-style, (ii) Manila macho-dancer bar style, or (iii) Chiangmai style. In the second half, the 6 (or boys are paired or trio'ed for their routines. 14. From the customer's perspective, he is in a really intimate setting with boys hardly more than a metre away, making frequent eye contact and with seductive smiles. He is also invited by the dancing boys to touch and caress them now and then. The show has a degree of personal attention that a bigger showspace cannot provide. Although the customer had been asked to stump up an extra 200 or 250 baht for the show (on top of the first drink), he is getting value for it. 15. The economics is that the six or seven customers in a private room will have put up 1500 or 1750 baht for the show. Involving 6 (or boys, the labour cost for each room's show will be 600 (or 800) baht with each boy getting 100 baht for an hour's work (serious dancing, not shuffling) 16. The duration of the show is about 45 - 50 minutes, comprising 9 - 11 acts. At the end, the rooms have to be vacated for cleaning in preparation for the next round of shows. If a customer wants to see a subsequent show, it's another 200 or 250 baht, though for most people, 45 - 50 minutes will have been enough! The economics of such a bar has the following characteristics: The typical customer will be buying two drinks: the first drink on entry and the second drink either because he wants to sit with a boy prior to an off, or because he wants to see a show. Two drinks per customer is a significant improvement on the present one-drink average in most bars. The important thing though is that the customer must feel he gets value from paying for a second drink, and that is where an intimate, hands-on show comes in. Staffing characteristics: The bar doesn't need a lot of boys. Assuming on average at each hour, only two rooms are opened for shows, the bar needs only 12 boys (6 boys per room), plus another 10 - 12 doing the rotation in the main salon. If there's a surge of customers and all four private rooms need to be used, the same 12 dancing boys can cover all four rooms by having each dancing team of six boys to stagger their routines between two adjacent rooms. Double the work, yes, but double the earnings. Competitive advantage: Because there's a show every hour on the hour, customers can come any time that is convenient for them. The bar is able to attract customers at those hours where other bars aren't doing shows. Bars with "blockbuster" type shows can't afford to put up more than one-and-a-half of them per night, so they can't have a show going on through the entire evening. This little bar can. --- The business model responds to the economic trends thus: Response to Etrend 1: Currently, gogo boys are mostly wasting time, doing little and earning nothing unless/until they get an off which is "jackpot money". In the new business model, the boys are working for pay for many of the seven or eight hours they are in the bar. For each set of dancing in a private room (each boy does an average of two 5-minute items per 45-minute set) a boy earns 100 baht. Assuming a typical boy gets to do three sets a night, he earns 300 baht. Multipled by 25 days a month, he has base earnings of 7500 baht before tips. Response to Etrend 2: As boys become scarcer, the bar runs on fewer boys, but these boys work harder to deliver satisfying shows. Running on fewer boys also means the bar owner can get a little picky about which boys to hire, thereby keeping the "good looks" factor, boosting the rate of offs. Response to Etrend 3: No more elaborate staging for shows and the costs associated with that. Response to Etrend 4: In an era of flat tourist numbers, such a bar will rarely look empty. That's because it is divided into small spaces, and you only open such spaces as are needed (also save on airconditioning). A small salon or private dance room with 6 customers in it looks a lot better than a bar that can seat 100, but has only six people; the atmosphere is more encouraging. Response to Etrend 5: The bar and its boys draw revenue not by relying on high rate of offs -- in a new era of Chinese tourists this may not be realistic -- but by getting customers to pay for a second drink in order to get a satisfying show. Of course, any offs that the bar/boys get will be good too. Operational imperatives for success: A bar that requires boys to actually work through a seven-hour shift (rather than sit about or shuffle about as at present) requires boys with a good work ethic. This especially as every boy must be able to perform on stage, equipped with a handful of routines, executed reasonably well (i.e. with artistry, with good eye contact and seductive appeal to customers). This means training, training, training. I also think it is imperative to address the problem of service quality after being off'd, but that's a separate issue I have written about before.

Economics is already irrational enough ("irrational exuberance" remember?) to be accurately predictable, politics is even worse! Khor Tose has sketched the possibility that the royalist forces, in their determination to stay in power, will go to any length to do so, including a Myanmar-like situation, a state of affairs that would bring about a seriously dampening effect on economic health. In my view such an extreme scenario is remote. My reasons for thinking so are as follows: The royalist forces are not monolithic; even now they are a coalition of convenience. Among the chief components of this current coalition, observers have identified: The palace, the army, the business and Bangkok-centred middle class. There's also the Yellow Shirt movement which may turn out to be a joker or wildcard in the pack. The palace may feel that for them it's an all-or-nothing game, but the army and certainly the business middle-class will not think so. The army is primarily an avaricious organisation, interested in safeguarding its opportunities for profiteering (see the second post in this thread on Gay Ting Tong: LINK), and avarice can be safeguarded by making deals with opponents who look like they might win. In any case, the army itself is not united; there are some who believe in a more professional army. Then there are on the periphery the Navy, Air Force and Police who may not see their interests as identical to the Army's. As for the business class, they will not tolerate a regime that sacrifices economic health for political control. Hence, this coalition of convenience may splinter should the palace demand a Myanmar-type solution. The business middle-class, if forced to choose between living under a Burmese-like junta or under a neo-Thaksin government, will choose the latter. Yet so long as this coalition holds together and their handmaiden, the Abhisit government, manages to hold back the Thaksin tide by dangling the same populist carrots as Thai Rak Thai did, the democratic forces (which as Fountainhall has said, aren't all that united either) cannot win decisively either. This is why I think a stalemate-like situation will last for some time until mortality carries away a Dowager, after which it's too hard to predict. Too many variables will by then be at play. What if the Red Shirts really manage to seize power? It depends on how that is done. If it is done through a peaceful, electoral process and the royalist coalition crumbles rather than resists -- notwithstanding the fact that I still see crumbling as unlikely -- then the economic trends (and their effect on the sex industry) will be as I sketched earlier. Politics will not alter its course by much. But if the Red Shirts seize power by more revolutionary means and quickly acquire the hubris of conquerors, then I can imagine a new scenario: One where the new politics will work to suppress the sex industry. Conquerors have a tendency to want to remake the world. If the new regime sees the sex industry as symptomatic of the ancien regime and its feudalistic patronage culture, and the exploitation ("especially of our precious Isaan youth"), moral degradation and corruption that characterised it, a puritanical streak may surface. ---- A small digression, which readers may or may not think is relevant: Towards the end of Imperial China's Qing Dynasty, the chief power in the palace was not the emperor. There were a series of weak men who were formally the emperors, but real power was in the hands of the Empress Dowager - one of the concubines of a previous emperor. While she was alive, she managed to stay in power despite having to make accommdations with one of the two forces of modernity -- the mercantilistic Western powers intruding into China. She was savage towards the other force of modernity -- the republican movement. This movement had its base of support not in the capital Peking, but in the regions, particularly Southern China. Its leader was exiled but was still effective. Back home, the republican movement raised its own army. Soon after mortality carried the Empress Dowager away, the republican revolution succeeded.

Your wish is my command SUMMARY I think economic trends will keep driving up the price of sex. Political trends will bias towards the existing model of doing business and penalise innovation, thus reinforcing the trend of price-rises. Demographic trends will keep driving up the price of sex. The Soi Twilight type of gogo bar has a bleak long-term future. What will survive for longer (but perhaps still not forever) is the Chiang Mai model. ECONOMIC TRENDS The price of sex like any commodity is determined by supply and demand, but also impacted by income gap. Economically, Thailand is doing OK, with steady growth, healthy investment and in the wake of these two trends, increasing job opportunities for its people. Sex is something that people sell when they have no other realistic work. Even work that pays relatively poorly is preferred by most to selling their bodies. As a new generation of Thais have at least 8 - 10 years' schooling and is able to do some factory work, and as investment into Thailand takes the form of low-to-medium skill manufacturing, there should be a good match between jobs created and available labour. The pool of people with no hope of getting work in the formal sector is likely to stagnate or shrink. Thus supply of new sex workers will stagnate or shrink (see also the section below on demographics). Meanwhile like in so many Asian countries, the income gap is widening. This means the rich can afford to bid more and more for sex. As the domestic price for sex rises, so will the tourist or expat price. POLITICAL TRENDS The current crisis in Thailand, which a recently launched book explained is part of a continuing conflict that began in 1932, is one that pits royalist forces against democratic ones. I do not see either side winning a clear victory anytime soon. While I will give the democratic forces a small but significant chance of eventual success, I give zero chance to the royalist forces. They will eventually be defeated or overtaken by history and other trends, the only question is how long they can hold out. However, the most likely prospect over the next 10 years is a continuation of the current stalemate. This then means the current (corrupt) model of doing business will remain in place, with a privileged class primarily interested in extracting rent by means fair and (mostly) foul. With greed as the driving factor, there is a constant push to increase the price of sex as middlemen of all sorts (from mamasans to Boys in Brown) demand a bigger and bigger cut of the proceeds. Any bar or massage parlour that wants to innovate by changing the service offering, the business model or pricing scheme will be seen as a threat to the existing cosy arrangement. In a polity where there is transparency and rule of law, a businessman can calculate his expected costs should he evolve a new business model. Tax rates, cost inputs, permissible licenses, etc are knowable in advance, while security from the underworld can be assumed. In a scenario like Thailand, these are not knowable in advance, because they are never formalised. The rule of law is grey, the meaning of licences is vague, the cost factors are not quoted in advance as much as they are the outcome of veiled threats made after you have launched your new business model. Such an environment discourages innovation, because you can never pre-calculate whether your innovation results in cost savings or cost/licence/security catastrophe. Hence there is a strong bias for the existing business model (and oligopolistic practices) to continue, with its ingrained indulgence towards greed. It means an inability to respond to external trends such as the rise of the Asian spender, as we have discussed earlier, or to complaints that the bars have lost their fun factor and feel very stale. DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS In the 1960s, Thailand's annual population growth was about 3 per cent; the average woman had 5 - 6 children. This produced a bumper crop of young men and women in the 1980s and 1990s. Farmwork for all was unrealistic. There was a significant drift to the cities. By the early 1990s, Thailand's first phase of industrialisation was producing a new urban middle class with the wherewithal to buy sex. The low profile domestic sex industry that had existed for eons, grew till it rivalled the high-profile sex industry that served the US forces during the Vietnam War but was winding down after the war ended. Bars like Tawan, Twilight and Barbeiry opened, at first aimed at the domestic market with its new purchasing power, and sourcing from an expanding supply of farmboys from the large families of the 1960s. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1996/7 wiped out a good chunk of the middle class, but currency devaluation made Thailand very competitive. The tourism boom quickly replaced the disappearing domestic market in Tawan, Twilight, Barbeiry and others. Today however, annual population growth in Thailand is 1 percent or less. "Thailand's highly successful government-sponsored family planning program has resulted in a dramatic decline in population growth from 3.1% in 1960 to less than 1% today." -- Source: State Department and Indexmundi The Total Fertility Rate slipped under 2 births per woman more than 10 years ago and is now 1.65 -- source: Indexmundi. If a TFR is 2.1, it means a population just barely replaces itself from one generation to the next. Under 2.1, a population will age and shrink over the long term. That process has now begun for Thailand. The supply of young men and women is shrinking rapidly. Moreover, economic growth and better education means that what supply there is will have more jobs to look forward too than those born in the 1960s and 1970s. By the laws of supply and demand, this indicates that the price of sex will rise. SCALING DOWN THE SEX BUSINESS As the supply of young men shrinks, any business that depends on scale becomes vulnerable. By this, I am referring to bars that mount relatively massive shows like Dream Boy. For example, their Big Cock Segment has currently some 18 guys showing off their assets. What if the day comes when you can't even find 18 boys to staff the entire bar? Also, as the cost of labour rises, businesses will try to find ways to save on other costs, and ripe for the knife will be the production costs of these elaborate shows. One model that will seem attractive is the Chiang Mai model where the show consists of solo performers (occasional duo) doing five minutes each, with little by way of costumes or fancy props. Interestingly, it is also the Manila model, and I note that in both Manila and Chiang Mai, the bars aim at the domestic market, which is less volatile and more soundly based than the tourist market. For this reason, I suspect that over the long term, the Dream Boy model will disappear and the Chiang Mai model will predominate. Smaller bars will become the norm.

Think: The Cafe Royale Piano Bar - same problem. I don't think it will work, because of cost and because this is culturally farang, not Thai. For a business to succeed, it must appeal to Thais, otherwise it becomes overly dependent on expats or tourists, and as we know, gay farang tourist traffic is flat or declining, and gay expat numbers alone are never going to be enough. A classy joint (unlike Telephone bar with its fair quotient of sleaze) means a high-rent location, spaciousness (more rent per customer served) costly furnishing and operations (live music). It will need the support of hi-so Thais who are (1) out of the closet, (2) want a romantic atmosphere, and (3) have westernised taste in beverage and music. I suspect they are very few in number.

I agree with fountainhall's response to this. I myself had what might have been a near miss. Years ago, I picked up a guy from a park. As we walked towards the main street to hail a taxi, we stopped to get a drink from a vendor. The very sweet, smiling guy in the park changed before my eyes. His words to the vendor sounded brusque and coarse, almost barking our orders. A little further on, while we were sipping our drinks amidst a crowded street (we were near a bus stop and metro entrance) someone brushed him on the shoulder as he walked past, causing him to spill his drink slightly on his jacket. Instead of a quick "sorry" like any normal person would say, putting the matter out of his mind, he turned around and hurled abuse at the passer-by. I decided there and then it would be a bad idea to have this guy in my room, and amazed myself with the quickest of thinking. A bus was just then coming to a halt at the bus stop beside me, and while his guy was hurling abuse at the stranger (and was facing away from me) I hopped onto the bus and escaped! The AYOR warnings I had seen were completely validated in my mind.

Another drag show. Another nail in the gay industry coffin.

Freelance options in China, especially those picked up in parks/streets can be dangerous to life and limb.

Medical drugs and health supplements. The mark-ups to cover marketing costs are jaw-dropping.

Nor have I. In Shanghai and Beijing, my impression is that rates are higher than Thailand, but not by much. In smaller cities, could be lower than Thailand. Service quality everywhere too is not a lot different either (more like 'indifferent'). But my experience is limited to no more than 4 occasions, so I won't pretend to speak with any authority. Bars owners may own the business but lease the building. Could be. It might even explain how a bar like Hotmale or X-boys survived the last 12 months, averaging 3 - 5 customers in the low season and now maybe 15 - 20 customers in the high season. My back of the envelope calculations suggested that couldn't even pay salaries and show costs.

Taking this discussion off on a different tangent, a big reason why I am not expecting the majority of Soi Twlight bars to take the initiative to change with the times is that they are not run as businesses in the usual sense. While I don't have proof, I have a sense (do others have the same view?) that except for farang-owned Dream Boy/Boys Bangkok and maybe Classic, the owners of the rest, including Jupiter 2002, are ultimately senior police officers. Many of these bars have women as their "bosses" or "owner" as the boys call them, but occasionally I've heard the boys whisper that they're the wife of some Police colonel. If that's the case, then it is very unlikely they are there to create/run a business in the normal sense of creating value, ensuring customer satisfaction, innovating, etc. They are in this business to extract monetary value from their high positions (positions which they might have purchased). They use their position to get a bar licence and exemption from laws against prostitution, public nudity, etc, while denying the same to others, and they treat the bar as a kind of cash cow. They fit into the classic Thai rentier class; i.e. they use their positions to collect "rent" from others, through their privileged ownership of assets (in this case the power to issue/police licences). They ride along benefitting from the market value (of those assets) created by others (in this case Dream Boy) by charging similar prices and copying similar activities (shows, etc) but it never occurs to them that they should be innovating and creating new value themselves. Some wives are savvier businesswomen than others. Perhaps the Jupiter woman is savvy in her own right and is able to make something out of her family bar. Pattayaland bars are likely different in that they are owned mostly by ordinary Thais. That they are subject to crackdowns on nudity suggests that their relationship with the powers-that-be are not as close as the Soi Twilight bars. But hopefully, it also suggests that at least some of them think like businessmen, and are capable of reinvention?

From a branding point of view, this is very confusing and inept. Calling it a "temple fair" conjures sights and sounds of crowds and noise (as does its promo pic) the exact opposite of what massage should be about. But the idea of doing a sexy show at 8 p.m. at least makes it innovative.