macaroni21

The same can be asked: it's 2025: why isn't the Australian/US/British education system teaching Chinese? Let's not get too anglo-centric here.

This is useful data. Albeit that it's a small sample, yet one in six flights arrived about 30 minutes late. @jimmie50 was right to choose a later connection rather than risk it. The variance between 5:04 and 6:14 is quite notable.

You'd be surprised how many would tip handsomely (a.k.a throw money at) such guys for mere "look-not-touch". It amazes me all the time.

Giving yourself only one hour is asking for trouble. Please do not assume that flights, even on the best airlines, arrive on time. The number of times that I have experienced a delayed departure from a US airport is beyond counting. It's not the fault of even the best airline. It's the sheer unremitting craziness at US airports. All it takes is a 30-minute delay in departure from SFO, and your one-hour is gone. If I remember correctly, Changi Airport closes gates 30 minutes before the scheduled take-off time. So, what you think is one hour is only 30 minutes to make the transfer. Moreover, I've flown good airlines which have had to fly against unexpectedly strong headwinds, or told by air traffic control at destination to circle around due to congestion, leading to delayed arrival. In an 18-hour flight, a five percent delay due to headwinds or circling around means fity-minutes additional flying time. Giving yourself only one hour is a decision you will regret. The more important question is how long you will need to not suffer a heart attack if even a small thing goes wrong. And that depends on the answers to @thaiophilus questions. If yours is a through-ticket SFO to BKK via SIN, brought directly from Singapore Airlines, then you can check your luggage all the way to Bangkok. All you need to worry about is to allow time for these: 1. Disembark (how long depends on whether your're on Business Class or Economy Class, and the size of the aircraft but personally, I plan for 15 minutes, because I have known planes going around in circles looking for the right gate - Schipol, I am looking at you!). Or the plane is parked remotely and passengers have to wait for the bus. 2. You'd probably want to do a quick freshening up if you're flying Economy. Allow another 15 minutes. 3. Get yourself to the other terminal. Allow 15 - 30 minutes (you may get lost and have to retrace your steps, allow for that!) 4. Go through hand-luggage security (Changi Airport does this at individual boarding gates, not upon entry into the airside of the airport, unlike most other cities). Allow 15 - 30 minutes. All the above must be done at least 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time of the connecting flight. If it were me, I would allow a minimum of 2.5 hours. I'd rather have extra time with a coffee (after an 18-hour flight) than have to rush around under stress. --- If yours is NOT a through ticket bought from the same airline (i.e. if you bought SFO-SIN and SIN-BKK as separate purchases) then it gets even more complicated. This is because I think you won't be able to check your luggage through to Bangkok. Maybe others can chip in, because I have never done this (NOT buying a through ticket and somehow expecting a quick transfer). If you have to retrieve your luggage in Singapore and check in again for the SIN-BKK flight, then I suspect you will have to enter Singapore through Immigration, go to the bags carousels, wait/retrieve your bags, find your way to the other terminal, find the Departure floor, check in for your BKK flight, go through Immigration again, find your gate, go through hand luggage security.... all this must be done at least 30 minutes before the scheduled departure of the Bangkok flight. But as I said, I don't have personal experience even trying this kind of thing, so maybe others can advise better. How long will you need then? Hard for me to say because I'm not sure if my assumptionns about the process are correct. However, I think @jimmie50 was probably referring to a through ticket, so all this may be moot.

To remain thematically consistent, staff at Jungle Boy should be in loincloths like Tarzan of venerable fame.

And what value does this create for customers other than to enjoy (for the time being) soft cushions with new fabric under one's bum?

These two are connected in a way I've been saying for years. Bars should learn from this and should offer fun experiences with personal interactions for affordable fees instead of depending solely on winning the jackpot of getting offs. The price of an off may be too high and the majority-Asian male visitors baulk at the rates. So, the bars try to pull in women -- but they like conversation, drinking and attention (and they spoil the gay vibe of the brand) rather than offing. For the bars, I have recently mentioned (again) the mystery of why private lap dances are not available as options. And as @vinapu has said, this notion of a fashion-parade-type catwalk with unsmiling models is senseless. It appears to be geared to women though. Psychologically, women feel a bit threatened when men smile at them uninvited, so the "modus operandi" of catwalking has developed this look-into-the-distance style. And Thai-style management simply copies, not known for thinking critically outside the box. I feel sorry for the boys. The bars' business goals (sell drinks) destroy their livers, yet give them little income. They're really better off working in massage places (where boys can average 3 customers a day at 1,500 - 2,000 baht per customer) than in bars. Long-time visitors to Bangkok like us may not be put off by such bad branding, but the test is whether newer visitors can feel welcome in such a vibe, and whether the experience is affordable or value for money.

Is there some way to move this thread to the Malaysia forum so that in future other readers planning to go there can see this story? From a social media post by someone I know who is Malaysian, I am hearing that it is the well-known Otot otot sauna, which has been operating for years. Why now, I wonder?

For a while he used to work in Hotmale. He's chatty and friendly.

Found its website. But one page there intrigued me. What on earth does this (with marked prices) mean?

I have been following the news on this, and among the commentaries I have read (can't remember which one now) there was a truly sobering comment: the whole notion that the way to evacuate people in a fire is through the fire stairs has been called into question. These were 30-storey blocks. There must have been many elderly persons for whom going down 30 flights of stairs in a state of near panic would be physically impossible. Weak knees, weak hearts, poor eyesight.... Having been in a fire twice in my life, I don't fancy taking any risks. Silom Soi 2 is one alley I do not venture into. There was also one hotel in Vientiane which shocked me. I was returning to the hotel via a shortcut, which route took me past the side of the building where the exit of the fire stairs was. It was also where the back door of a restaurant was. And in the 2 metres of wall between one door and the next were cylinders and cylinders of cooking gas. Taking the fire stairs might lead you straight to an inferno of exploding gas cylinders.

There was a Nepali guy working at the now-defunct Tawan a few years back. And a tailor shop up Silom Road that I have used on a few occasions has Nepalis on its staff.

@Olddaddy you realise, I hope, that one sentence contradicts the other. 🤣

OK, so I made a quick search on rent.men filtered for Bangkok. The majority of the listings are not Thai. They seem to be "working" tourists, expecting to earn their way around the world. Is there a market for them? Possibly. LIke in all cities, even in darkest Africa, there are the One Percent who are filthy rich, and who may want the thrill of reeling in a callboy of exotic ethnicity plus muscular build. A friend of mine who used to live in Hong Kong once told me white girls (mostly Russian) were successfully charging US$500 to 1,000 per hour in the city. Plenty of rich Chinese businessmen from Shanghai or other mainland cities made up the clientele. (He's straight, so he had no knowledge of the the male-male market). Even among Thai sex workers, asking for 5,000 baht or 10,000 baht (US$300) is not unheard of. Personally, I cannot see how paying three to six times the knocking shop rate delivers three to six times the pleasure, but then I am not a member of the One Percent.

Thanks for elaborating. Excepting the case of Toy Boys (which I wasn't aware of) what you're describing isn't what I thought you were saying - that the boys were expecting Asian customers to pay more than farang customers. What you're describing is the well-known phenomenon where asking the mamasan about rates begets inflated figures. Many here have long suspected that the higher rate quoted is because she builds in an extra 1,000 for herself on top of the going rate, and she will demand her cut from the boy the next day. It just so happens, if I read you correctly, that Asian customers may be more likely to refer to the mamasan than white customers, though my observation is that the situation is not as simple as a cursory reading of your description might suggest. It's true, I have personally seen mamasans in action in exactly the way you describe. In fact, I wrote about one such instance (with a customer from China) in Pouffes ahoy at Fresh Boy. But I wouldn't suggest that it's a race thing. It's just a confluence of various factors, starting with the fact that perhaps 90% of customers in gogo bars are Asian visitors; many customers (whether East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Arab, European, or Latin American) are first-time visitors to Thailand and don't know how to negotiate directly with the desired boy (between the boy's weak English and the Asian visitor's weak English, it gets doubly hard); and so it will be unsurprising that most instances when we see mamasans over-quoting the rate to a customer, it will involve an Asian customer. Our observations are skewed by the statistical fact that the great majority of visitors to the gogo bars are Asian. I have seen European visitors ask the mamasan too about rates; they are probably new or infrequent visitors to Thailand, but European customers (both new and wizened) in gogo bars are uncommon. Mamasans are not going to suddenly become non-greedy just because it's a farang customer asking.

Can anybody here imagine these Jomtien Complex bars making money? Maybe the most profitable business is that of a redecorator, considering the way these bars come and go.

The bar under Hotmale is Midnight bar; it is not under Fresh Boys. All the other open-front bars in the area are either for men interested in boobs or men interested in getting sloshed. The "older Thai gentleman" you refer to is probably a barker for Hotmale, Fresh Boys or Dream Boy. Likely, there are more than one taking his job seriously.

First time that I am hearing this. Any idea what the rationale is? When you speak of "ST" it seems that you're referring to boys from the gogo bars; not the massage places. And are you referring to Pattaya or Bangkok or both?

@abidismaili - I hope you're not thinking that somehow boys treat some other forum members better (by quickly shedding their clothes) than they treat you 🤣 It varies depending on the shop's policy, and also may vary depending on the boy. Most Type 2 shops, e.g. those in Silom Soi 6, want to maintain an image of real massage, and the boys negotiate inside the room. Obviously, it won't make sense for them to strip until negotiations are successful. The Type 4 shops such as Prince and Arena are "all-inclusive" and so there's less need to maintain any image of wholesomeness. It can also vary with the boy, or with how familiar with boy is with you. My regulars, even at Type 2 shops, strip from the start because they know that that's where we're going.

Like @Vessey and @vinapu said, I think the most likely explanation is that the shop manager wanted to charge the boy for the extra half-hour of room use. It was fortunate that the boy had your number and could ask you to reimburse him. But as @zazzu said, the shop should have realised it then and there and spoken to you directly rather than take it out on the boy. It annoys me when businesses make a mistake and still expect customers to pay for their mistake. It's like "Oh the advertised price mentioned the wrong date for the special offer, so since it's not today, please pay the full price," or "We stuck the wrong price tag on the shelf, this product isn't $48, it is $75. Please pay $75." Such businesses do not deserve any respect and should be shamed. I would encourage @kentguy2025 to name the shop.

This can be misread. I think you mean 500,000 journeys cancelled. Airlines don't operate as many as 500,000 flights.

At last, somebody agrees 🤩 I have been saying the same for years, From a business perspective, bars should choose between being a showbar or an offing bar. The conflict between the two business models is such that any bar that tries to do both will have to walk a very narrow line with a high risk of failure. A showbar needs volume because putting up shows is costly. The nature of the shows also tends to feature drag queens who bring no erotic value to gay men (with only rare exceptions). They attract straight audiences, and the bars get addicted to the straight audiences because they need volume (it gets into a vicious cycle). It doesn't take long to drive away gay customers who are the backbone of any offing business model. Show bars also need floor area because they need to accommodate a surge crowd at show time (how else to monetise the hoped-for volume?), backstage space, maybe high ceilings too. Rent costs become significant as a result, yet outside of showtime, you're paying rent for under-utilised space. Banana bar is one such bar teetering on the edge. It succeeds as a showbar but I wonder how many offs the boys there get... and if they don't get enough offs, why work there any more? An offing bar doesn't need a show. It just needs a small, intimate space (e.g. the size of Thantawan bar) with a small stage in a corner. It needs a good slate of boys carefully selected to suit the tastes of whatever customer/market segment the bar is aiming for, from twink to twunk to chunk to hunk. I would recommend that boys go up to the stage one at a time for a 5-minute sensual striptease act (without going "all the way") -- so that customers can see what the physique is like in order to decide on an off. Without a show, there is no need to cater for any surge crowd, so a small bar will do, keeping rent low. There is no need to hire waiters or staff associated with show production. The business focus of such a bar is to get the boys off'd. The above (a pure offing bar) is actually a proven model. Toy Boys operates something similar except that they still have boys standing on stage bored to death. And clearly Toy Boys has staying power. The latest post on ShamelesssMack describes a pure offing bar in Tokyo, King of College. It is a successfull, long-running business. It doesn't even have a strip show. Many of the Sunnee bars were like Toy Boys too, with a primary focus on boys on offer. When they had dancing, my best memories were the bars where the boys moved around the room, dancing right at your table (or on it) thereby creating a personalised experience for the customer. Sunnee bars' demise was not because the model didn't work, it was because their selection of boys skewed strongly to the tasts of a particular generation of western customers and didn't evolve with demographic changes. When that generation of western retirees began dying off, the bars failed to tap into the huge growth in Asian customers in Thailand's tourism profile (which would have necessitated a revamp of the type of boys that bars had). Granted, it's a lot more complicated than that in that Asian gay males have been staying mainly in Bangkok and are much less interested in going to Pattaya. So it is a chicken-and-egg question too. But even this tells us something else - the utter lack of any marketing. Asian gay males will go to Pattaya if businesses would only advertise. But of course, they also need to understand carefully what type of boys Asian customers like and ensure the bar has the desired type. Look at Bangkok's massage parlours, from low end to high end. They're in rude health! They advertise furiously. If only the bars would learn from what they're doing. I have also previously said that an offing bar can add to its sales revenue (and the boys' earnings) by offering private dances in a cubicle: Ten minutes of stripping all the way, gyrating and inviting groping for a reasonable fee, say 500 - 600 baht. This is akin to the sort of personalised fun experience that the best Sunnee bars offered. Through private dancers, boys can earn extra income in addition to being off'd. Customers can "buy" 2 or 3 private dancers to check out 2 or 3 boys before deciding which one to off. Right now, the boys' earning model is more or less an "all or nothing" game. They're either off'd and earn big money, or they earn next to nothing during the evening. Forum members here on gayguides may say that the boys also earn drink tips or "you look handsome" tips, but boys can't earn enough from such tips alone. Furthermore, always bear in mind that fact the customer profile is mainly Asian. Look carefully and the truth is that most Asian customers don't tip as liberally. An Asian customer sees far less value in calling a boy down for a drink because it is unlikely that the boy can speak Chinese, Korean or Japanese. It's a rule of thumb: customers need to see value before they spend, and a private dance is one way of offering value. It's a mystery to me why it is so rare for bars to think about the value proposition for the customer. They do more of the same unthinkingly, without asking themselves how to ensure that customers see value in patronising my bar. More tricky perhaps, they don't know how to analyse value conflicts. What is value to one type of customer (the straight couple that want either a drag show or a gawk show) is disvalue to the gay customer who is prepared to off a boy (but is put off by the heterosexual vibe and the very public exposure he has to endure in a bar with gawking customers).

I can confirm that. In fact, I mentioned the sign in my post of August 2022, The screaming bar.

We probably have to accept that the idea of a muscle bar with boys who can be rented out are over. Even the non-muscle bars on Patpong 2 and the massage parlours I know, have increasing difficulty getting Thai staff. Where will new muscle boys come from? Not Thailand. But is it realistic to expect bodybuilders from neighbouring countries to come to Thailand to sell their bodies? Somehow, I think not.

Given how excessive numbers of Chinese tourists have in recent years annoyed the local Japanese, I have a feeling many locals think fewer Chinese will be a good thing; never mind the stock market.