PeterRS

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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!

"9 males" ?? In a Tomboy Club?? It has been great to see the "coming out" of the Tomboys over the past few years. Watching the tomboys walking through places like Central Festival shopping centre holding hands with their girlfriends is lovely. Presumably the raid on this club happened because the bib's were not getting enough in their brown envelopes. Sad. 

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!
 

A novel business idea just dangling there for a visionary entrepreneur!

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

Lots of interesting posts here. I have been going to Thailand since 1987 but not since the pandemic began. I do wonder for my next trip what interest I might have in the go-go bars. I'd see a show at Jupiter since it is known for its cute guys. But just a bar with boys dancing lazily waiting to be offed? I don't think I have any interest in that anymore.
I think the massage parlors will interest me more, but right now, I just don't know. Mainly I am looking forward to nice hotels, scenic tours, and good food. Friendly people too, just not necessarily in a thong.

The level of Drama in your response is over the top 🙄

What a lot of drama and nonsense over nothing really. The fault is entirely yours. You went there and picked a guy who was clearly labelled a top, which made clear to him at least what he thought you wanted and he attempted to provide it. He was doing what he was being paid to do - to screw a queen. He tried fucking you and you told him to fuck you with lube - not to stop trying to fuck you, so that's what he did. He was doing what you told him to do. If you wanted him to stop, you should have just said Stop!,Stop! said No! or held-up your hand. It is not as if the guys are too stupid to understand basic sign language or basic words like No.
"I finally settled that this is not going to work by shoving him off me." - that level of drama was entirely unnecessary and one can only imagine how traumatised the boy must have been by such an encounter on his first day at work - first he had to fuck some foreign queen he wasn't remotely attracted to, then he gets shoved away by the queen, and then the person refuses to pay anything to the boy who actually did what he was hired to do. Telling him to stop would have been enough. It's not as if he was living out one of his fantasies by fucking you.
Miscommunications happen all the time and in this case someone on their first visit to Bangkok encountering a boy on his first day at work was rife with the potential for things to go wrong and none of this would not actually warrant comment apart from your genuinely moronic suggestion that they should have offered to "press charges." Press charges for what? For fucking you with lube like you asked him to?
One could easily end this post with with a genuinely bitchy remark, but I'll just end it right here by saying  that the fault for the fuck-up was entirely yours. It was the boy who ended-up getting screwed.
 

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?

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?

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.

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!

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. 

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!

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.

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?

As retirement approaches how many of us I wonder have considered a cruise or two to some exotic part of the world? The more so nowadays given that there are several all-gay cruises to pick from - if that idea floats your boat, as it were. Quite a few, I expect, if only the prices were not quite so exorbitant. Some years ago friends of mine based in New York with little experience of Europe saved up for a one-week gay cruise from Barcelona to somewhere else in the Mediterranean and loved it.
Others never got the chance to get near their ship. Sadly the Germans who had booked a package tour from their home city to join a cruise due to start from New York all died when their chartered Concorde aircraft crashed after they had transferred on to it in Paris in July 2000.
Death is one dreadful if extremely remote possibility in denying you the chance to make your cruise. Recent media reports tell of another less final but almost equally awful cruise experience. Last year a company named Life at Sea advertised a three-year round the world cruise on board a smallish-sized ship limited to around 1,000 passengers. According to National Public Radio, the cheapest inside berth for a single passenger was US$196,000 this to include almost everything on the cruise. Move up to the 7th deck with a balcony and The Guardian reported it would set you back $562,000. Unlke most long cruises, this one would not pick up and let off passengers en route for shorter cruises. You had to sign up for the full three years.

One American lady started out thinking this had to be a scam. But she had her attorney go through all the paperwork and the background of the company. She was more than satisfied. Another American, a former flight attendant from Florida, also loved the idea of three years around the world and also paid her 30% deposit. The balance became due in monthly payments starting one month prior to sailing. She then got rid of her house, put most of her belongings into long-term storage and prepared to set out for the start of her dream of a lifetime.
The two accounts I have quoted have different start ports - one Miami, the other Istanbul - but in the light of what happened that's rather immaterial. The flight attendant sent her four small cases in advance to Miami. Days later the cruise company informed her the cruise had been rescheduled to start in The Bahamas. And just a few days after that the information came that the cruise was cancelled in its entirety! Some passengers had already flown to Istanbul ready to pick up the ship there. The company has promised to refund all deposits and the additional expenses of getting to the departure point/s. And the first lady claims some of the money has already been returned. But how do you suddenly reclaim three years of your life that you had assumed would be seeing the world on a semi-luxury liner?
It seems the company, which is quite well established, had intended to purchase a 20-year old vessel named AIDA aura in late September before making cosmetic changes prior to the scheduled departure under a new name the MV Lara.

Sometihng clearly happened in the negotiations for the ship was eventually sold to another company. Life at Sea had originally planned to refit one of its own vessels but opted instead to purchase the larger one. Ah! The best laid plans! Even so, despite all the hand-wringing, breast-beating, the angst, the resignations etc., Life at Sea has not given up. It is already accepting bookings for next year's 3-year cruise. Whether that will be on a luxury liner or a small dinghy remains to be seen.

Oddlly, whereas I would have been near incandescent with rage, the former flight attendant has accepted everything remarkably calmly. She still has plans to travel, although on shorter trips. "It won't be the same as the round the world trip," she says, "but it will be my own adventure." Good luck, Madam!
https://www.lifeatseacruises.com
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/29/1215569569/life-at-sea-3-year-cruise-around-the-world-called-off#:~:text=This 3-year cruise around,leaving passengers in the lurch&text=via Getty Images-,When the Life at Sea cruise line failed to purchase,in November began to unravel.&text=They were promised the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/01/half-million-dollars-three-year-cruise-ship-possessions-liberating