forrestreid

Being your usual ray of sunshine on a thread, I see, scott456. I should have added to my suggested itinerary that one should do start it sundown or later, to escape the worst of the heat. But to be a "flaneur" means that you are, of necessity, in a big vibrant city, so noise and air pollution, and facing chaos and crowds,are pretty unavoidable. However, I dont think you will get another tropical or subtropical city anywhere in the world that combines Bangkok for the variety of street and bar life combined with the relative safety of your person. Singapore felt very pleasant and safe to stroll around in the evenings,but it was of less fascination. I haven't been to Jakarta or Manila (or indeed Rio or Bogota) but I suspect the feeling of safety there would be quite a bit lower.

Thanks for the kind words Flaneur, I think Bangkok is one of the best cities in the World for just wandering around.

That's a little harsh Marc. According to Wikipedia a flâneur "is an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of industrialized, contemporary life." Perhaps associated with people who have an interest in art or architecture, but not essential. Historically a flâneur (usually seen as a male figure) was somebody who had a fascination in the "demi-monde", and was particularly interested in wandering about red light districts in Pars and other European cities. A suggested Itinerary But if you want to spread your wings Flaneur, here is an itinerary that enables you to indulge your penchant for being a flaneur, and starts and ends within ten minutes journey from Saladaeng station. Get a Sky train to Siam Station. Have a wander in Siam Square. In the late afternoon/early evening, it should be full of young Thai people shopping and eating. Walk up along the skywalk eastwards, up Rama 1 road, passing the Siam Paragon and Central World Shopping Centre. Pause at the Erawon shrine and watch the crowds making merit. Admire the model elephants many leave. Then continue past Chit Lom skytrain station toward the beginning of Sukhumvit Road. Plenty of vendors to observe and you will start to notice more and more middle-aged western guys in the crowd. Pass under the motorway overpass and you are on Sukhumvit. Wonder up Soi 3 and the Little Arabia” zone, area full of Arabs smoking Shishas and nice Lebanese food, and go as far as a soi 7 and 11 - you will be in the centre of the straight expat and sexpat area with plenty of interesting bars and life to see. Cross the road at Nana station and stroll down Soi 4 (Soi Nana itself) as far as Nana Plaza. Observe the sign under the entrance that proclaims Nana Plaza as as “the worlds largest adult playground.” Go in and see if you agree. Perhaps go to the top level and into one of the ladyboy bars. I’m not interested in ladyboys sexually but they can be fun to talk to, and a lot of them have a very good English. That’s what I call a good evening of playing the flaneur, and at the end of it you can jump on the skytrain at Nana station, and be back in Saladaeng within 10 minutes (don’t forget to change trains at Siam).

I see that Dream Boys Pattaya was raided last night. Gambling and foreign workers were found, but thankfully, no prostitution. The Pattaya News website has a video of it all. Raid was prompted by reports from "a concerned citizen". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V75aC20mMHs&ab_channel=ThePattayaNewsThailand Wonder who the boss pissed off?

Well, one option to consider is a actually take the bull by the horns and launch a ground invasion, after making strenuous efforts to get the civilians to leave northern Gaza. That appears to be under consideration, although is uncertain as to whether Israel carry it out. Hamas are so dug in nowadays that the Israeli military casualties would doubtless be horrific. In my opinion it was pretty inevitable that the Gaza situation was always going end up like this, once Israel allowed Hamas to get established there. I remember when the Israelis evacuated Gaza in 2004. That was not part of a long-term peace plan, it was just a way for the Israelis to make it less painful them to control Gaza and the West Bank. When Hamas eventually took complete control,in the civil war with Fatah in 2007, I was surprised that Israel did not then promptly invade. In retrospect, Israel should have invaded them, before Hamas had a chance to get to build kilometres tunnels which they will presumably used to make it very costly for Israel to invade now. My opinion is that Israel had decided on an "acceptable level violence" policy in regards to Gaza. They decided it was better to have the occasional exchange of rockets with them, then to invade and try and root out Hamas. That has come back to bit them now, in a horrific way In fairness, a ground war will probably end up being bloody for Gazan civilians too, but at least the IDF will clear out Hamas. What to do from there is a good question.

Thanks for your well written reports, with plenty of advice and opinions. A real pleasure to read, and useful too. You have inspired me to make my way to Suan Phlu Market in the next time I am there, to try out the S'Sense guys.

Moistmango. Thank you for your trip report,I really enjoyed reading it, it was good to have one done in nearly "real time". Good trip reports are at the heart of the board and really draw people in. Having done a few myself, I know how long they can take to write. And you are a naturally gifted writer too, which make sit all the more pleasurable.

I posted a review of Thermas Sauna earlier this year, after my visit this spring. You can have a read of it yourself here: My review was a bit more general about the the experience of using the place, compared to some other reviews. The only other sex place I went was the "Night Barcelona" cruise bar. It is a small bar, with a darkroom behind. The evening I went the darkroom was busy, with mostly older customers. Definitely worth a visit. The pictures on Tripadvisor give a fair impression of the place. The thing to watch in European darkrooms is your wallet! I would suggest getting hotel in the Gaixample, as the gay area is known, and then walking to the bar. That way all you need with you is just enough cash for a few drinks. I was sorry I did not get to more places, I would be interested to hear your review of the spots there after your visit in December.

If you like rougher-looking, straight-acting lads, Sunee Plaza might be a good option for you.

The clearest mapping of this, (though getting a bit out of date now, as it was researched in December 2022) is the blog of Shamelessmack. He has maps of the Silom/Surawong gay businesses here: Map of Silom-Surawong area, December 2022 – ShamelessMack2 (travel.blog

Thanks for alerting us to this, fedssocr. I had seen some videos by Bangkok Park before, but that example was particularly interesting. I hadn’t expected that he would be so keyed in to the gay historical sites. It was fascinating to see the photographs from the Babylon Bangkok, which I went to once about 10 years ago. And see what the site of it looks like now. If you have any interest in Bangkok history, the other videos in Pat's Vanishing Bangkok series are also worth watching.

I wonder how familiar with Songkhla people commentating are. I once met a guy on Dongtan beach who was retired there – I remember he said that although it was sometimes a bit quiet, it was also a pretty town on the beach, and far enough north to be away from the terrorism problems. According to Wikitravel, it is a bustling university town about 30 minutes by bus from Hat Yai. But I agree that being wanting to visit Malaysia frequently does not necessarily mean that one needs to be close to the border, depending on where in Malaysia the boyfriend wants to visit. If he wants to visit Alor Setar, that is about 3 hours from Songkhla, but if he wants to visit Kuala Lumpur, you are talking about a ten hour bus journey Compared to this, the 1 hour 30 minute flight from Phuket to KL may be handier (although admittedly more expensive).

Well, the obvious answer to that is no. But then you could say that about any of the places mentioned - in Prague or Berlin would you see many Asian guys? And it can affect your rankings. I have stated Bangkok and Pattaya as my top two, but this is despite the fact that I actually prefer European looking guys to Asians, all other things being equal. However, I do like a lot of types of Asian guys, and the other advantages of Thailand make up for this. But I suppose if you were a complete "potato queen" Pattaya wouldnt seem that attractive, no matter how safe or reasonably priced, or the variety of venues. Just like a "rice queen" probably couldn't be completely satisfied with Rio no matter how many varieties of white, black and mixed race guys there. I guess there are just a few places in the World- NY, London, LA - where you will get a truly wide ethnic mix of providers.

Well, I think it is good for discussion, even if it is impossible to agree consensus. As long as people realise it is only a bit of fun...

Sorry to hear of your troubles TotallyOZ. Hare anything dental related myself!

Always like to see people starting a wide-ranging discussion thread Premv3. However, as this board is very Thailand focused, it will be interesting to see how many options you get - I think for many it will be Bangkok, Pattaya, Bangkok, Pattaya.... And to be honest I was a bit intimidated by the range and exoticism of your list, LOL. Nevertheless is my list, based on my comparatively restricted travels 1 - Bangkok - Jupiter and Moonlight for gogo bars, and Arena for massage (I go for more hunky guys). In general the range of body types and venues is so varied, and the feeling of safety in the city so good, for the size of it. 2-Pattaya - Boyztown for a Gogo bars, and Jomtien for picking up a guys in the host bar. (I never made much of an effort with the apps in Thailand, as it is so easy to hire "in the flesh" so to speak). 3. Barcelona, and the Thermas sauna. The guys might be of variable physical qualities, but for getting a big bunch of guys in the one place, and for a very reasonable pricing, it’s hard to beat Thermas. 4 . Athens- For finding people on apps (in particular, Hunqz), the best place I found was the Greek capital. Plenty of guys and very reasonable prices. Athens was I found sort of the opposite of Bangkok, in that I found trying to meet guys in hustler bars was not that great, so I shopped on the apps there. You can see my reviews of Athens for further details. Other places we have hired include Istanbul and London. However, although I was happy enough with the guys I got there, I couldn’t really recommend either city as being particularly good for hiring (although both are great in other ways). In London, guys on the apps are a bit too expensive to consider it a "destination" city for escorts. The Villa Giani is worth checking out, although i never actually hired from there. In Istanbul, I visited the Aquarius Sauna, and hired from apps. The Aquarius was a bit grim, and I found that the guys on the Hunqz app a bit expensive, considering it was Turkey.

Just curious about the twenty hour site outage we just had. Was that scheduled? I don’t remember seeing any announcement about it. When I got the message on Chrome about downtime, and went back to Explorer and got the message about the site being dangerous, I began to get paranoid that the powers the be for the internet were trying to kill it 😪

I think you jinxed the website with that comment Latbear4blk. Your comment looks like it was last post before this site was down for 20 hours. Maybe the system was having a sulk?

I would agree with a lot of that analysis. However, just to clarify, I never suggested that an "authoritarian" government is, in itself, a major restriction on development. Many non-Communist authoritarian governments, such as Chile under Pinochet, or South Korea under Park Chung Hee, achieved very high growth rates. Authoritarian Vietnam has had very high growth rates since it more or less abandoned trying to implement Communism properly in the mid-1980s. Laos, although not so far down this road as Vietnam, has managed quite respectable growth rates since the year 2000 or so. I get the impression that Laos is more corrupt than Vietnam (the main Achilles heel of an authoritarian government), which may slow it down. But, like Vietnam, it is now catching up with the likes of Taiwan and South Korea. By the way, I am not trying to minimise how terrible the experience of American bombing that Laos suffered between 1960 and 1975. However, I just don’t think it had that much impact on growth rates in Laos since peace came in 1975.

In the case of Laos at least, the Pathet Lao campaign between the Fifties and the Seventies would have assured that Laos probably would not have developed much in any event in those years, as it would have been either involved in a Civil War, or ruled by a very ideological Communist dictatorship. Presumably the Pathet Lao would have taken over a lot earlier if the Americans had not been propping up the Royalist Lao government. So that would have brought forth a Pathet Lao dictatorship by the mid Sixties perhaps, which would have brought peace to the country at least. However, the Pathet Lao were believers in strict Communism in those days, and it is not known for agrarian communist regimes to have ever prompted a strong economic development in any country, so far as I am aware. South Korea was in a relatively greater state of devastation in 1953 than Laos was in 1975 (admittedly with far less dangerous ordinance lying about in the forests and the fields), but in the 48 years that followed it grew a lot faster than Laos in the 48 years since 1975. I cannot state it with "certainty", but I think it is quite likely that the way Laos was governed since 1975 is the main factor in where Laos is today, economically, rather then what the agonies it went through before 1975.

I think PeterRS is originally British. In fairness, I dont think that Harold Wilson sent too many bombers on raids over Laos in the Sixties. Unlike Tony Blair, he had the sense to know when to stay out of an American war.

I very much doubt that no matter how cute the masseurs are, that you will find Marshall Arkley (the guy with the goatee in the second pic) amongst them....

Thanks for the report Goldmember. You can see pics of the handsome Knott and the hunky Singh from S'Senses massage, along with the rest of their crew, here https://myalbum.com/album/JZpMRvAipch8/?fbclid=IwAR2MteL9Kwkr2nBpKEBpdOz6BLz-wEnS5ZjAGzPXq57W8B0VHdYPOPy_TVY

It may be helpful if we had clarification if the friend is into mature Asian guys, or more Caucasian-looking mature guys. Because if he is into Caucasian-looking mature guys, he may find that a lot of them are in Thailand specifically in order to chase young guys, and are not interested. But if he likes Asian mature guys, I would say if he went into ant of the saunas and showed a little interest in the older guys there, he would be fighting them off...?

To give an example of one massage parlour with more well-built guys, look at Jey Spa. You can get a massage for an hour with 950 baht to the shop. The minimum tip is 1500. However, different guys there can set their own minimum tip. For the more muscular guys the minimum tip, from asking on their Line account, seems to be 2000 baht (and up). So if you go to Jey Spa you can get an encounter with a muscular guy in a nice environment for about 3000 all told. You are unlikely to get a more muscular guy for less than this on the Hunqz or Rentmen. So I would consider 3000 baht (about 85 dollars, or 80 euro) to be the minimum I would expect to pay in Bangkok. Although Pattaya is cheaper for encounters generally, there seem to be fewer muscular guys there. I suspect the premium for muscles might be proportionately greater there.