macaroni21

It was slow again about an hour ago, so I gave up. Then I tried again (just now) and it's fine. Something's not exactly right.

If you're tired of cultural sites, there is apparently a bar in Ubon - but I have no idea of the bar's name or address.

Not just mobile phone banking, surely. Even if you use your laptop, there's a similar risk of trojans and phishing. So you'd have to avoid all online banking. But then how to pay? Either credit cards or cheques? Credit cards have their own problems (cloned cards and skimming), and increasingly vendors don't want to accept cheques or cash....

If you're a sun and sea person, this vlog will tempt you to Phuket. What's particularly interesting is the mention of a bus service that goes to all the main beaches.

Terrible writing at Pattaya Mail. 25-30% of compared to what number? 30 per cent of flights resumed? 30 percent compared to what number?

I have never experienced anything like this, but I have heard something similar, although by the time the story got to me, it was third-hand, so I cannot swear to the accuracy of the details. If I recall correctly, it happened in Pattaya. A boy was offed in the usual manner and was already halfway through the proceedings in the hotel room when the mamasan called. They boy then told the client that he had been instructed to finish within the next 30 minutes and get back to the bar as another customer was arriving soon. Since the boy had a follow-on booking, and he wanted to be sure he could rise to the occasion when needed, he told his client that he would not cum. This abrupt turn of events naturally left the client very frustrated. I don't know what financial adjustments were made.

You're almost right. I believe it stands for Penises Like Elephants'. Some members would rush over if true.

I have vivid memories of 2 shows in which members of the audience were invited on stage. One memory was from a bar on Twilight - but I can't remember which bar, could have been X-boys or Fresh Boys. The other memory was from Dream Boy in 2019 in its first Patpong Soi 2 location. On both these occasions, the boys who went on stage were droolable-beautiful, and on the Dream Boy occasion, the boy took off his shirt too. I almost fainted. On being invited onto the stage and asked by the performer or mamasan where they were from, they said (into the mic) they were from China. The Taiwanese would not say "China". They would say "Taiwan". Of course, my sample tells us nothing about how common they are in the bars, but they're definitely there and will be once borders open again. By the way, I have seen gay dance clubs in the big Chinese cities, (or at least gay nights) and they can challenge Soi 2 in terms of crowds. So, yes, there is a huge market.

@PeterRS I get similar comments. In my July visit I had the opportunity to chat over dinner with friends of friends who were from Malaysia and Singapore . In my recent visit, I had some casual conversation with a group of Taiwanese guys who were outside Raya Hotel and a bit shellshocked to see Soi Twilight boarded up. The Malaysians and Singaporeans were older, and in their words, "dance clubs are no longer our scene", so they no longer go to Soi 2. (it remains obvious to us however that lots of 20ish, 30ish even 40ish Asians still flock to Soi 2). They said they mostly get their thrills from erotic massages, though they may still take a boy from a bar if they had not had "satisfaction" in the day. But their other comments about bars reinforced my impression that they are put off by their prices and bored by divas in the shows. I can understand why some may say boys strutting their stuff in bars don't interest them; that would be logical since they are not intending to take an off for the night. What I learned is that their main interest in the bars, if they go, would be either (a) to see live porn (if available), or (b) to ogle at fine specimens of manhood (Moonlight and Jupiter models) To this, there were comments that the prices are still unattractive for what little they get to see (no nudity from the models), especially since there's plenty of free porn online. From the Taiwanese, the conversation was much briefer, and I learned less. My key take-away was that they had come from a massage parlour (VCK) they said - so I assume they'd had their rocks off already by the time they made it down to the boarded-up Soi Twilight. As for why they were interested in gogo bars, I didn't ask, but it seemed quite likely that their motives were similar to the Malaysians and Singaporeans, looking for an explicit show rather than to off boys for the night.

@reader Much obliged for any information you can provide, whenever you have it. But even from your informant's list, I see I do not have Ma Ha or Center Point (I don't even remember seeing these names anywhere) but I do have a Natural Massage on their right side of the soi as one enters from Silom Road. As for 9-Teen, are we saying that it had an original location on Soi 6, which is now under renovation, and the shop facing Silom Road is actually their second shop?

Six shops before the dogleg? I only have four on my map (https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2022/12/22/map-of-silom-surawong-area-december-2022/), so I apparently missed two. Do you happen to recall the names and relative order of the shops (right side or road/left side of road), so I can update the map?

The world isn't divided into straight and gay. There are as many bisexuals as gay men. For social reasons, they identify as straight - they can't imagine otherwise - but in bed, with the right person, they can be quite fun.

Some years ago, a straight escort explained it this way: he found it hard to get it up while with clients, so he couldn't top. Yet he knew that he would be losing out on clients if he only insisted on handjobs, so he learned to bottom. That said, I suspected he was one of those who, two minutes into the session, might say it hurt too much because "you too big."

The thrill of finding out how he reacts and how he performs.....

I reckon you're including Prime in the "Silom 6" shops? They definitely have a roaring business and I would certainly believe the average masseur there gets 3 - 4 customers a day. But the reports I hear are that most of the time there is no sex, so that doesn't count in my sex-buyer column. They do foot massages too, and I don't know if foot massages are included in your 3 - 4 a day. The other Silom 6 shops I have passed by many times; I rarely see any customer go in or come out of them. >I don't see how that reflects on the go-go bar business. The massage and gogo businesses compete for the horny customer. At least the massage places with a sexual finish do. To the extent that a tourist is satisfied, say, in the afternoon with a sex massage, he might not feel a need to spend money at a gogo bar. What you're saying kind of confirms something I have observed too. The sex business is now primarily served by massage shops (maybe it has always been, but even if it has always been, I see the trend as increasingly so). The gogo bar businesses are failing to compete with the massage businesses for the horny customer.

I actually know someone who's a kind of computer geek who can spend days coding away at his desk, and sleeps in a sofa in the same room. For food, he orders in, and he's told me that he can order pizza and coke for several meals in a row. For a change once in a while, he orders a burger and Dr Pepper.

Gogo bars - I think in total 50 - 60 offs per night in high season. How do I get this estimate? In the bigger bars (Dream Boy, Jupiter, Moonlight) about 10 boys per night. If we watch the room carefully, we may see about 3 boys taken out each hour (4, at a stretch). Multiply this by 3 hours (10pm to 1 am) and we get 9 - 12 offs. I round it off to 10. Smaller bars (Fresh, Hotmale, Banana) I think 5 offs a night. I haven't sat long enough in Tawan to estimate whether it's more like a bigger bar or a smaller one. Add them all up and we get 50 - 60 offs a night from all the gogo bars. Massage parlours - difficult to estimate since we seldom see other customers around when we visit. However, the fact that we seldom see other customers can also mean that there are not that many. When I ask around, however, I do find that visitors to Thailand buy from massage parlours at least as often as from gogo bars. So, if I really have to hazard a (wild) guess, I'd say 80 - 100 massage bookings a day from tourists. When I do see other customers in massage parlours, they are more often than not a local Thai. This is also noteworthy. The parlours continue to get custom from locals whereas the gogo bars (in Bangkok, at least) have lost all their local customers. In fact, outside of the Silom Road and Surawong Road cluster, I think the majority of massage customers e.g. in Saphan Khwai or Plukjit are local. I say this is interesting because it shows how bad the gogo bars are that they can lose a whole section of the market. Apps? - even more difficult to estimate, but just about everyone I know tells me it's more trouble than they are worth, in a country with an unfamiliar language.

Good morning! Merry Christmas to all. And what do I do first thing? I come and check this forum. It's like opening Christmas presents (in lieu of the fact that nobody gives me Christmas presents anymore ) It's a bit sad, actually. Anyway, I notice that so far neither of us have referenced the post we're discussing. It is this one: The gogo business: untapped potential The question is: what percentage of gay male visitors to Thailand would be open to buying sex? I used an assumption of 20% in my post, but @10tazione thinks 5%. It could well be, but my sense is that while it may be 5% or even 3% when one is in one's home city, when one is in a foreign country with a much higher degree of anonymity, the percentage goes up. Does it go up to 20%? Or to 15%.... we can only guess. I agree that even if there is X percent who are open to buying sex while in Thailand, it doesn't mean that all the X percent will buy, and do so once a day. So, here's another variable. What fraction of this X percent will actually buy each day? I think, if the bars and massage parlours market themselves well and price themselves attractively (within cost reasons) we can easily find half or more of that X percent converting interest/desire to actual purchase each day. That the bars and massage parlours are nowhere near getting half through their doors tells us that they are not marketing themselves as well as they should. Businessmen, if they have a mind to, can make time, especially in the evenings, for bars and offs. I used to travel quite a bit on business to many countries and I can say this with confidence. Often, they extend their stays an extra day or so to "unwind" from the stress of the business meetings. Not far from their minds is that a business trip is an expenses-paid trip. They're hardly spending any of their personal money, and thus to them throwing unspent money in bars and on boys and girls barely hurts the pocket. In our very own Silom-Surawong area, Thaniya Road is a good example. The scene there rose on the backs of Japanese businessmen.

Very strange choice of a hub airport. Seems to me that there are other non-aviation considerations involved. An effective hub airport is one with good connections regionally. Vientiane is not that. It's also hard to see Vladivostok (population 600,000) as a place with enough outbound tourists to make anything of a hub out of Vientiane.

I don't think there'll be any boys available at 8pm. Don't they start work at 9?

@10tazione I am glad you're taking up the challenge to think through these issues. Indeed my numbers are basically back-of-the-envelope estimates, so they are certainly open to debate. On the two questions you had: 1. I believe you're saying my estimate that tourists spend about half their days in Bangkok and half outside Bangkok, is too generous to Bangkok. I tried looking for data as to room nights in Bangkok versus room nights outside Bangkok but couldn't find them. In any case, I wasn't sure they'd be any good even if I did find them, because room nights data would almost surely include domestic tourists, rendering the numbers pretty useless when we're talking about foreign tourists. However, it is useful to imagine how a typical tourist who spends typically nine days in Thailand would divide his time. It's quite easy to imagine him spending a few days outside Bangkok e.g. Chiangmai or Pattaya in the middle of his holiday, but spends the first few nights and the last few nights in Bangkok, for convenience vis-a-vis Suvarnabhumi airport. I accept that there are tourists who fly directly to Chiangmai or Phuket and spend their whole vacation in the respective regions, but the Chiangmai numbers are small, the the Phuket numbers strongly seasonal. Counterbalancing that, there are plenty of business visitors who spend all their days in Bangkok and never leave the city. On balance I came to the estimate that about half the room nights of foreign visitors are probably spent in Bangkok. If you're a white farang, you need to resist the tendency to imagine the "typical tourist" as someone like you. The simple fact is that the majority of tourists coming to Thailand are Asian. They make relatively short trips of a week or slightly more and their interests centre around food, entertainment and shopping. 2. I believe you're saying that the rough figure of 20% of gay male tourists in Bangkok who are open to buying sex is too high an estimate. What do you think the percentage is likely to be? Note: I say "open to buying sex", not "actually buying sex." In fact, I emphasised in my blogpost that many of them are still not buying (my casual observation). Thus the point in my post - that the bars are not maximising their potential. There is discussion above about gay visitors in the closet, or too proud to buy. I have allowed for this - they're among the 80 percent who I reckon are not open to buying sex. Is 80 percent still too little? Do we think that maybe 90 or 95% are not at all open to the possibility of buying sex? You raised a good point about whether even if one were open to buying sex, would one be open to buying every day that one is in Bangkok? Some will be, some will not. I used to be somewhat like Vinapu twenty years ago when Thailand and Bangkok were new, bright, alluring and addictive. My daily rhythm was massage in the daytime (with sex), then off a bar boy in the evening, so twice a day. I was super-horny. In building my estimates, I assumed that the super-horny and the not-so-horny will probably balance each other out to average about 0.5 to 1 sex session per gay male tourist (who is open to buying) per day. So, if there is a potential market of 660 gay men in Bangkok open to buying sex, but they only buy 0.5 times a day there should still be 330 sex purchases a day (apps, massages and gogo bars combined). My observation is that the actual number of sex purchases by tourists is significantly lower than that. Thus the point of my post: In the sex business, there is quite a bit of upside potential among the tourists who are already in Thailand, but the potential is not properly exploited by the businesses. The question is: what's putting these tourists off?

I agree with you 200 percent. As you can see from my blogpost of September 2022 (Bangkok gogo bars: 15 years of price rises) I came to same conclusion. The bars got themselves into a vicious cycle of focussing on shows (which were never more than third rate), reeling straight gawkers in and relentless price rises. I also have records from 10 - 15 years ago where I noted my observations regarding customer numbers, and the current footfall that the bars are getting is only about half of what these bars had in 2008 - 2010. Actually, since there were twice as many bars in operation in 2008 - 2010, this means that the footfall today in all the existing bars combined is perhaps only a quarter of the traffic the entire industry had in those years. What we need are a couple more places with the easy-going atmosphere of Tawan, but differentiating themselves by having twinks, boys-next-door, etc so as not to compete directly against each other.

Here's a question for those who were recently in Dream Boy Bangkok. Outside of showtime, when the boys were on stage with their numbers pinned to their waists, were they in jeans, shorts or briefs? In July they were in jeans and some of us registered our protests with the mamasans. I'm wondering if they have changed their policy.

Just in on BBC: the eldest daughter of the Thai king, Princess Bajrakitiyabha, apparently collapsed and has been rushed to hospital. Few details so far, but the BBC correspondent points out the unusual statement describing her to be "stable to a certain extent". Some mention in the report about possible impact on succession, though obviously this is rather premature and speculative.

Wow. Great room for only 6148 baht!