moistmango

What the sign says is "Hong Kong-style marijuana establishment". (Hence the image of Bruce Lee, I'm guessing.) Given the state of things these days, the Mainlander hordes might actually give it a miss .. This place is actually just across the street from the Sai Song Rd. entrance to Boyztown, where Scandic used to be.

Yep, Scandic's gone, but dispensaries are everywhere - some with wonderfully innovative designs and marketing strategies.

Man, not for close to 1000 baht per pop. For that price, they better have a drink or a boy or some illicit substances waiting at the top ..

If it's an option for you, I'm envious. Locations and all that - a plane ticket to Brazil would cost many, many times what a flight to BKK does for me.

Good luck! If you *really* want conservative, there's always Aceh ..

Surabaya's a bit off the beaten path for Western tourists (which I'm assuming you are - apologies otherwise). What are your plans there, if I'm not being nosy?

Just curious: where do you go for similar pleasures in Indonesia?

<lol> Fab analogy. You win this forum today.

Any other cities in SE Asia that boast gay go-go's? Phnom Penh, if anyone's sampled the treats there?

Great story. Not to sound like a sap, but it's good to know that there's some genuine .. well, I guess sentiment is the word, even if it's little more than simple gratitude. As @Boy69 predicted, the requests for money starting coming in soon after my departure from Pattaya. Not that I blame the boy for trying, but the requests became so incessant that I had to shut him down - no ifs, ands or buts. Happy to provide a little extra if we're hooking up in person, but not otherwise.

You can say that again. Other potentially fatal implements were not (primarily) designed for killing, such as cars and knives, and do serve other important functions. Guns, however, have only one use.

Which guy? And indeed the requests for money have started up, yes ... Romance is dead, I tells yous.

Thanks for the compliment! High praise from a veteran of these boards. A keen, close reader is always a gift.

Thanks for the compliment! High praise from a veteran of these boards. A keen, close reader is always a gift.

A pilgrimage to the love trap - rather fitting for this forum <lol> ! If anyone's ever in the vicinity of the Hard Rock on Beach Rd, the naga shrine and spirit house are tucked away in a corner on the sidewalk, and publicly accessible. The naga is magnificently large, a real imposing presence, and hard to miss. I've housed the little guy amidst the general festivities happening in the spirit house; see if you can spot him if you're there. Post a pic! Would like to see that he's doing well.

4 reported deaths; the suspected gunman is a teenager. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thailand-bangkok-siam-paragon-shooting-police-evacuation-3817086

Thank you for this. I have to admit, I'm neither terribly sensitive to energies, nor a believer in the supernatural and the like (perhaps the first explains the second), so the statuette seemed perfectly innocuous to me. I had it sitting next to my laptop as I worked. I have to say that, if indeed it came with more sinister intentions than just being a simple gift, it wasn't really working its supposed charms on me - if my feelings last night about its giver were any indication. I suppose my largesse was really a mixture of obligation (since I had been given a token of sentiment, or so I assumed) and some guilt (the money doesn't mean all that much to me, but it might to Tao), rather than ensnared affections. If anything, Art seemed to be the unwitting recipient of any magical love hexes that were happening .. That said, I did give the matter some thought, and came down in favour of your suggestion. What convinced me was reason, plain and simple: to be given such a gift by a bar boy on first acquaintance seems extremely unusual. In fact, it's the first time it's occurred to me, and that perhaps counts for something. I've been gifted presents by boys before, but they typically had some erotic dimension (such as a worn G-string); an object of mystical significance does seem odd, when I thought about it, especially from someone whose acquaintance i had just made ... Whether or not the gift came with strings attached, I decided that prudence was the best course of action here. I didn't want to bring the little guy with me on the plane, so I deposited him at the shrine next to my hotel, which honors a nine-headed naga. Next to the naga is a little spirit house, beautifully festooned with garlands of all colours, and little dancer figurines. I housed my ersatz pal there, and said a silent word to the spirit inhabiting the residence - if spirit it is - that I don't mean to intrude, but that it was best that my friend and I part ways. He needed a new home, and I would be most appreciative if the spirit in question could make some space for him. This solution doesn't involve the suggested temple or monk, but it was respectful. Thanks again for the pointer. It would not have occurred to me of my own accord, nor am I even sure if I buy all this, but discretion is the better part of valour, I'm sure.

Thanks for being a keen and close reader, Vin! It's the first time I'm documenting a trip in such detail, and, I have to say, it's been cathartic when it needed to be.

THE FINAL DAYS Spoiler, or TLDR: things with Tao end on a sour note, but the silver lining in the cloud is that I meet someone else. My time in Pattaya turned out to be less active than I’d hoped, though maybe that’s not a bad thing for a vacation. Grand plans to visit the Truth temple and an elephant sanctuary, or maybe take in a Muay Thai match, do not work out; I even miss Jomtien and Walking Street. (The latter looked like a real circus from afar, not in a good way.) Did quite a bit of strolling up and down Pattaya Beach, though, which is a gorgeous thing to do at the golden hour. Also managed to get a little shopping done. The last couple of days were lazy ones. On Sunday, I sleep in. Staggered up at 9.30 a.m. to make it for the last stretch of the breakfast buffet, and faffed around a little – to use a friend’s preferred way of describing what one does when one does absolutely nothing productive – then returned to bed. Later in the aft, I decide I’ll try to get lucky again on Grindr with an in-call massage. I stumble onto Ken, a muscle boy who looks to be in his mid to late 30s. After a bit of back and forth and a number of repeated excuses, it becomes clear that he does not take clients in the day, for some reason or other. (He tells me he does massage work full-time, so it can’t be other work commitments. Maybe it’s a hangover.) In any case, he agrees to an 8.30 pm session at my hotel, then proceeds to show up 20 mins *ahead* of time. He’s not quite as muscled as in his pics and videos, but seems as if he still has some goods to show, so I decide to keep the session. In my room, after he takes his clothes off, I like what I see. Plus he’s wearing a red g-string, and there’s nothing I like better than skimpy undies on a built guy. The massage is decent – not great – but as least he didn’t rush through it to get to the finish. All good, in my book. I have a date with Tao, from the previous night at Dream Boys. Of course, when I show up at 10.30 p.m., he’s not around. “He no come”, the puzzled mama, Nonni, tells me. I’m disappointed and annoyed, but figure that this is boy bar culture – promises and punctuality are not prized goods. In any case, there’s the show at X-Boys across the street, and Nonni insists on coming with me and having me buy her a drink. I rather enjoy her good nature and love of fun, so it’s a green light. The show today is a diluted version of Saturday’s performance, and the crowd is also noticeably sparser. I end up ordering a bottle of Thai whiskey – Sansom, one of the cheapest on the menu – so naturally our table becomes the centre of the action. Nonni departs periodically for DB, and after an hour or so, as the performance is winding down and I’m wondering if I want to off one of the cuter faces on stage, lo and behold, Tao shows up, clad in his civvies. Clearly Nonni had worked her magic (or used her whip). I’m well, buoyantly pleased, to put it mildly. We return to DB, where the party continues. I buy another bottle of Sansom, and a good time is had by all. A group of us head out for supper at the braised duck eatery next door, and by the time Tao and I stumble back to my hotel I’m good and soused. Strangely, Tao turns out to *actually* be straight, or at least closer to the heterosexual end of the spectrum. He asks to watch some straight porn to get off, but is nonetheless very willing to cuddle and be affectionate. He also gifts me a little statuette of a monk as a souvenir, to which he wai-s when he takes his leave of it. It is one of the most personal presents I’ve received. My last full day in Pats is spent on a lousy hangover. Gone are the days when a night of binge-drinking will do little to me .. It’s another day of naps and faffing around, and then I unfortunately have to take a work meeting in the mid-aft. On my daily pre-dinner stroll along Beach Rd. I stumble onto the Fat Coco Seafood Club at the ship-shaped A1 Royal Cruise Hotel. The décor is tiki-tiki meets Miami Beach – lots of thatch and rattan and neon signage – and a real f**king hoot. I like the vibes enormously, so decide to splurge and order a crab omelette and a large plate of river prawns steamed with soy sauce and garlic. The omelette is a little too greasy for my taste, but the prawns are dee-lee-cious, and come with a fabulous green chili and lime dip. It’s hard to go wrong with seafood when it’s fresh and simply prepared. After dinner, Tao messages to ask if I want to spend some time with him later, when he’s at the bar. I’m thrilled, of course. I’m thinking that, yes, we can take it easy and maybe take a stroll on the beach (his suggestion), but, as most such narratives go, the protagonist is clearly being set up for a letdown. Tao proves to be a no-show, unsurprisingly. I sit at DB for 40 minutes that evening, chatting with Nonni and her fellow mama-san. When he eventually texts to say that “I busy”, but that he needs money, my patience has been quite abraded. I take off to X-Boys to watch the show – for the third night in a row – but am distracted by the constant messaging with Tao as he asks if I’m angry, if I can transfer some money to him, to say that he’s struggling and can he come to my room later (at 4 am!) etc. Nonni senses that I won’t be good company this evening, and seems a little uncomfortable. As I sit at the bar and think about the Buddhist notion of karma, I wonder where my interpersonal karmic balance with Tao now lies: in my favour (because he’s being such a user), or in his (his seemingly sincere gesture of a gift last night). I decide that his little statuette deserves, if nothing else, some cash at least, so I leave some with Nonni. I hope it’s of use to Tao, and that whatever issues he’s facing get sorted out. His unreliability with clients can’t possibly endear him to employers, and his prospects in this business may not be bright - I wonder if we’ll get to meet again, whether in this context or another altogether. As the show winds down, I spot a cute face from previous nights: a tall-ish guy in his late twenties perhaps, with full lips and floppy bangs. He’s gangly and slightly awkward as a performer, but that just adds to the charm. I take him – X-Boys’ off fee is 800 baht, higher than most – and head off back to the hotel, where, once again, it turns out that my gaydar is completely dysfunctional. Art (Utt?), despite the typical boy next door vibes, proves to be quite partial to male charms, and, in fact, within 20 minutes of being back in my room, we’re both done. That he rather enjoys my company is attested to by the fact that he hangs around afterward, and with the help of Google translate and his smattering of English, we manage to have a decently informative conversation, peppered with lots of kissing. It’s one of the sweetest encounters I’ve had on this trip, or in a long while, in fact. He comes from a rice-farming family in Isaan, and the shockingly calloused texture of his palms prompted my question about his background in the first place – he’s not the smoothest of the lot, as that upbringing suggests, but that just adds to the charm. When it’s time for him to leave, he tells me quite honestly that he’s hungry and off for supper, and that it’s his favourite chicken noodles he wants. Or, as he says it, with a rub of his washboard flat tummy, “chee-KEN noodles”. I’m just bowled over – by a boy mispronouncing chicken. My dotage has arrived. The next day, I send him 5 messages on Line, asking him to keep in touch. I leave for the airport in a bit, so am taking the little bit of free time I have to wrap up my report for you good folks. Wishing those who have plans in Thailand a productive time! (Looking at you, @jason1975.) May my little guy watch over us all in his meditative contemplation.

Have fun!

I'm torn on this one. Tipping struck me as being an unproductive, archaic system when I first moved to the U.S. - my immediate question was, how thin are profit margins in the F&B industry that it can't afford to pay wait staff a living wage? - then it dawned on me that there's *some* logic to it. Servers are incentivized to earn their tip, i.e. be efficient and courteous. I'll confess that I have used it to my advantage once or twice: in an encounter with a particularly supercilious waitress in a Manhattan restaurant, I wrote "0.00" into the tip field, circled it, and scribbled a note saying "Does this suggest something?" Where I live, a "service charge" obviates the need for tipping, which is both good and bad. Pro: the system is perfectly clear; there's little room for misunderstanding or argument. Con: service staff aren't encouraged to try a little harder. One thing that always bugged me about both methods (the service charge, like a tip, is calculated on the size of the bill, numerically speaking): how much a table spends isn't always commensurate with how much work is involved in waiting on it. A family of four ordering pasta plates might spend less than a couple dining on lobster, but require a lot more attention and effort.

DAY 5 The frustrations of the previous day forgotten, I'm starting to enjoy being by the beach in Pattaya. The vibe is far, far different from Bangkok's, I have to say. The sight of a farang - typically in his 50s and up - sitting by himself at a bar in the middle of the day, staring rather blankly out into the street, is surprising in its ubiquity. Meanwhile, the locals almost seem to treat tourists who cross their path with an indifference that sometimes crosses over into badly concealed exasperation, as I found out when I asked for a grocery bag at the supermarket. (The sustainability movement hasn’t missed Thailand, so bags have to purchased at certain large retailers – Big C in this case.) I decide that I want a massage today, but as it turns out, the big guy up there had other ideas. I was in the Boyztown vicinity, and remember a fellow forum-er (Christian?) posting about a place called Relax Massage that boasts rather fetching lads. I stroll past the joint, but perhaps it’s too early in the day – this was slightly before 2 p.m. – and the few masseurs who were present did nothing for me. I ended up taking a rather pleasant jaunt back to my hotel along the beachfront instead, which actually wasn’t a bad substitute for the missed massage. I try my luck on Grindr later in the afternoon for an in-call masseur, and of course make the mistake of not asking for a video chat first. The boy shows up, and the discrepancy between the person in the profile and the boy in the flesh is just too wide for me to ignore. (He had photoshopped his acne issues out of the pictures, and there *were* issues.) I politely declined the session, and gave him 200 baht for his troubles. I wonder if it was too generous, but he did get all dressed up in a button-down shirt and slacks. I choose to be charitable about the misleading photos, since it seems to be common practice hereabouts – he was likely just doing what he needed to, to conduct business. Lesson learnt. As consolation, I buy myself a couple of cocktails at the Hilton’s rooftop bar. The view over the sea at sunset is quite sublime, though – IMHO – the curving stretch of Beach Rd. glittering in the gloom of dusk is by far the more attractive view. Spent an hour and a half there, staring out at the city lights with a sea breeze in my face. Definitely a highlight of the trip so far. I head off to Sunee later in the night – which did not prove an auspicious beginning, unfortunately! Nice Boys was first, but its crowd is a *little* too rough around the edges for me. There are maybe 8 boys hanging around in their undies, with nary a customer in sight. I decide that I would rather not stay, and take off to Winner. This was around 10 p.m., but all I saw were two patrons seated outside. I’m assuming that the boys are all indoors with their patrons, but that was an assumption indeed. Inside, there’s no one on stage, but two small clusters of boys seated around, who can barely be bothered to get up. That’s it for me. I decide that Sunee is not happening tonight, and set off at a brisk stroll for Boyztown. First stop: Classic Boys, which I skipped last night. There is a clutch of boys in their undies, but no one catches my eye. I head off to Toy Boys, where there is a larger selection – 16 tonight, the papa tells me ruefully, when at their busiest there are something like 30 – but it’s pretty much the same line-up from last night. I buy a beer, then head to Dream Boys, where I chat a little with Arm and the mama. (@floridarob, you are completely right. Arm’s enthusiasm with a john dips significantly after the first encounter.) Nothing much is happening there, so I swing into X-Boys to take in the show, which was a surprisingly fun time! It was the right amount of farce for me, with certain acts an improbable mix of the erotic and the completely ludicrous – the standout here being the one where boys do pull-ups with buckets of paint (? – I think) tied to their erections. And then there’s the act where they play miniature golf with their er, flesh putters … The difference between bars that boast shows, and those without, is stark. Like BBB last night, XB is packed out this evening. There are a couple of lookers in their roster, but those guys get called to other tables pretty quickly, so I head back to Dream. I’m very, very keen on a boy named Dao, who apparently has been at the bar less than a week, but he seems shy, with limited English skills. For some reason, he’s reluctant to be offed this evening. My initial guess is that he’s none too fond of me, but he communicates through the mama that he’s free the following night, and even asks me before I leave what time I’m dropping in tomorrow for him, so perhaps I’m not a complete ogre. Mama recommends another boy, Boy. Yes, that is indeed his real name.. Boy has a great smile, so I’m won over. “Straight, but can smoke”, I’m told. We go out for supper at the all-night Thai-Chinese place next door, where one can get braised duck at 1.30 am in the morning!! Praise be to the gods. Boy hails from a town in the south of Laos, and has been working in Pattaya for about a year, or slightly less than. Back at the hotel, the purported straightness of these boys is once again, I find, belied by their reaction to another male body in bed. After he leaves, I sit on the balcony and have a puff and listen to one of my favourite tunes, Carole King's "It's Too Late", and think about ex-lovers, and good times and bad. Tonight, I’m off to see Dao. Wish me luck, folks.

Well, I guess we have a winner (or a Nice). If both @vinapu and @forrestreid are saying aye, Sunee it is.

Good to know - he did mention heading back to the bar to get a drink after we were done.

Yes, indeed, that seems like a plausible explanation for the little episode I witnessed last night! - different cultural approaches to sex work and its finer details, lol ..