Enchanted_Elixir

Offing boys from bars is a niche activity, and will be more difficult to sustain without a predictable supply of boys from neighbouring countries. Asian tourists, and locals, often prefer the massage experience, as evidenced by the large and highly segmented number of massage shops in Bangkok and the fierce competition between them. If the Chinese like a venue they will promote it on RedNote and they will often pose together with their favourite masseur.

You’re circling something real here, but I think the frame needs tightening. What you’re reading as “weird pricing” is less about Singha leaving money on the table, and more about how different shops in Bangkok deliberately position themselves within a very segmented market. Ssense is not trying to be everything to everyone. It sits in that middle lane, and quite intentionally so. Ssense caters to both a local Thai clientele and a steady foreign crowd. Younger Chinese book Singha or Knott and take photos with them, and they all end up as a review on RedNote. This composition matters. Local regulars anchor the business. They expect consistency, discretion, and predictable pricing. It is also gay-owned and operated, and you can feel that in how the place is run. There is a fairly strict sense of quality control, both in terms of who they hire and how services are structured. Supplementary services are not a free-for-all. Prices are set by the shop, and that removes the whole negotiation dynamic you see elsewhere. No haggling, no awkward calibration mid-session. You either accept the menu or you don’t. For many clients, that clarity is part of the appeal. No H services are provided officially by the shop. So yes, could Singha charge 2–3k in a different setting? Probably. But at Ssense, the pricing is not his to float. It follows a standardised band that aligns with similar shops in that category. It is set by the shop and therapists are not allowed to diverge. That’s the trade-off. Stability, volume, and a controlled environment over maximising individual upside per client. In terms of positioning, I wouldn’t call Ssense “upscale” if you’re comparing it to places like Titan or Prestige. Those lean harder into a curated, almost boutique experience, with pricing to match. But Ssense is noticeably fresher and better managed than older venues like Chaichana or Green. It feels current. Clean lines, younger roster, tighter operations. Where your comparison with History of Massage is useful is in highlighting the contrast in business models. History runs a much looser system. No mandated central tip level, and the guys can present options directly. That opens the door for higher earnings per session, but also introduces variability. The massage itself is often not the headline product there. Let’s be honest. You’re paying for physique, for presentation, for the aesthetic labour that goes into those gym-built bodies. It’s a different value proposition. Ssense, by contrast, sits closer to what places like The Signature Massage aim for. More structured. More service-led. Less transactional improvisation. Stepping back, Bangkok’s gay massage scene is highly stratified. You’ve got budget walk-in shops, mid-tier hybrids like Ssense, physique-driven venues like History, and then the more premium, almost spa-like environments. Each comes with its own pricing logic, client expectations, and internal rules. So the question isn’t really whether Singha could earn more elsewhere. It’s what ecosystem he prefers to operate in. Some guys optimise for margins. Others for consistency, volume, and a workplace they’re comfortable in. In that sense, the market is working exactly as designed. Pick the segment that suits you, and the pricing starts to make a lot more sense.

You can test already the travel function or simply the browse function in Grindr for the city of Khon Kaen.

I think the difference in pricing is sometimes overstated. If you disregard what the newbie tourist would pay. The difference in pricing reflects the market segment you’re operating in, as the opening poster was not clear about. You go out of CBD and you pay less, but you may sacrifice convenience and accessibility. Thais who go to zoo spa in Sukhumvit pay 3000 Baht in tip for a masseur with model like appearance and report the same low level of service and dissatisfaction. They go to Jey spa and pay the same and the reviews are glowing. There might be a price difference in regards to women clients: Here is an excerpt about straight men: «Among workers in various types of sex venues, men working in host bars claim to receive more female clients than gay men. The fact that they attract more female clients than their colleagues engaged in other types of male sex work makes them proud and bolsters their masculine, heterosexual identities. Some of them claim to provide services to women for free, or at a lower rate than they charge gay male clients.”» https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14672715.2023.2221679#d1e137

This thread is fascinating.

Have you been this pompous in all your 15 years on the forum?

You invited him in 🤷‍♂️

Quite so. It turns out even in the most transactional environments, not everything comes with a price list. A small mercy, perhaps.

Be careful or I might start to write you angry DMs 😉

That was subtle.

Why would the words of an ignorant 6 month member have any consequence for you?

The claim that you have met, spoken with, or even dined with ChristianPFC, and that there exists a discrepancy between his online persona and his real-life character, is not the decisive argument you present it as. It rests on a category error. What we encounter on this forum is not the private individual, but a deliberately constructed public persona. His blog, posts, and interactions here are curated outputs. They are authored, sustained, and projected into a public space. This public space is the relevant object of analysis. From this, two points follow. First, if there is indeed a discrepancy between the online persona and the private individual, then criticism directed at him here is necessarily aimed at the persona he has chosen to present. It does not purport to judge his private character. Appeals to “how he is in real life” therefore fail as a defence. They address a different subject altogether. Second, social context matters. Behaviour is not uniform across settings. You describe interactions among peers, in situations where there is no asymmetry of power or dependence. That tells us little. Character is more meaningfully assessed by how one engages with the vulnerable. Finally, even if we momentarily accept a Baudrillardian frame, where the distinction between the real and the hyperreal collapses, your argument weakens further rather than strengthens. If the online and offline selves are inseparable, then the digital persona is not a distortion but an extension of the real. It carries equal ontological weight. In that case, actions, tone, and positions expressed online are not dismissible as performance. They are constitutive of the person. So either the online persona is distinct, in which case it stands on its own and is open to critique without reference to private impressions, or it is inseparable from the “real” individual, in which case critique applies all the more directly. In neither case does your argument do the work you think it does.

Sure they do also review some very local shops too, but from what I read these are not worth the hassle (for me at least, but if you’re bored you might want to) of seeking out as they seem to be very out of the way from the BTS and MRT. They may not offer a level of service that is worth seeking out as long as Saphan Khwai area is as accessible as it is. Time to destination, accessibility and convenience are also factors to consider besides price 😉

I understand you, but you may be overthinking it. They tend to review shops which tend to be frequented by people on this forum such as Jey Spa and Phoenix. There are shops like BKK Signature that are mostly frequented by locals but that is due to geography, that it is outside of the main CBD, and not because there are subtle barriers for non-locals.

Why don’t you go and see for yourself and report back.