macaroni21

You're surely more familiar than I am, but what I've heard from my Singapore and Malaysian friends is that the gay bars and clubs in Taipei are very happening places, though these reports might be skewed because they tend to go there during Taipei Pride. But if they are correct, then it would be hard to imagine that the Taiwanese would only be interested in massage places when visiting Bangkok. Why would a Taiwanese make a video for a Singaporean audience? If you're suggesting that the video was made by a Singaporean, then there are 2 clues against it. The gay Singaporeans of bar-and-clubbing age with the skills to make a video and the wherewithal to travel (actually, most Singaporeans have that wherewithal) would speak English as their first language. Many can speak Chinese, but if they're going to make a video, they're not going to do it in their second language. Also, Singapore uses simplified Chinese, not traditional script (not so sure about Malaysia).

Haha 🤣 Maybe he's still on the bus, and without phone signal, can't tell us.

Just found a very recent video to illustrate what we may be talking about: I can see how impactful a video like this can have in directing newbie tourists to specific places, or in channelling those who want to go where the crowd goes. I think it goes a long way to explaining the long queues at some of these places' doors, and the surge during the annual White Party. The subtitles are in traditional Chinese, so this is probably a Taiwanese vlogger. Also, while I'm not even a Chinese speaker, let alone any expert on the language, the accent sounds very different from what I hear when in China, so again, I think it is Taiwanese. I know this topic isn't of any interest to most members of this board, and in fact it is off-script to the forum topic which is really about HK, China and Taiwan (apologies!), but for those like me who wonder how gay and erotic businesses should market themselves within a niche (not just to the Chinese market), this is instructive.

Thanks, @10tazione... This indicates what bars and massage businesses hoping to draw Chinese traffic need to do. They have to work with selected Chinese visitors who can act as influencers. E.g. offer a discount to anyone who can demonstrate a biggish following on their social media. Better yet, have pre-produced video snippets of their shows or massage boys in action (always with their shop name in the background) and say, "hey, would you like to incorporate these few seconds of video into your social media story? it's free to use." If done well, these video snippets should be eye-catching. I know, reputable journalism has a gold standard where reviewers must not accept any benefit from the business being reviewed, but that's for mainstream journalists; influencers and wannabe-influencers are not above enjoying discounts, I can tell you that. Now why does this sound familiar? Oh, isn't that what ShamelessMack tries to do too? Haha. But, to be clear, ShamelessMack does not accept discounts or freebies in return for reviews. He does not even identify himself to any business, so no business knows to offer such deals -- to avoid precisely such as situation. ShamelessMack has no pretensions about bveing an influencer; well past the age group, and anyway, the readership is laughably small!

I did the bus thing many years ago, but what recall about it was that there was no phone signal almost the length of the route (6 hours, if I recall correctly). I am intrigued that you're posting this "on the bus"... Have things improved?

Looking forward to your report. I think you also mentioned in an earlier post that you'll try to find out how the Taiwanese (or other Chinese speakers) know about the bars and other places in Thailand and which platform they use to chat/share. I'd be most interested to know too, as I have long been intrigued why Fresh Boy and Dream Boy get a consistent Chinese crowd but Hotmale and Moonlight are nearly bare on the same nights.

Thanks @Kiwi306 for your public service. I had to read your post twice because your opening paragraph seemed to suggest that it had opened for business ("ie the opening of the White Cat bar") and you were about to report on a visit. But in the end your likely conclusion was that it had not yet opened - is that right? Your dedication is appreciated. I believe you parked yourself at a nearby chicken rice stall for two and a half hours to be in the vicinity for regular checks. Why do you think Atlas was mismanaged? And since White Cat has the same owner (based purely on what I am reading here; I have no new information), are you then of a similar opinion as @khaolakguy?

Perhaps you're thinking of 76 Garage. I have not cared to visit, and anyway it was not in Jomtien, but Bangkok. I use the past tense because Google says "Permanently closed". See this post by @Jasper from September 2020: https://www.gayguides.com/topic/13101-sit-2-sis-restaurant-and-ent-club/#comment-145863 and a later one by @PeterRS from November 2023: https://www.gayguides.com/topic/40259-chinese-tourists-avoiding-thailand-bbc-report/#comment-366800

2019 is ancient history when it comes to the gay scene in Bangkok. Former member reader reported in this comment dated 6 Feb 2025 that the bar had been sold to a former manager and some investors. The only change they made was the jettisoning of the long red pants that the Moonlight owner imposed on the boys. It's really such a shame. IMHO, Hotmale does have some attractive boys but their marketing sucks. They have zero idea what marketing is. They're not even making an effort. I can't find any working Line account for them and their Facebook page's most recent post, if you can call it recent, dates from January 2025.

😳 you spent time with a content creator -- can I assume someone on OnlyFans or similar? -- doing the usual plus filming? Will you soon be world famous on OnlyFans (or whichever platform) too?

Monster is one of the sub-busnesses of Material Group (www.mate-real.com). Check out the other businesses, each of which is highly specialised. Monster is for those who go gaga over big appendages, never mind what body or face they are attached too. Non-Binary offers fem boy escorts exactly as the name implies. GMPD offers heavy bodies - not in any muscular way. Freestyle offers escorts who are prepared to travel to meet clients (at least that's how I am interpreting the information on the page). Men's Healing Place is for massage with only "close contact" or "hand massage", i.e. no hard sex. Boyish: I found this one a bit confusing. At first I thought it meant a slate of barely legal boys, but it seems to have mostly girls with short hair, plus a fair number of FTMs. (Wasn't there a discussion recently where a member said his 2026 resolution was to conquer FTMs, his last frontier? Bro -- hot foot it to Japan!) The real disappointment is the sub-business Dumbbell, supposedly specialising in muscular and athletic men, but scrolling through the pictures, they are mostly lean athletic, very few body builder types. Trust the Japanese to create such specific specialisations for different market niches. However, the same boy can be offered through different stores. For example, Daisuke belongs to Monster but is also advertised by Dumbbell. It's self-description at the bottom of the main page is refreshingly blunt: "The Materials Group One of the largest in Tokyo It is a group of prostitution stores." How many similar businesses in any other country would call itself a "prostitution store"!

Yet another Singapore sponsor? Good heavens, what's wrong with these sponsors??? Alternatively, I had better find one myself.

I have a write-up on Shamelessmack at https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2025/02/12/onnut-is-not-that-fafa-on-the-bts-sukhumvit-line/ The visit was about 13 months ago and Fafa was rather new then. I wrote that, located where they were, they'd need aggressive marketing to succeed. I'm glad they're doing that. As for quality of services, there's not much I can say since I have only made that one visit - hardly a representative sample! Do note the shop does not have ensuite showers, as my post makes clear.

Two other possible reasons for the sharp drop in Chinese visitors: a downturn in the Chinese economy the past few years since the pandemic, and bad reports from those who have gone to the Philippines previously (which I can totally understand). Having been to the Philippines a few times over the past 30 years, I think the traffic and transport situation has become impossible. In Manila, anytime you're on the road even in a Grabcar, it's gridlock all the way to 12 midnight. From the airport, just getting to your hotel is already a nigthmare. The city has no easy-to-understand public transport system except for a few metro lines that are decrepit, terribly crowded, and seldom go where you want to go. Hotels are overpriced. Food offerings are also mediocre. Whereas in many other Southeast Asian countries, there are plenty of cheap and midpriced places that serve tasty, good food, in the Philippines, the food quality is much poorer -- I think the local cultural expectations of what "food" should be are not demanding enough. Most important of all, for folks like us, Agreed. There are "massage" shops but again, the subpar standard of facilities, the often lackdaisical service quality, and the pain of getting through the traffic to reach the shops.... they're not worth the trouble. Indeed, there are nice places outside of Manila, but most of them are beach places. Unless you're a beach person, the Philippines doesn't have much to offer. As the video also says, you'd have to go back to Ninoy Aquino Airport (never something to look forward to) and catch a domestic flight to whichever domestic destination you want to go to. Or you could take an overnight ferry and risk drowning. Furthermore, the gay industry hardly exists outside Manila.

At first, I didn't want to open a new thread, preferring to post this video into an existing one about Silom Soi 2. A search however revealed that we hardly ever have threads about Soi 2. The few that I found were mostly from 3 to 8 years ago (didn't bother going deeper into history), and ultimately there wasn't any existing thread that I could comfortably fit this video into. The closest to a usable thread was this one Fire at DJ Station which is a relevant angle to any discussion about Soi 2. Anyway, this video is three months old, and in fact there is a brief shot of something saying "Golden Week" which likely means the first week of October, and which therefore suggests that many of the club patrons we see in the video could be from China or Taiwan. Does anybody here have any first-hand, on-the-ground reports of visits to this soi and its bars?

Can you be more specific? Are you making a distinction between the previous format when it had go-go boys on stage + shows? Do you mean to say the stage is now empty until showtime? Has the format of the shows also changed? It used to be B-Boys and big cock. Has it gone cabaret with drag queens?

I can write a long post about the value propositions (or lack thereof) of gogo bars in Thailand, and an even longer compare-and-contrast with the booming massage industry. However, whether a gogo bar still offers value despite rising prices will depend on an individual's wants and priorities. However, this statement does not end the discussion either, because as prices rise but the product offer remains the same, the remaining number of customers who still consider it value will decline; and at some point, the business or industry becomes unsustainable. The more specific issue arising from @spoon's incident, however, is, at heart, not even a price/value question. It is more accurately seen as a penalty charge which the bar wanted to impose for a customer choosing a lower-priced option, which hitherto, has long been a legitimate option. The bar was not even trying to trade. It wasn't saying, we're charging you more because we're giving you more value. It was trying to punish a customer for taking the lower-price option. Kind of like, if we booked an economy-class ticket rather than a business class one, the airline gets miffed that it is losing revenue and then suddenly says, oh, you have to pay a $XXXX surcharge if you're not flying business class.

It's been close to two years since I last stayed at Raya. The breakfast is good value in my opinion but as always, what's value for one is not value for another. My recollection is that it is essentially comprised of Asian dishes, more Chinese than any other kind of Asian. You didn't say if your friends are farang or any other nationality. I don't remember bacon, ham, sausages, cheese, yogurt or the kinds of things that westerners expect, though there was the ultra-processed food also known as "cereal" (unhealthy stuff, if you ask me). If your friends are OK with noodles and stir-fry dishes, then fine. If they're looking for a western or (God Forbid!) american pancakes, then they'll not be so happy. Even among Asians there can be problem if they're Muslim. I recall distinctly my recent stay in a 3-star Hanoi hotel which served quite a comprehensive spread for breakfast. There was a Muslim Malaysian couple who couldn't find anything to eat except bread and jam. Not even the scrambled eggs because the hotel added bacon bits to the eggs (it was delicious, by the way). Anything with meat they couldn't take (not just pork) because the animal had not been slaughtered with Muslim rites, and that kind of thing.

One thought occurred to me, on noticing that the wix website has a photo of a shop signboard. Maybe Tin Tin really does exist, but as a different shop (and competitor) further down the same Ratchada Soi 7. Someone then tries to snatch customers from Brother Massage by inserting a link to their own website into the Google Search result for Brother. Dastardly, but possible.

@zazzu Is Brother Massage a walk-in type of shop or do you have to book in advance via Line? I have their Line ID, but they don't seem to be sending photos the way other massage parlours do. I think the Line is only for enquiries, but you probably know more. @jimmie50 I wouldn't give much credence to websites. Owners and managers of lower-tier massage parlours are not known for their digital or branding skills. Within five minutes I noticed that - Brother's Facebook address (facebook.com/brothermassage) returns no content - the website link to Tin Tin only shows up on the panel beside a Google Search for Brother Massage. Could be someone added it by mistake, the way people drop pins all over Google Maps with no care for accuracy. - the address on the Google Search result is "544/3 Ratchadaphisek 7", but on the Tin Tin wix website, it is different: "554/3 Ratchada Soi 7". Brother's Line message gives no address, only says Ratchada Soi 7. - if you click "See directions" from the wix website, you get taken to a place haflway around the world. - Brother's phone number is 061-091-2110's but the wix website gives 061-696-9392.

Thanks! This definitely interests me, I love Japanese gardens. The only thing about gardens is that one has to plan the trip for the right season. I'm sure I'll love the Kurashiki warehouse district too, these places have a unique charm. I don't know about the denim though... Not my style, though if there are old factories converted to museums, that will be interesting. I love learning about industrial processes.

You realize, I hope, that the original post was from 2013.

What's there in Okayama? Other than dead fish, that is. 😅 A quick websearch reveals a castle, an old quarter and some nearby ski resorts. Would you recommend a visit?

I don't know why I am even replying to this thread since I don't see myself doing "nights on the town" anymore. I don't do this in my home city -- never been much of a nightbird -- but in line with the OP's framing, I shall speak only of Bangkok. I'm not much of a drinker, and if possible I try to get dinner before 7pm. If I have to eat after that (e.g. if my massage session ends at 7:30 or 8pm), then it will be a small meal (e.g. Thai-portioned meal, at Foodland). Most of the time, the massage would have been satisfying and I would see no point in heading to the bars after that. If I do go to the bars, it's mainly to update myself about changes, which means I have no urge to visit a bar more than once in a trip. I won't be looking for an off, though I've been know to make exceptions. In any case, unlike some others on this board, I don't do long-time offs, so there's no need to go hunting in the bars, when a late afternoon or evening massage is far more pleasant than dealing with mamasans and constant pressure for tips by any number of staff in the bars. Prices are also getting ridiculous (see my recent reply to @spoon at https://www.gayguides.com/topic/78207-bangkok-trip-report-10-days-of-bliss/page/7/https://www.gayguides.com/topic/78207-bangkok-trip-report-10-days-of-bliss/page/7/