macaroni21

Too many bars in Thailand rely on an old (gatoey-heavy) formula for entertainment. They also need to rethink the "showtime" model, trying to pull the crowd in at a specific time to watch a tired third-rate "show". Especially for a small bar like The One (Tawan) with a stage no bigger than a single-bed, trying to do a "show" is a challenge. Nor is there any point trying to pull in a "crowd" when there aren't enough seats for a crowd. A rapid turnover of customers/seats all through the evening is better revenue than a crowd at a single time. It is possible to entertain customers with fairly frequent acts throughout the entire evening, but management needs to come up with fresh ideas that do not need much space. Some suggestions I have would be: 1. Every drinks order also gets a lucky draw ticket. When ten or twelve tickets have been issued, a gogo boy comes onto stage dressed in two shirts (one an undershirt), jeans/trousers, two underpants and a condom. Six lucky draw numbers are called in succession. Each lucky customer goes on stage, gets a kiss and a hug from the gogoboy and gets to remove one item of clothing. The sixth lucky guy gets to remove the condom! Then wait for ten or twelve other customers to come in buy a drink and a new round follows. 2. Chair dance. Gogoboy gets onto stage, invites 2 or 3 customers in sequence onto a chair gives each a one-minute personal dance. 3. Juggling act. Maybe in the nude? Customers watch the balls 🤪 4. Bronco ride. Customer invited to ride pillion with a gogoboy on a bronco horse. Customers clutches gogo boy tightly for dear life for 60 seconds. 5. There are some plastic balls that stick when thrown at object. For 100 baht, customers get balls. Throw at underwear'ed gogo boy on stage. Three hits on his underwear from, say, 2 metres away (Strike!) and the underwear is lost. Gogoboy then gives a personal dance to the winning thrower, jiggling his assets in the latter's face. 6. As in midpoint of this video, gogoboy gets hot and sweaty doing a dance in front of a customer in the sitting area (not on stage). Customer gets a cloth to wipe off sweat. Plus many more ideas I am sure members of this board can come up with. All that's needed is for management to be open to new ideas.

I can see that @reader has answered your question, but in case it's of help to anyone else, there's an updated map of the area, with nine massage shops shown, at https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2024/06/05/map-of-saphan-khwai-and-sutthisan-winitchai-area-may-2024/

I never knew that! And so many have opened bars despite this? Out of idle curiosity, do you know if the Sunnee bars had/have liquor licences?

I have always stayed in District 1 and didn't think it to be a problem. In fact that's where the tourist- friendly cafes and restaurants are. Outside of it, you may find it difficult to even get an English-language menu. I have been into District 10 a few times and I agree there are a number of massage parlours there. But I wouldn't want to stay there. It's an ugly part of Saigon (roads with no pavements, repair shops for bicycles and home appliances, etc) with few allowances for foreigners. If I need to go there, I get a Grab car in and a Grab car out.

Based on what you described as the the activities for your February visit and what you seem to be looking forward to, then I think you are right in deciding on two shorter visits of about 10 days, within a year. The sights are seldom as much a wow thing the second time compared to the first. In any case, there aren't enough sights (not in Bangkok, anyway) to fill three and a half weeks. There's an endless supply of sex, but my experience is that desire will peter out after a week or so. The thrill wears out, it becomes a routine and soon enough, a boring one. And yes, you should try the massage offerings. But let me give you a bit of advice here when venturing into this area: There are roughly three kinds of massage parlours and it is hard to tell them apart from appearances. 1. Places that offer real massage and no sex (at most, if you are lucky, a handjob) 2. Places where the management pretends it is a real massage place, but most of the boys don't know the techniques, and are more interested in selling sex for big tips. 3. Places that have "massage" or "spa" in their name but are basically brothels. You may get a simple, reasonably satisfying massage or the boy merely goes through the motions (or sometimes don't have a clue how to perform a massage) and you need to think of the "massage" more as foreplay. Depending on which brothel you're patronising, the expected tip can vary tremendously. To make matters even more confusing, there are no hard and fast boundaries between one type and another. There are places kind of in-between. However, I find it easier to think in terms of these three types and classify the various places accordingly in my mind. Why? Because the business transaction operates somewhat differently depending on whether it is 1, 2 or 3, particularly the tip (or what I call the service fee). Closer to November when you are ready to dip your toe into Thailand's gay "massage" business, maybe you can ask for more information about how to navigate ths confusing sector. By the way, are you heading to Hanoi or Ho Chi MInh City in August?

There's no better or worse; a lot depends on what you're wanting from a visit. While you have explained your leave situation, it might help if you also said something about what you found fantastic from your February 2024 visit. Were you mostly enjoying the clubbing scene like lots of younger gay travellers? The commercial sex opportunities? The cruising saunas? Or were you going around the historical sites, the shopping malls, and soaking in the different culture, cuisine, traffic gridlock or air pollution (OK, maybe not the last two 🤪)? Are you hoping to get out of Bangkok to visit other parts of Thailand or neighbouring countries? There are some on this board who stay 3 to 6 months at a stretch and love it. Others choose more frequent but shorter stays - and also love it. A way to figure out what *may* work better for you may be to see if your interests align more with the long-stay fellas or the short-stay fellas. Personally, while I have done stays of several weeks, they always involved travelling to other parts of Thailand or a hop over to Laos or Cambodia. I can't imagine staying more than a week or 10 days in just Bangkok. So, I am a short-stay kind of guy, but I also have an advantage - work takes me to Southeast Asia regularly, and from wherever I am on one of these trips, it's a short hop to Bangkok.

Hmmmm... another bar in the roaring centre of gay nightlife where the average number of patrons per bar is 1.4.

I don't think reader has missed much by not having yet visited Jey Spa. Over several visits over the years, I have yet to have to a memorable encounter except perhaps the very first or second time I was there (easily >10 years ago). The guys are OK, the services OK, but I have yet to see twice as much value as the "more pedestrian places", considering that Jey Spa is setting its price level at twice those places. But I can see how those punters who set great store by how the body looks to the eye would rate Jey Spa well, whereas my experience has been that looks do not indicate the quality of service you get. I do understand though that if the partner does not look a certain way, they don't even feel any arousal, so they'd rate Jey Spa differently from me. I think I have mentioned it before, but my theory is that some of us are broad-spectrum players, others are narrow-spectrum players, needing a specific type.

My laughter of the day.

Me too.

@floridarob Thank you. It's probably the decision of the art director to pose them in similar ways, but the end result is they look rather like clones. But don't get me wrong. They're do-able clones.

I have seen a few of this duo's videos about other places and indeed they tend to be too "respectable". They're also too positive. Praises, praises everywhere -- their videos sound like oversell advertorials. And yes, there are those distractions. Not just their teeth (as mentioned) abut also the way they pronounce some words. I just can't get used to their pronouncing 'delicious' as DEE- lishuhs.

There simply isn't enough attraction in Thailand to make me want to stay 60 days. But if it also applies to the working boys from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, etc, then it reduces the number of visa runs they make by half, which may then draw a few more of them into the business-that-we-all-know-about. That would be the best news.

Yes, you are right. The local market is also a wide price spectrum, at the upper end of which we call the "Hi-So" market. Clients there give 10,000-baht garlands to gogo boys and pay eye-watering prices for 60- or 90-minutes of fun.

The opening post was originally in the Gay Thailand Forum. The thread was moved to the Philippines Forum after we realised that Green Apple Boys was based in that country. As for the nice array of guys, I haven't seen any array since I do not have twitter. Should I find some other way to see their pictures?

By chance I came across this news story about three security guards assaulting customers at a straight bar in Pattaya Soi 6 on May 27, 2024. There is a video of almost the entire incident at https://www.reddit.com/r/ThailandTourism/comments/1d1auy5/full_merged_video_of_the_soi_6_incident_seems/https://www.reddit.com/r/ThailandTourism/comments/1d1auy5/full_merged_video_of_the_soi_6_incident_seems/ While the customers seemed to have started a bit of pushing, the guards' reaction seem totally disporportionate and I hope the police will see it that way too. What is interesting is that the guards weren't employees of the bar in question but were called in from somewhere else.

I think you mean if the boys at Saphan Khwai are only expecting... (not the shops). In addition to @reader's first point about the boys not having to spend the whole day waiting around, the shops in Saphan Khwai are largely aimed at the local market, so the boys working there adjust their expectations accordingly. I also have the feeling, based on my visits and attempts to book that the boys in Saphan Khwai get more business (two clients a day?) than the boys in Silom 6. @reader's second point is also germane. The Saphan Khwai shops position themselves more as knocking shops / brothels, and make clear a minimum tip that is for sex. The local market by and large understands what the business is about. The Silom 6 shops still largely pretend to be massage shops. They do not set minimum tips commensurate with sexual services, leaving the boys to negotiate their own tips and if the boys don't do that, there is a risk of undertipping by clueless foreigners. So, if the boys are going to negotiate, they might as well aim high.

This video is six years old, but it does show the quality of Fake Club's productions. The place certainly deserves all the success it gets.

@Matthew285 hits the nail on the head. Gay visitors to Thailand are spread out over a spectrum. At one end would be those who have been regular visitors for years, even decades. So naturally, their point of reference would be the prices that used to be. Moreover, by now they are likely to be older and retired and on fixed incomes, so they will notice how prices have moved. At the other end of the spectrum are newer and generally younger visitors to Thailand (Thank heavens for them, otherwise the scene would be well and truly dead). Their point of reference would be prices in their home countries. My guess is that the ratio between prices in Thailand and prices the West have not budged very much, though in dollar terms, both prices have moved up. So, the new generation of visitors to Thailand are as delighted with the happy discounts they see today in a similar way as the previous generation saw (and were delighted) back then.

Help, I am suffering from cognitive dissonance. 1. What are "non-sponsored hotel bookings"? The passage seems to imply that gay Thais' hotel bookings are "non-sponsored" and foreigners' hotel bookings are "sponsored". Sponsored by whom? I'd like to know. What sponsorships have I been missing out on all these years? 2. What "huge commercial investment" is there? Most entertainment venues in Boyztown and Jomtien Complex run on string and shoe polish. Some not even on that - and close down as a result. 3. How many gay Thais have we seen in the bars of Boyztown and Jomtien Complex? I tried reading the full article at Pattaya Mail (https://www.pattayamail.com/latestnews/news/pattayas-gay-celebrations-have-huge-commercial-investment-461331) but wasn't any wiser.

I'm not a subscriber to twitter or whatever Elon Musk wants to call it nowadays, but a quick websearch turned up a a twitter listing ( @greenappleboys. 09165573269) with a Filipino phone number. Then there's a search result for saying "videos related to Green Apple Boy on TikTok", (https://www.tiktok.com/@madzlatest/video/7135073372731477274) which takes you to Sunkissed Spa in Pasay, Manila. Separately, there is a Facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064043646772) which refers to a place in San Pedro, a town on the outskirts of Manila. This Facebook page has not been updated since January 2021. Did you think Green Apple Boys is/was in Bangkok? Because you posted this in the Gay Thailand Forum. There is a Green Apple Spa - all girls, by the looks of it - in the Ratchaprarop area and a Green Apple Hostel in Khao San Road.

It's not just the Thais, I see a lot of gay tourists from China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, etc in Bangkok's shopping malls too. They tend to be the younger set though. As for the commercialisation of Pride Month, which is really what the opening story is about, if you know Thailand, it's going to be gatoey, gatoey, gatoey.

You would too if an ATM is approaching your front door 😛

Threesome? Ooh, kinky,

I had an unusual itinerary where I flew Air Asia to Bangkok from Kuala Lumpur. Air Asia uses Don Muang airport. I seldom have reason to go through Don Muang - must have been at least 10 - 12 years since I last did, coming in from Chiang Mai. At that time, there was no easy rail connection to get downtown from Don Muang. But now there is the Red Line connecting the airport to the spanking new Krungthep Apiwat central rail hub. I made a careful note of how I got from Don Muang to Sukhumvit-Asok (where my hotel was) by rail. Possibly this may be useful information for others. It took me 1 hr 15 minutes between exiting the Customs gate after landing and reaching Sukhumvit MRT station (Blue line). The same blue MRT line continues to Silom and Samyan MRT station. Just add a few minutes more. The first step is to get from the International terminal of Don Muang airport to Don Muang train station (run by the State Railway of Thailand SRT). It's a bit of a walk (15 minutes), but nearly all in airconditioned comfort. I had to go southwards from Terminal 1 (International) via the full length of Terminal 2 (domestic) till I reached the south end of Terminal 2. Then there is a bridge over the highway; the bridge connects to Don Muang train station. For an overview, here is a sketch map: First, walk to the south end of Terminal 1. There, near a money changer and a 7-eleven store, you'll see a sign saying "SRT Red Line". The route takes you past nice toilets. A good spot to get a leak before the long trip downtown. Every now and then, there's a sign, assuring you that you're going in the right direction. Then you enter Terminal 2 Keep walking, Look carefully, and there are signs indicating "Red Line". Finally, at the southernmost end of Terminal 2, it said to go up an escalator. At the top of the escalator, more convenience. There's a Magic Food Court. Finally, you turn right and get to a pedestrian bridge that crosses the highway. In fact, you can already see the elevated train station at the upper right corner of the window. At Don Muang train station, tickets to Krungthep Apiwat station (20 baht) can be bought either from machines or a manned counter. I had to struggle a bit with the machines. They just wouldn't accept my 20-baht notes (tried several times). I had to insert a 100-baht note, but then it gave me eight 10-baht coins in change. This is the platform level of Don Muang train station. Take care that you're on the right platform for the train going to Krungthep Apiwat. The station is not the final stop for the trains; they run north to Rangsit as well as south to Krungthep Apiwat and beyond. Take the south-bound. Inside of a carriage. Lots of room for luggage. I don't know if it can get crowded at other times, though. There seems to be a train every 15 minutes or so. On reaching Krungthep Apiwat after only 15-16 minutes, you can't miss the signs for the MRT blue line. You will need to exit the SRT fare gate, go through an underground tunnel to get to Bang Sue MRT station. Including buying an MRT ticket at Bang Sue, it took me about 8 minutes' walking. (the fare to Sukhumvit station was 41 baht). Then take care again to board at the correct platform. That they have mounted a big sign suggests that many people make mistakes. The blue line took 23 minutes to get from Bang Sue to Sukhumvit station. Total time = 1 hour, 15 minutes. Total cost = 20 baht + 41 baht = 61 baht. Precisely because my hotel was in the Sukhumvit area, notorious for choked traffic, I was glad I didn't have to rely on taxis. Taxis might also have cost me 7 - 8 times more, and I don't know how much in tolls might be involved. Hmmm... two pictures seem to be repeated at the bottom of the post. don't know how to remove them without screwing up everything else. Please ignore. the last two pics.