Trip report April / September 2025 – Da Nang & beyond – Research if an elderly gay retiree can live comfortably in Da Nang, Vietnam

[PeterRS]

8 hours ago, floridarob said:

Namazu did a brilliant in depth comparisons a while back, was when this was still boytoy or something like that, was before you joined... maybe someone has the patience to find it and link here?Hotels, food, massage, business class flights and occasionally good, passionate,  non mechanical sex>
What's your experience been like in Colombia, Brazil or even Mexico, DR, Panama? 

With time on my hands, I used the search engine to try and find that @numazu link. This may not be it, but at least it is a comparison with explanations. Since he visits South America a great deal, e seems to visit Thailand less freqently as his last post was in January. Inevitably his comparisons are between Thailand, South America and renting a guy in his hometown. This was written on his 16th trip to Thailand and is both self explanatory and quite fascinating.

BONUS TOPIC: The Monger Index - posted by Numazu on June 30 2018

I'm interrupting my posting this weekend because I am on travel.  When am I not on travel? I used to write these trip reports in between trips and at layovers. Now this are a little bit difficult. I will continue next week.

But to tide you over, I am cross-posting something I wrote in BoyToy during the end of my Brazil Trip Report. It is a metric I came up with called the Monger Index, or a way to compare the cost of hiring in different countries versus the boys you get back home. It’s a metric me and a buddy of mine came up with while super drunk at the Crowne Plaza Bangkok at 3 AM in the morning years ago. He asked me why I get all these prostitutes overseas. With the airfare and hotel rooms, that cost adds up. Wouldn’t it be just cheaper to hire prostitutes back home?

I told him he was crazy because (a) the prostitutes are expensive back home and (b) sex is more fun when on vacation anyway. But I disputed his thesis that it is cheaper to hire prostitutes back home. So I came up with an index that measures how much cheaper it is to get hot guys overseas than in the USA, accounting got airfare and lodging costs. This is the Monger index.

I apologize for the math. I am Asian after all.

Some assumptions:

(1)    Time Range: The index would not work in measuring one-offs. Of course ONE prostitute would be cheaper in the USA than ONE prostitute in Bangkok. A $250 an hour prostitute you hire for one hour to take home to your USA house is cheaper than a $50 gogo boy you get in a nice gogo bar if you add the $600 roundtrip airfare one needs to get to the sauna, plus the hotel cost.
It will only work if you hire by bulk, and have a longer time range. My assumption for this index example is one week, or 7 days. For example, if you get one guy every day in a week in the USA, that adds up to 7*$250 = $1750. Now we are talking bigger dollars. Have sex in bulk when overseas helps you recoup your cost.

(2)    Airfare: The index should include the airfare. For my purposes here, I use airfare coming from California, because that's where I live. So for example, a typical off-season RT air ticket to Sao Paulo, Brazil is $1000. For Bangkok, it’s $550. This is a fixed cost in the index.

(3)    Hotel: Of course you have to assume you are getting a hotel in the city you are mongering in. I assume my hotels will be typical AirBNB’s, with basic amenities in a decent and nearby neighborhood. Translation: not a dump but not fancy, and Uberable or walkable to the sauna and tourist-friendly services. For Sao Paulo I assume of the cost, the AirBNB me and the BF got in Bela Vista last December. It was a decent $50 a night. For 7 nights that adds up to $350. For Bangkok, a typical decent Silom Soi 3 AirBNB costs $45 a night.

(4)    Overnights: I put in the calculation the cost it takes for hiring a guy overnight. For California, a typical overnight with a hot but not “superstar porn star” hot is $1000. For Sao Paulo, Jonas’ example was 200 reals, but I count his initial 200 reals in the sauna as part of the overnight, so 200+200 = 400 reals, or $104. For Bangkok, its a bit tricky, but I assumed a high-end 3000 baht overnight, or $91.  I pay that because of all the sexual acrobatics I require all my boys. It is only fair.

So here are the gross calcs. For 7 days, if I hired a boy for one hour and another boy for overnight every day:

California Prostitute: Price for one hour times 7 + Price for an overnight times 7 = $250*7 + $1000*7 = $8750

Bangkok GoGo Boy: Airfare + 7 nights in AirBNB + Price for a garoto in the sauna times 7 + Price for a garoto overnight times 7 = $550 + $315 + $52*7 + $91*7 = $1866

Sao Paulo Garoto (Jonas): Airfare + 7 nights in AirBNB + Price for a garoto in the sauna times 7 + Price for a garoto overnight times 7 = $1000 + $350 + $52*7 + $104*7 = $2442

The index is calculated as the ratio of the 7-day cost of USA boys, divided by the total cost in that country.

7-day Monger Index for Sao Paulo = $8750/$2442 = 3.58

7-day Monger Index for Bangkok = $8750/$1866 = 4.70

Issues:

(1)    I do not count the Uber cost to get to the sauna or gogo bar, or the entrance fee for the sauna, or the cabina price, or the off fee, or the drink costs in a bar.

(2)    I do not account for food costs. Of course you have to eat whether in the USA or Brazil or Thailand. This may be a future improvement to be added.

(3)    The airfare is just from California, maybe it’s more or less where you are. Maybe my assumption of $550 for Bangkok is too much or too little. This is just what I see anecdotally.

So, with that, here are my Monger Indices for some 6 cities I’ve been to, ranked by the best to worst:

1.       Pattaya, Thailand: 5.54

2.       Bangkok, Thailand: 4.70

3.       Mexico City, Mexico: 4.53

4.       Bogota, Colombia: 3.77

5.       Sao Paulo, Brazil: 3.58

6.       Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 3.44

These are solely based on my experience. Your Monger Index may be different.

Some observations:

(1)    Thailand remains the most bang for your buck, because of the presence of cheap decent places to stay in and low cost to fly there from California.

(2)    Mexico is helped by the fact that it’s so close to California, therefore the airfare is cheap.

(3)    Brazil on the other hand, is dinged by how expensive the airfares are from California.

(4)    If I factor in food, Thailand may even get a higher index, and Brazil may get a lower index.

(5)    Grindr prices were only used in Bogota and Mexico, because I do not have experiences getting anyone there outside of Grindr. So your mileage may vary.

(6)    Quality of boys is impossible to measure. And it is subjective, so it can’t be put in the index. The index is solely a quantitative metric. For example, twinks may be better in Thailand. Adonises may be better in Brazil. Again, quality is subjective, and can’t be measured meaningfully.

Of course, in the end, your mileage may vary, and these indices are only meaningful to me. If you don’t like having sex with Asians, your Monger Index for Thailand is -1000000, for example.

Indeed, the whole thread is interesting as it gives responses from other members.

If this is not the comparison @floridarob was referring to, sincere apologies - although it is still an interesting read! @numazu is a prolific poster and his posts are always fascinating in their detail. Apologies also to @bkkmfj2648 for interrupting his excellent thread.

[bkkmfj2648]

Wow!!!

I love this post from @numazu.

Thanks @PeterRS for taking the time to enter into the catacombs of our gayguide forum to dig it out of the archives.

And I love this concept of a Monger index.

This concept fits in very well with my ongoing experiment to compare 3 retirement destinations with each other:

Cebu to Jomtien

Da Nang to Jomtien

Cebu to Da Nang 

So, maybe I need a modified Monger index

for retirement life, that in addition to the cost of offing the local guys, also includes cost of living elements (food, rent, massages, entertainment, transpoetation, etc.)

What could its name be?  

RRR index = Rainbow Road Retirement ??

[PeterRS]

37 minutes ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

What could its name be?  

RRR index = Rainbow Road Retirement ??

How about just a BONGER index - Barely Older Naughty Gentleman's Easy Retirement!!! LOL!

[bkkmfj2648]

13 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

BONGER index

I love it - then BONGER it shall be.

Plus it is a close cousin to its phonetically sounding BONER - which us old guys can still do -- although, sometimes with a little assistance from our friends:    or  

[bkkmfj2648]

Day 17 in Da Nang – 10 May 2025

Wake up feeling melancholy – as I have that feeling that after 3 years as a new retiree – things are not quite as I had hoped that they would be.  I try to shake myself out of this mood by looking on the bright side of things:

• I am not stuck back in the USA on my reduced pension (I retired early) in a high cost country like the USA, which would be to live a poor minimalistic lifestyle,
• I am living in South East Asia, which had been my dream since my first work travel mission to Dhaka and Bangkok, back in 2012,
• Even with a reduced pension, I am able to live quite comfortably – as long as I stay within the confines of Asia – as life back in the USA and Europe are very expensive, relatively speaking.

I post my 9 May trip report update – which meant to rehash everything that happened from yesterday.

Afterwards, it is already mid-afternoon and I head back to  - I am definitely a creature of habit.  But their bagel sandwiches are so good and the barista, a very cute Vietnamese guy and so my type, prepares a very tasty and creamy salt coffee. Today the lobby is calm so I could eat and enjoy my bagel in peace.

I head over to the beach for a nice walk on the promenade and there is this part of the beach walkway that is decorated in a VERY patriotic way:

Seeing this makes me reminiscent of my early childhood, when we still had to practice civil defense drills, where depending on the drill, we had to either put our heads down on our desks to protect ourselves from an imminent attack, as the air aid siren was screaming in the background, -OR- we had to run down into the basement of the school into the designated civil defense area (like a bunker) – which I was always fascinated with as there were these humungous barrels of protected water and big storage areas of powdered milk, which we were told could help us to survive 10 years down there.   I was a child in elementary school and I always found this to be crazy, as anything associated with the color red or any of the communist symbols  was to be considered as “bad” or of being as our “enemy” - as the propaganda was very strong in that period.

The irony is that now I find myself enjoying my retirement in a communist country = Vietnam and I love it.

 

 

What is amazing in most Asian seaside towns is the vast abundance of seafood on offer.

I grew up on Long Island, New York on the seaside, and we just did not have the variety of seafood that I find here in Asia.  Perhaps we had 15 to 25 types that were available to us, but here in Da Nang I see 50 types or more.  In many of the seafood restaurants, you enter into the giant aquarium area and you tell the waiter/waitress which seafood you want to eat by pointing to the specific aquarium and indicate which sea creature within the aquarium that you want to eat – it is all fascinating – as there are sea creatures that I have never seen in my entire life available for consumption.

After a long walk on the beach, I head back to the room for a mini-nap and I try to find some guys to hook-up with – but I was not successful, as they either disappeared during the chat session or after a few exchange of pictures they don’t want to go with an guy with a belly.  They are very anti-belly here in Da Nang and perhaps back in Pattaya / Jomtien the guys “fake” to tolerate our bellies – as Supertown is full of us elderly with bellies walking around.  What I find funny, is how some of the Vietnamese guys in the apps will state that he is fat or has a belly and in my mind he is still in the realm of fit or skinny – so they are hypersensitive to fatness.  It is very rare to see any overweight Vietnamese here.

After my nap I head back to  where I order the lamb enchiladas with a mango margarita.  It was perfect.

Later, I walk around the neighborhood and then head back to my condo and I chat with one of my Thai friends who is complaining that this low season is very bad and that in Pattaya everything has dried up.  I tell him that he and his Thai  friends need to push back on this current Thai government, as it is this current Thai government that has made Thailand appear to not be appealing, between the call center scams, tricking well known Chinese citizens into Myanmar, safety concerns with the escalating Southern Thailand insurgency, road/bus accidents, the forced deportation of the 40 Uyghurs back to China and the resulting multi-country backlash, the scandal surrounding the collapse of the SAO (State Audit Office) building during the earthquake, taxation of anyone residing in Thailand for more than 180 days who transfers funds into Thailand, etcetera.  But as usual, my Thai friend(s) always reply that they are helpless.  So I send him a photo of a proud moment from Thai history, when in 2008 the Thai citizenry had had enough with the then current Thai government, and they occupied the Suvarnabhumi airport and shut it down, which gained a ton of global exposure to the problems of Thailand.  I told him, with all of you remaining in passive mode while this current government continues to deteriorate all of your individual futures – you must rise up and complain – otherwise I don’t see a bright future for all of you.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/29/thai-court-acquits-dozens-who-shut-down-bangkok-airports-in-2008

I go to bed realizing that I did not make any headway, as this young generation of Thais is not as motivated to fix Thai problems as the proceeding generation of Thais from year 2008 were.  So sad.

 

End of day 17 in Da Nang – 10 May 2025

 

[PeterRS]

I hope you can snap out of that melancholy feeling quickly. Retirement should be a time when life not only becomes easier, it should actually become more interesting.

I'm a lot older than you but I certainly know the problems of tighter budgets. Coming from the UK, my pension (that sounds as though it might be a decent sum of money - it's actually little more than beer money, or in my case vodka money!) was frozen the moment I started taking it. I knew this would be the case and had been saving up what I believed would be a considerable sum to see me through retirement. Of course I failed to factor in the dot.com bubble, the 2003 SARS crisis, the 2008 financial meltdown and interest rates plunging to little more than 1% for 15 years or so when I had reckoned on 5%. But since I was running my own little company as all this financial mayhem was going on around me, I loved my work and was happy to continue beyond normal retirement age. 

Thereafter, I kind of just fell into another part time job - unpaid to start with but hopefully generating some income eventually. At the urging of friends, including one of many decades' standing who was both a newspaper critic and author, I started writing. At first it was one book. Then another on a similar subject followed. The problem with all books by unknown authors is actually getting work publlished. Publishers will not look at you, so you have to go through the dreaded literary agents. Checking the websites of the 200 or more in the UK, each one wants different formal Proposals that can each take up to 8 hours to write. But then having got two published, the third published last summer was a whole lot easier.

Having now finished a fourth, I am stuck for a good subject for the next. I do enjoy writing and do want to continue. It fills in a lot of time that otherwise might turn me into the lazy slob I always thought I'd become. Over a very drunken lunch last year, an old university friend very seriously suggested I should pen "The History of A Sex Tourist in Asia." That actually became incredibly tempting until I realised I'd have to change the names of so many people and places, partly to protect their identities and, as importantly, my own!

But do think about doing something once you have decided on where you will end up living - a part-time job via the internet, a hobby a . . . whatever. 

2 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

They are very anti-belly here in Da Nang and perhaps back in Pattaya / Jomtien the guys “fake” to tolerate our bellies – as Supertown is full of us elderly with bellies walking around.   

That surprises me, if only because you look far from fat in the photos you posted earlier. I reckon I have a few more kilos and the young man I met in Danang had absolutely no hang up about it at all! (I'm sending you a pm with a little more detail).

2 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

I tell him that he and his Thai  friends need to push back on this current Thai government, as it is this current Thai government that has made Thailand appear to not be appealing, between the call center scams, tricking well known Chinese citizens into Myanmar, safety concerns with the escalating Southern Thailand insurgency, road/bus accidents, the forced deportation of the 40 Uyghurs back to China and the resulting multi-country backlash, the scandal surrounding the collapse of the SAO (State Audit Office) building during the earthquake, taxation of anyone residing in Thailand for more than 180 days who transfers funds into Thailand, etcetera.  But as usual, my Thai friend(s) always reply that they are helpless.

Sadly this does not surprise me. We really should recall that the Thai people voted in the largest numbers in 2023 for change - change through the new party run by Pita Limjaroenrat. But the elites almost always get their way in Thailand. They were not going to put up with the sort of changes he wanted and manufactured a means both to ban him as an MP and then disband his party. It's not the first time that has happened and I am sure it will not be the last. Young people have no reason to push for change as long as they know they are up against both a brick wall and an iron fence they can never break through. Hopefully Khun Pita and the people around him will make sure he runs in the next election and he is this time so squeaky clean that there can be no grounds for banning him. Then change may come. But it's merely a hope. 

[vinapu]

8 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Young people have no reason to push for change as long as they know they are up against both a brick wall and an iron fence they can never break through. 

until Thailand finds own Lenin, Gandhi, Castro , Mandela or Walesa.

speaking about social dynamics word 'never' should never be used.

Sometimes winds of change take a lot of time to gather force, sometimes they just happen to show up almost overnight.

[floridarob]

17 hours ago, PeterRS said:

If this is not the comparison @floridarob was referring to, sincere apologies

I believe that's it....although I thought he had one with a excel or graph..... I knew someone would find it 😁

I first met Namazu in Thailand ... he'd never been to Colombia or Brazil. I explained some of the difference to him between the various countries and he's hardly been back to Thailand since 🤷‍♂️

I can't believe it's already  been 7 years since that post, wtf

I'm sure with the much weaker Real and the increased costs in Thailand, the numbers are a little dated, but it still gives a good idea of the differences... plus this reply on his post makes sense too:

 

Also you say a boy is about 2000 baht ($50). Not true if you use bars. You have off fee, you have at least two drinks to pay. Say in total 2000 + 500 + 500 (and then I use the cheapest bars) = 3000 baht for a boy, not 2000. But factor in that to find your boy for the night you maybe went to other bar first to talk to boy there first that is another few hundred bahts. So I wouldn't be surprised that scooting for a boy in bars brings the total to 4000 baht short time (unless the first boy you talk with in the first bar is always the one you choose).

 

So in my case it would still be profitable to go to Bangkok, but the index would be far lower than 5.54.

[PeterRS]

7 hours ago, vinapu said:

until Thailand finds own Lenin, Gandhi, Castro , Mandela or Walesa.

speaking about social dynamics word 'never' should never be used.

Sometimes winds of change take a lot of time to gather force, sometimes they just happen to show up almost overnight.

In principle I would agree with you. But the examples you cite refer to individuals in countries with hugely different conditions from Thailand. And in all, violence played a part. The Imperial system in Russia was a disaster for the vast majority of the people. Gandhi was fighting - peacefully - for independence for his people after centuries of foreign rule, although violence on a massive scale was the result. Castro similarly - granted Castro's Cuba can not have been a particularly pleasant place in large part a result of stringent US sanctions, but then pre-Castro Cuba was basically run by the mob and for again the vast majority it will have been a pretty gruesome existence - Mandela was fighting against a brutal enforced separation of the races, and Walesa was fighting against a politically and socially oppressive government.

I realise these were merely examples in your "never say never" position. But present day Thailand illustrates none of the above characteristics. It did some decades ago when there were several student riots, fighting in the streets and deaths. But Thailand now is a very different country. It is also for many of its citizens a wealthier country. Unlike the serfs, the native-born Africans who were forced to get up at 2:00 am in order to make an hours' long journey just to get subsistence work etc., most Thais are relatively speaking much more content with their life. Yes, they would like changes. Yes, they believe the elite and the military still have far too much say over their lives.

Change in some form will no doubt come to Thailand, although in my view it probably needs a major reform of the education system to see that become reality. But please remember I was not talking about Thais as a whole. I was talking about a specific section as mentioned by @bkkmfj2648 - barboys. Change has actually already occurred within this group. When I first came to Thailand at the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I came across no non-Thais who worked in the gogo and host bars etc. From reports here Thais are now in a considerable minority. And that's because of two reasons: a birthrate that has declined very substantially in a very short space of time, and work for young under-educated Thai boys now no longer being restricted to toiling in the paddy fields or in the village shop, with the result that bar work has become generally much less  attractive. In the bar trade, for those working in Jomtien, I maintain that life must indeed seem helpless with the arrival of the low season.

[bkkmfj2648]

Day 18 in Da Nang – 11 May 2025

 

Lazy morning start to the day.  Post yesterday’s trip report update.

Mid afternoon, again back to  for a nice lunch and a great salt coffee.  I hire a Grab car to go to  as I need to load up on some groceries that are only available in the bigger  supermarket.  I also take advantage of the presence of the  that allows me to withdraw 10,000,000 VND (around $385 USD) in one go – thus saving on bank fees.

Unpack the groceries back in my condo room and afterwards I start hunting for a massage.  I am chatting with 3 different guys, but 2 of the 3 guys response rate is slow as a turtle.  So, I go with the quicker guy from Heesay (formerly BLUED) – his profile is = KTV_masagess (Jack). Remember that the word “massage” is black listed in the Heesay system so everybody uses variations of the word in English or the Vietnamese word for massage = Mát xa.  Most of the apps now invoke annoying filters for “illegal” words – more than likely to make their lawyers happy – but us as the human species – we enjoy finding work arounds to get around inconveniences created by lawyers.  It is like a fun “cat and mouse” game.

We move our conversation from Heesay over to    where there are no “illegal” censored words where we are free to discuss things in an easier way.  I share my location via the Zalo app, we fix a price for a 90 minute meeting of 1,200,000 VND (around $46 USD). At 8pm I go downstairs to meet Jack in the lobby but there is a rain storm – and so he arrives at 8:10pm.  Usual routine, I ask if he wants something to drink from my fridge and he says no, as he came equipped with his own beverage. We go immediately to the designated massage room and we both get naked and I see that he is a meaty semi-muscular mature guy and he is not your typical skinny Vietnamese guy.  His massage is excellent, strong, with elements of muscle stretching.  When I turn over, then the fun starts – but he does it in a teasing way – to brush up on the balls and then move up to the nipples, then a few tugs on my cock and this teasing routine continues for a while – as I am caressing his firm manly body.  Then he gives me a blowjob and I reciprocate the favor.  He goes back to edging me and eventually I give way to the eventual end result.  He takes a shower and I gather his money and then he is gone.  Nice guy – not a man of many words – but a very good masseur.

I clean up the room and shower and then I chat for a while and Hung – the manager of the  massage shop, that I visited on Day 15 - Thursday 8 May, - sees me online in Heesay and tells me to come tonight to visit him in his shop.  I tell him that I already had a massage tonight and that I can come and visit him in the next days – as I want a massage from the guy who is featured in his FaceBook photos =

He replies to me – oh, he is not one of my staff – he is a customer.  I was so disappointed.  I tell him that he should not put his photo in his FaceBook page for marketing purposes.

https://www.facebook.com/people/Hero-massage-spa/61575063357842/

He tells me – sorry.  Then he proposes to me another guy who is one of his staff – and he is ok – but he does not make me horny like the guy in the above photo.  When I eventually return to his shop – I will ask him if there is anyway that I can hookup with that customer of his. 

Do I have a chance?   I may need to play that game =  

 

End of day 18 in Da Nang – 11 May 2025

[spoon]

2 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

oh, he is not one of my staff – he is a customer.  I was so disappointed

Me too. 😭

[floridarob]

4 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

his profile is = KTV_masagess

clever workaround 😆