First Time in Bangkok - May 2026 Trip Report

[macaroni21]

@Shax The general rule in Thailand (and in many other countries) is that the more upscale a place, the more you must be careful to give face. That is to say, these upscale places want to maintain a clean public image, while somehow providing the commercially lucrative services and you must play along.

The above is easy enough to understand as a concept, I am sure, but I think where the difficulty lies, especially for Westerners (and I suspect Americans have the greatest difficulty with cross-cultural issues) is the question "what exactly does 'give face' mean in terms of the nuts and bolts of behaviour?"

It's not difficult to learn. Most Western expats pick up fairly quickly what Thais mean by giving face.

In the specific example of TCS Spa, you can tell that it is an upmarket place from the photos on their website. Straight away, you should pigeonhole it as one of those places where your interaction must be one that helps them preserve a public image of a clean proper massage shop. So, as a stranger -- and a customer is a stranger -- you never talk about sex or ask any question about sex with management. Doing so would put them on the spot that is the total opposite of giving face.

Yes, you select your masseur (they are so upscale, they even call them "therapists") at the time of booking. On arrival, the boy may even go through the pantomime of taking out a clipboard and a form and doing a questionnaire with you about which parts of your body needs more work or less, which parts have had previous injuries, etc. You have to play along with this theatre, even though, as @vinapu says, the actual massage standard in the hour to follow may be no more than "decorum".

Even in the privacy of the room, it is best (i.e. least likely to cause offence and loss of face) to let the boy initiate the first erotic move. Do not be the one to initiate discussion about extra services. Let him go through the motion of giving a proper massage first. The boy may initiate funtime through strategic touching, or may even pose a question like "Sir, how do you want to finish?"

Even though you're in the privacy of the room, you need to be subtle in replying, e.g. "Can you take off your shirt?", "have you done body to body before?"  To maintain face, every question should be very carefully phrased so that he can say no gracefully -- that's the art of giving face. Note: I said ask questions, not make requests. At each step, let him notch the conversation up and you follow. Even on the question of money, let him initiate a request. He may say "Can you increase your tip if I do this?"

As others have advised (and my personal experience too) hand job and body to body is about as far as most boys will go. If you want insertive work, choose a less upscale place, especially if you're the type that must have every service detail spelled out from the very start and want to have management answer your queries.

 

 

 

 

[bkkmfj2648]

Excellent post @macaroni21. 🤩

I wish there was a way within our board to post your very well written reply at the TOP of all of the threads.  If only, our board/forum was reorganized by categories; massage, gogo bars, saunas, restaurants, hotels, etc. for a given city - then this post could be at the TOP of the massage thread for all of the City/Massage combinations in our forum.

 

I would add one more additional information point.  This forum is very useful when our forum members post their trip reports and often reveal what took place in the massage room with a certain masseur.  That type of intelligence can help you better choose your masseur.

Another useful information source (about what a masseur will and will not do) can be found within the Thai run massage forums.  I wrote about them in the below thread (look for my reply to MichaelJay70).  The forum owners review random massage shops with a specific masseur and often allude to what the masseur is willing to do behind closed doors.  Also, within the new Telegram chat group feature, the members share masseur and massage shop details and opinions amongst each other.  Note that everything is written in Thai, but if you activate the AI auto translate feature then you can follow along in English.  Also, once you are in the room with your masseur - if he cannot understand/speak your language feel free to use Google translate on your phone to create the possibility for a good session - but remembering what macaroni21 wrote above = give face.

 

[vinapu]

3 hours ago, Shax said:

Ah I see. And these are conversations that happen after you've picked a guy and are in the room with him?

Presumably, with places like this, it is not a conversation you will have with the manager on the role, what the guy can do etc. before deciding on who to go with (as with some of the more "hard" massage centres)?

you did not ask me but I have urge to respond anyways

I for one, never talk to manager in the spa or mamasan in the bar what guy in question will or won't do , neither I talk about money issues. If they forward some information , fine but I prefer to sort this kind of issues with guy himself in the room

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

Excellent post @macaroni21. 🤩

I would add one more additional information point.  This forum is very useful when our forum members post their trip reports and often reveal what took place in the massage room with a certain masseur.  That type of intelligence can help you better choose your masseur.

 

 

Indeed, almost scientific post and I say it seriously.

as for reports and recommendations, no matter how highly or lowly somebody else speaks about provider or venue or both,  there's  big chance that our own experience may be completely different owing to many reasons - personality , time of day, choice of mouthwash , you name it.

It's why I tirelessly say go and check yourself and if you originally liked underperforming guy, give him another chance.

as we all know ,  completed grade 3 or higher , one statistic sample is not basis to formulate hypothesis.

as to illustrate that several day ago I got report from my friend( not a member here) about guy he met in one of shops and was very happy with experience to a degree that he recommended me guy with picture and a nick. Himself he was anxious to repeat experience few days later , no doubt hoping for equally enchanting session. His polite comment after repeat ? 'law of diminishing returns applied"

 

[Keithambrose]

14 hours ago, vinapu said:

Indeed, almost scientific post and I say it seriously.

as for reports and recommendations, no matter how highly or lowly somebody else speaks about provider or venue or both,  there's  big chance that our own experience may be completely different owing to many reasons - personality , time of day, choice of mouthwash , you name it.

It's why I tirelessly say go and check yourself and if you originally liked underperforming guy, give him another chance.

as we all know ,  completed grade 3 or higher , one statistic sample is not basis to formulate hypothesis.

as to illustrate that several day ago I got report from my friend( not a member here) about guy he met in one of shops and was very happy with experience to a degree that he recommended me guy with picture and a nick. Himself he was anxious to repeat experience few days later , no doubt hoping for equally enchanting session. His polite comment after repeat ? 'law of diminishing returns applied"

 

Yes, i imagine we agree, but the point was made that revealing what the masseur would, or would not do, was helpful.  That is surely correct?

[MichaelJay70]

On 7/9/2026 at 3:22 AM, macaroni21 said:

@Shax The general rule in Thailand (and in many other countries) is that the more upscale a place, the more you must be careful to give face. That is to say, these upscale places want to maintain a clean public image, while somehow providing the commercially lucrative services and you must play along.

The above is easy enough to understand as a concept, I am sure, but I think where the difficulty lies, especially for Westerners (and I suspect Americans have the greatest difficulty with cross-cultural issues) is the question "what exactly does 'give face' mean in terms of the nuts and bolts of behaviour?"

It's not difficult to learn. Most Western expats pick up fairly quickly what Thais mean by giving face.

In the specific example of TCS Spa, you can tell that it is an upmarket place from the photos on their website. Straight away, you should pigeonhole it as one of those places where your interaction must be one that helps them preserve a public image of a clean proper massage shop. So, as a stranger -- and a customer is a stranger -- you never talk about sex or ask any question about sex with management. Doing so would put them on the spot that is the total opposite of giving face.

Yes, you select your masseur (they are so upscale, they even call them "therapists") at the time of booking. On arrival, the boy may even go through the pantomime of taking out a clipboard and a form and doing a questionnaire with you about which parts of your body needs more work or less, which parts have had previous injuries, etc. You have to play along with this theatre, even though, as @vinapu says, the actual massage standard in the hour to follow may be no more than "decorum".

Even in the privacy of the room, it is best (i.e. least likely to cause offence and loss of face) to let the boy initiate the first erotic move. Do not be the one to initiate discussion about extra services. Let him go through the motion of giving a proper massage first. The boy may initiate funtime through strategic touching, or may even pose a question like "Sir, how do you want to finish?"

Even though you're in the privacy of the room, you need to be subtle in replying, e.g. "Can you take off your shirt?", "have you done body to body before?"  To maintain face, every question should be very carefully phrased so that he can say no gracefully -- that's the art of giving face. Note: I said ask questions, not make requests. At each step, let him notch the conversation up and you follow. Even on the question of money, let him initiate a request. He may say "Can you increase your tip if I do this?"

As others have advised (and my personal experience too) hand job and body to body is about as far as most boys will go. If you want insertive work, choose a less upscale place, especially if you're the type that must have every service detail spelled out from the very start and want to have management answer your queries.

 

 

 

 

Well done explanation @macaroni21

[vinapu]

9 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

Yes, i imagine we agree, but the point was made that revealing what the masseur would, or would not do, was helpful.  That is surely correct?

ever since certain , long gone , super macho Tawan boy, who wouldn't even let me to touch his ass self admitted that he bottomed for customer and he liked it, I know that what guy would and wouldn't do is very flexible idea and may depend on customer, financial need , phase of moon and may be even time of day.

Fact that this brave customer was our member at the time  is irrelevant to the point above but nice to know. 

[khaolakguy]

5 hours ago, vinapu said:

ever since certain , long gone , super macho Tawan boy, who wouldn't even let me to touch his ass self admitted that he bottomed for customer and he liked it, I know that what guy would and wouldn't do is very flexible idea and may depend on customer, financial need , phase of moon and may be even time of day.

Fact that this brave customer was our member at the time  is irrelevant to the point above but nice to know. 

Although one can't always be certain that even a member here is always 100% truthful!

[Keithambrose]

2 hours ago, khaolakguy said:

Although one can't always be certain that even a member here is always 100% truthful!

What a suggestion! You mean they don't cum 6 times in a day?

[vinapu]

7 hours ago, khaolakguy said:

Although one can't always be certain that even a member here is always 100% truthful!

yes, but in this case there's no need to test it as I heard about that ' debacle ' from boy first hand and it was free will confession, lol

[Patanawet]

14 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

What a suggestion! You mean they don't cum 6 times in a day?

To whom can you be referring?

[macaroni21]

This video is about the bunch of Italian exchange students who caused a furore earlier this month. I am putting it here because the narrator explains very well the huge cultural gap (not just on the part of the kids, but the teachers too) that laid the ground for the incident.

 

For about two minutes from 16 minutes 30, the narrator puts it succinctly. Thai culture is a high context culture, whereas most Western cultures are low context cultures. As a result, Westerners do not learn, when growing up, to read social and situational context the way Thais and many East Asian societies do, or give these readings the weight that is required. This is inseparable from the issue of giving face, which I discussed in an earlier post on this thread (9 July).

[PeterRS2]

On 7/9/2026 at 5:22 PM, macaroni21 said:

@Shax The general rule in Thailand (and in many other countries) is that the more upscale a place, the more you must be careful to give face.

I always consider it rather strange that in the west (general term) we happily talk about losing face. We hardly ever consider the issue of giving face. Having worked in three Asian countries and visited most of the others over the last 47 years, I learned quite quickly how important giving face is. And it is not always the same in each country, although the basics are the same. 

There was a post some weeks ago about a westerner who was about 30 minutes late for a massage appointment in, I seem to recall, Seoul. From the taxi he had phoned someone in the spa who seemed to speak English to say he had been held up in traffic and would be late. Having finally arrived at the spa about 30 minutes late he was told he could not have the full time he had booked because he had been so late arriving. I assume the masseur had another appointment after his one and that customer was likely to be on time.

The poster blamed the rush hour traffic (always horrendous in Seoul) and then had an argument with the owner about not being allowed his full appointment. He then left the spa shouting some form of obscenity. It clearly never entered his mind that it was entirely his fault that he arrived so late and was nothing to do with the manager of the spa. Yet he had booked the start time and he had not bothered to get to the spa area early so that he would be on time. Instead of accepting the fact that it was his fault, he blamed the spa and just left. He complained in this forum as though this was an example of Asian rudeness or something to that effect. Never in his post did he once consider that he had in fact been at fault and that by cursing at the manager he was making him lose face in front of his employees. He could have at least been polite and apologised for being so late before saying something like "I'll come back another time."

Every guide to Asia should have near the start something about 'face'!

On 7/9/2026 at 5:22 PM, macaroni21 said:

To maintain face, every question should be very carefully phrased so that he can say no gracefully -- that's the art of giving face. Note: I said ask questions, not make requests. At each step, let him notch the conversation up and you follow.

[macaroni21]

Maybe we risk over analysing or over simplifying the giving face/losing face issue. After all, people in Western cultures also understand the value of not causing embarrassment to others.

On the other hand, and with a bit of reflection, the video narrator's point about certain cultures giving more weight to context could prove more helpful in understanding behaviours. It seems to me that in certain cultures (we may tend to speak of Western cultures, but I am pretty sure that's both over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time) there's a greater reliance on explicitly stated boundaries, whereas in other cultures, people aren't so exercised if things are left unsaid. Furthermore, particularly in American culture, there is a valorisation of attempts to test or push the boundaries -- we see in media depictions of heroes who go right up to the edge of the permissible or even flout the rules and not only get away with doing so, but winning the day to cheers all round. The valorisation of individualism goes with it.

Other cultures may consider this too brash, even uncouth. They expect members of the community to be alert to non-verbal cues and situational settings and to modify one's behaviour accordingly in a way that is respectful of others. In a sense, one might say such a culture has a higher quotient of communalism. It has struck me that many older Hollywood depictions of Asian males almost take this to paper-thin stereotypes: where the Asian character is a man of few words, with some supposedly sagacious characters speaking in riddles, but also they are receding characters, not pushing their way forward. And as has often been pointed out, the Asian male in such Hollywood productions are not generally seen as heroic, or even sexy -- by Western audiences.

That digression having been done with, here's another: on some other threads in the Thailand forum, we regularly see Western visitors who are less frequent visitors to Thailand asking questions about how one would know whether the shop or boy would be H or not H -- I think folks who are unfamiliar with Thailand also have difficulty distinguishing been S and SS -- and how much to tip, and so on. They display a great need for explicitly stated information about offerings, limits and costs. The Thais and frequent visitors to this country (and expats) seem to have no need for such explicit information. They do need some clues (and have learned how to spot the clues) but they don't need to have all the T's crossed and I's dotted. In the moment itself, they work out what's possible and what's not and how to navigate their way to what they would desire. 

The older ones among us who used to cruise in parks and alleyways in the pre-internet age were masters of unspoken context, body language and signals to figure out a situation. Perhaps the newer, younger members of this board never developed such skills for lack of learning opportunties?

 

[12is12]

It would b well to remember that farangs can also dislike losing face, and that there need not b a 3rd party present in order to loose face.

I loose face when two Thais (for example - mamasan and boy) speak about me, in my presence, in an obviously denigrating manner. Whenever a local takes advantage of a farang's cluelessness (not to mention MBs exploiting un-assertive 1st timers) - face is lost. 

It's VERY important for us to behave in a respectful and culture-sensitive manner toward Thais, both because we r guests and because we hold the financial upper hand.

It should b equally important vice versa, and many times it isn't.

[Keithambrose]

7 minutes ago, 12is12 said:

It would b well to remember that farangs can also dislike losing face, and that there need not b a 3rd party present in order to loose face.

I loose face when two Thais (for example - mamasan and boy) speak about me, in my presence, in an obviously denigrating manner. Whenever a local takes advantage of a farang's cluelessness (not to mention MBs exploiting un-assertive 1st timers) - face is lost. 

It's VERY important for us to behave in a respectful and culture-sensitive manner toward Thais, both because we r guests and because we hold the financial upper hand.

It should b equally important vice versa, and many times it isn't.

For those of you who are fans of 'Yes Minister', you will remember Jim Hacker saying to Bernard, 'Antennae, Bernard'

[PeterRS2]

14 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

people in Western cultures also understand the value of not causing embarrassment to others . . . The older ones among us who used to cruise in parks and alleyways in the pre-internet age were masters of unspoken context, body language and signals to figure out a situation. Perhaps the newer, younger members of this board never developed such skills for lack of learning opportunties?

With all respect to your view, I think losing face is not quite the same as just causing embarrassment to others. Perhaps we could say that's a rather mild form of losing face.

Personally I don't think we over-analyse the face issue. I think it is more that most people don't even think of it until it happens to them. Your comment about the old days are I believe very pertinent. As one who has visited Taipei so many times I have lost count of an exact number (over 100), I can recall the final years of martial law when Taipei basically had no gay scene other than cruising in the New Park a little way behind the Hilton Hotel. You are also so right that in those days hardly anything was spoken. We relied on looks, body language - in fact our basic gaydar. That told us when someone might be interested in us. Similarly when they were not.  We never pushed for acceptance nor were we annoyed when they showed they were not. We just accepted the situation.

As a small gay scene started by the beginning of the 1990s, gay Taiwanese still tended to go out in groups. I can recall visiting Funky's in the mid-1990s with two foreign friends. We sat at the bar watching many groups of young guys enjoying themselves but with no desire to acknowledge our presence. That was merely what they were accustomed to. Yet away from their friends, in the one large sauna near the station that had opened, westerners were in considerable demand. I supposed the guys we met there more than a few times just did not want to lose face in front of their own gay pals by admitting they liked foreigners. For quite some time, outside the sauna guys would often not acknowledge our presence.

The Taipei gay scene has of course developed massively in the last 30 years and many Taiwanese now eagerly seek out western men. Most not for cash, as MBs are relatively few. I cannot help but compare it with Japan, another country I love. But of the hundreds of bars still left in Shinjuku Ni-chome (more than 100 have disappeared in recent years), all but a dozen or so will still not welcome foreigners. To a certain extent that is a face issue. Most Japanese-only bars are tiny, often accommodating not many more than 12-15 patrons. They are hardly gay bars in the western sense. They are places where usually the same group of Japanese go on a regular basis. More of a sort of social club than the western concept of a bar. The mamasans are concerned that foreigners who do not speak Japanese and do not understand Japanese customs will disturb the harmony of the bar. Enter one with Japanese frends and it is totally different. You are made very welcome. The first time I went with friends, I was rather shocked that the mamasan asked if I was top or bottom. The reason was actually quite practical because she then seated me next to one who sexually preferred the opposite to me. But with no foreigners, there is no chance that anyone in the bar is going to lose face.

I consider the loss of face issue has slipped into the background largely due to the apps. We are too used to instant gratifucation whereas years ago it was more of a slow build up when the 'chase' was almost as much fun as the 'conquest'. There is no requirement now to be polite, even to enter into any form of social discussion. When I return to Taipei in November, I know I will get lot of hits even at my age, far more than I can handle. I don't want to be rude but unless I get rid of the apps, I have no choice but not to respond to many of them. I have no desire for them to lose face, but I think loss of face on the apps is something most people do not even think about nowadays if they get no response from someone they have hit on.

All I will say is that I have longish discussions occasionally on an app with guys in China, but there is hardly ever a chance of meeting them. We just want to know more about each others lives.

[floridarob]

12 hours ago, 12is12 said:

It should b equally important vice versa, and many times it isn't.

Taxi drivers come to mind.....