Saving Soi Twilight

[Jun]

Since I started coming to Thailand, prices have gone up significantly on Soi Twilight and I also get considerably fewer baht for my pound. Then places like the formerly outstanding Classic Boys bar have dreadful mamasans & the boys were even in shorts on the last visit. What are they playing at ? Expensive gogo bars need to have something pleasant to look at & lads in small white briefs which barely hide what's underneath usually work well.

Now my stays in Bangkok tend to be relatively short. Last time, I think it was 3 days. I visited 2 bars in Soi twilight & made a total of about 4 visits to gogo bars in other nearby locations.

Pattaya still has a wider choice of gogo bars & much lower pricing.

[fountainhall]

Totally agree that Classic is a shadow of its former self. You can usually negotiate the price of your first drink before entering, but what you get once inside is nothing like before. After the fire above the bar and the temporary shut down a few years ago, I heard it had been bought by one of the BIB.

Talking of which, I wonder what levels the tea money have reached in that soi? Chatting to the mamasan of one of the beer bars 3 or 4 years ago, I was told the monthly payments were Bt.160,000 for inside gogo bars and Bt.40,000 for the beer bars. That's a lot of drinks! When you consider that the majority of the patrons in the gogo bars now seem to be Chinese tourists who pop in to ogle at the show and have just one drink, it's no wonder the number of offs has gone down and the price of drinks has soared.

Corruption must inevitably be a contributing factor in the general decline. But hopeless management must surely bear the brunt of the blame.

[a447]

I agree that Asian tourists don't seem to hook up with Thai guys in gogo bars for sex, unlike farang. But I've seen many going into massage parlours.

As for the decline in young people visiting Soi Twilight, I would tend to disagree. One thing I've noticed over the past few trips - and especially my trip this year - is that there appears to be more and more young guys visiting. The average age has dropped considerably. And I'm talking about farang, not Asian visitors.

As for turning the soi into a coffee shop /restaurant area, that would defeat the purpose for me. There are plenty places elsewhere for that. I want to see guys who I can choose as a bed partner. For that, you need gogo bars.

I think the gogo bars may just hang on, as there are surely lots of guys who are also looking for an easy hook-up and prefer to see the guys in the flesh, rather than a photo on an app.

[Undaunted]

Talking of which, I wonder what levels the tea money have reached in that soi? Chatting to the mamasan of one of the beer bars 3 or 4 years ago, I was told the monthly payments were Bt.160,000 for inside gogo bars and Bt.40,000 for the beer bars.

On the same soi with Golden Cock, Super A, and Nature Boy used to be a bar with a stage and many boys also cheap drinks called "Solid", like many bars it closed, shortly after I saw the owner/mgr. running a beer bar in soi Twilight he said "Solid had to close because the tea money had gotten so much that no profit could be had, now at his very quiet beer bar in Twilight he said he was able to make a living as his tea money was only 10,000 bht. per month.

[Alex]

Yes, fountainhall, I do believe that a big part of Thailand's appeal back then was the fact that many if not most of you couldn't do as you pleased back home at that time, or earlier, in your youth.

For me, on the other hand, Thailand has never meant liberation, just more choice as I'm getting older. I first visited Bangkok in 2004 at age 28, but at that point my overall sexual appetite was already on the decline compared to what I had been up to - back home! - in my late teens and early 20s.

When I moved to Bangkok two years later and ever since, Soi Twilight has never plaid a significant role among my spare time activities (I do visit now and then, mostly when curious visitors are in town). Still I like the fact that it's available, and I would hate to see it disappear. It's a nice to have for me, but of little sentimental value, because it's missing that liberation/escape from suppression back home component for me. Also, I had all of my most satisfying sexual encounters elsewhere (and not with professionals), so there aren't any particularly memorable moments to make me feel a special connection with these venues either.

[fountainhall]

I remember Solid well - situated on the corner. A friend and I used to drink there quite often after our regular Sunday evening dinners.

Having blamed managements for the general decline in gogo bar business in Soi Twilight, I have to add that I believe it was not the tea money that killed off Solid. It was again management failings. We enjoyed that bar a lot and for a couple of years it had some cute and fun guys. The dancing may not have been up to much, but the boys were often a delight to enjoy a drink or two with.

One evening my friend and I arrived to find only one other customer, a farang. He had the 5 best looking boys drinking with him and all were smoking despite there being three large NO SMOKING signs. We had hoped to have drinks with a couple of those boys, but they just continued chatting to the farang. Fair enough, we thought. He beat us to it. But the smoking in that small space did bother us. So after about 15 minutes I went across to the table, pointed out the signs and politely asked the guy if he and the boys would mind either not smoking or going upstairs to smoke. He just looked at me for a moment and agreed they would stop smoking.

After a couple of minutes back at our table, my friend said "Uh-oh! He's coming over!" I thought be might be about to punch me. Instead, quite politely he said he was the co-owner of the bar. He realised smoking was against the law but if he asked everyone customer who smoked to put out their cigarettes he would have to close it. We then had quite an amicable chat about how we were regular customers, bought quite a few drinks, tipped well, enjoyed our visits and had paid for quite a few offs. But we felt his monopolising the boys when we were the only paying customers around was a bit too much of droit du seigneur type of mentality. He said nothing, returned to his table and kept on chatting to "his" boys.

That conversation occurred a few months before the bar finally closed. I doubt if it could ever accommodate more than about 20 customers. Rarely did we ever see more than half a dozen. Often one or two would wander in, take a look around for a minute and then depart. No effort on the part of the two mamasans (didn't one go off to work at Dick's in Pattaya?) to encourage them to drink or have a chat with a boy, several of whom spoke quite reasonable English. My friend and I both felt that the general attitude around the bar was far too "mai pen rai". A nice change from the pushy Soi Twilight bars but it was perfectly obvious it was not and was never going to be a money-making concern. We felt that was sad.

[a447]

Fountainhall, your experience in Solid mirrors my own exactly.

[Undaunted]

Fountainhall, your experience in Solid mirrors my own exactly.

My experience does not mirror yours. Whenever we went in we never were rushed for a drink, the boys were attentive and the fellow in charge (the same one with the beer bar now in Twilight) was always helpful never pushy and a G&T was 150bht. the bar also had a get acquainted space above the main floor, if I could complain about anything and it is just a matter of taste the boys were a bit to twinky for my taste.

[Oliver]

And mine.
By the way, fascinating posts...particularly for me since I'll be checking for myself in a few days. Thanks for such high-quality contributions.

[fountainhall]

My experience does not mirror yours. Whenever we went in we never were rushed for a drink, the boys were attentive and the fellow in charge (the same one with the beer bar now in Twilight) was always helpful never pushy.

I think you are virtually agreeing with me! I was clear in saying there was never any pressure to buy a drink as soon as you arrived, and the manager I referred to was the farang co-owner - not the Thai mamasan who now has the bar in Soi Twilight. In our many visits we never were given any impression that he might have been a co-owner. In fact he was not very complimentary about the farang co-owner!