A Brief Sojourn in Pattaya - January 2018

[RonanTheBarbarian]

I was in Pattaya for six days in mid-January. Thought I better get my thoughts down before I forget them!

I also spent a few days in Hua Hin and Bangkok, will do a bit about those experience later.

I stayed in the Ambience Hotel for three nights, then I moved to the Venue in Jomtien.


The Ambience hotel
For the first three days I stayed in the Ambience hotel. Like others have said it is getting a bit decrepit. My room was definitely in need of a refurbishment (just a lick of paint on the walls would have done a lot). Also, I found the wifi to be a bit unreliable.However as I paid 1100 Baht I felt I can’t really complain - if you want somewhere cheap and central it’s fine. Just be aware that you wouldn’t want to be trying to get to sleep before the bar downstairs closes. However after it did so around 2 am I found there wasn’t too much noise from the street,and I had no problem getting to sleep.


Meeting Board Regulars
I met up with Joe and colmx during my stay. Joe mainly stuck to Sunee Plaza while he was in a Pattaya but one night colmx and me tempted him out to Panorama for a drink. I already posted about that meeting at the time on one of Joe’s threads.

Afterwards we went to a Mor Lam concert which was Joe’s first time at that particular type of entertainment and I think he really enjoyed it. Anyone visiting Pattaya who gets a chance should try it, but you really need to bring a few Thai guys with you.


The present state of Boyztown
In my opinion, Boyztown definitely seems to have declined since my last visit in January 2015. I don’t remember the bars ever being as quiet as they were, also the selection of staff is definitely smaller and there seemed, IMHO, definitely fewer attractive guys.

I paid a visit to Toy Boys, X Boys, Cupidol, Kawaii Boys, Prisma and BBB.

In both X Boys and Kawaii Boys I had the experience of being on my own as the only customer in a bar. This happened to me before but never in Boyztown. I think I was in X Boys are around 9.30 and Kawaii boys around 10.30 and both times there was no one else there. Considering January is supposed to be in the high season, it doesn’t really augur well for the health of Boyztown especially when the Cafe Royale was dark also while I was there. Ironically the best attended the bar in the area was BBB despite giving, in my opinion, probably the worst experience for a customer. As has been said here before, the guys now are is mostly standing in the stage fully clothed.They dont even shuffle, which means you never get to see the guys in the back, Admittedly it does have some cute guys, mainly leaning towards the masculine and straight acting,which is presumably why it attracts it’s mainly Asian clientele. I took a guy down for a drink and definitely wasn’t impressed when, after about three or four minutes he said “I go eat” and disappeared before he gave me a chance to say whether I wanted to wait for him or not. I had been about to leave as the chemistry between us have not been great but he didn’t even give me a chance to give him some money. As the show was on I decided to wait for him to come back just to give him 100 baht as I thought he probably had not meant to snub me. When he came back and I asked the check bin, he just walked away, After paying the bin, I waited for 10 seconds to see would he come back. When he didnt I just walked out without giving him any money.

His loss I suppose.

Looking back on it he presumably didnt want an off with me, and perhaps he was hoping I would sling my hook while he was gone. He must not have told the mamasan though, as she came over about three times in the 15 minutes he was gone to tell me “He go eat, he come back in a minute”.


My experience with Massage
I used the massage service in the attached to the Ambience hotel – I can’t remember if it has a separate name or not. Got a good massage from one of the older, more experienced guys - nice afters too, cannot complain about it. Bit of awkwardness regarding the tip afterwards. At the start I had paid 400 for the massage and 500 as minimum tip. At first I was just going to give the cashier 400 and thought the minimum tip was a reminder, but the cashier told me to give him the 500 minimum tip too, with the massage fee.

At the end of the massage I gave the masseur 700 baht. I reckoned with the 500 it was a total tip of 1200, which was fair. But when he saw the 700 baht in my hand, he said “could you give me 1000 baht please -good massage”. I said: “Well this gives you 1200 in total, as I paid 500 already”. But he just said “Please - a thousand tip for me”. Wondered do the guys get all the minimum tip the cashiers collect? So I gave him a 1000 note instead. Left a rather poor taste in my mouth at the end. Also felt that given the 500 at a start made me look a bit stingy at the end, just handing over 700 in cash. I felt that if there was no minimum tip and I had handed him 1200 Baht in cash it would have felt better on both sides. Or maybe 1500 is a standard tip and now it is for a massage in Boyztown? I don’t know. If i was doing it again I would have asked the cashier to give the massage guy the 500 baht in front of me, before the massage started.

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[frequent]

Looking back on it he presumably didnt want an off with me, and perhaps he was hoping I would sling my hook while he was gone. He must not have told the mamasan though, as she came over about three times in the 15 minutes he was gone to tell me “He go eat, he come back in a minute”.

Rule #1 - never get between a Thai boy and his food

[RonanTheBarbarian]

The Venue in Jomtien
After spending three nights on the Ambience hotel, I moved out to the venue in Jomtien Plaza.

No problems at the Venue, a nice hotel and a nice room well maintained. Wifi was good. Good value for the price, pity does not do breakfast. Although I stayed in its accomodation, I never got around to seeing the show at the Venue. I had planned to, but the night I was going to go to it, it was closed for a private party. So I cannot comment on that aspect.

I had originally thought, when I booked the Venue, that I might spend one or two nights of those nights entirely in Jomtien, but as it happened I ended up going back to Pattaya nearly every night. This was was awkward from a transport point of view as I ended up taking several more motorcycle taxi rides than I would have liked.

Jomtien Bars
But I did spend some time in a few of the bars, particularly the Sun bar, @Home bar and the Question Mark bar. The Jomtien Plaza bars were generally buzzing, as others have said, it is the main host bar zone in the Pattaya area now. But some bars were busier than others. In particular, the bar closest to the Venue, the New Life Bar, was completely empty of customers the two evenings I was around. It was a bit weird actually, because most of the other bars were fairly full but there just seem to be one farang in the New Life bar, who I think may have been the owner, and a few host boys are looking rather desperate . I don’t know what was turning people off the New Life that week, or if it’s usually that quiet, but it certainly seemed to be be the ugly stepsister of the Jomtien Plaza bars while I was staying there.

I talked to a few guys in the bars - they were mostly Cambodian with a few Burmese, plenty of very handsome guys up for an off, although it’s not quite obviously as direct a way to pick your guy as it is in the go-go bars. The @Home Bar had very handsome Filipino guy working there as well, chatted to him for a while, he had really good English as most Filipino guys do.

So you could do a sort of vicarious tour of Southeast Asia just by taking guys out of the bars.....

One slightly funny interaction. I went into one of the bars - cannot remember which- I sat down and a guy come over and chat to me. I didnt particularly fancy him so I didn’t offer him a drink but we had a short conversation before I got a chance to ask him could he ask another staff member to have a drink with me. During this short conversation, where he was jokingly telling me he wanted me to bring him off straight away as I was so handsome etc, he mentioned that he was a top only.

Then I got talking to the guy I was interested in. I asked him if he was top, bottom or versatile. He said he was top only. Then he pointed to his friend that had been talking to me earlier and said “Do you like him? - he is a bottom so you can fuck him if you want”.

I was a bit taken aback as his English was quite poor but that rather crude line came out fluently. I looked at his face and he was smiling as he said it. I wasn’t certain if he just didn’t know what role his friend did , or his friend had been lying to me because he might bottom for some but didn’t want to for me, or maybe the guy I was chatting just thought it be funny if I offed his coworker on the basis of that recommendation and only found out later (perhaps in the room!) that he was top only.

You can all feel free to theorise as to what was the thinking on that one!

I ended up bringing back neither of those guys that night, brought back a Cambodian guy, very handsome and very energetic in bed.

Sunee Plaza
One evening I took a little trip to Sunee Plaza to meet Joe in his home environment, so to speak. Actually it was two evenings as I missed him the first evening and just had a drink in Ting Tong Red bar. I thought Sunee would be almost completely deserted from what had been reading on the boards but although there seem to be a lot of empty shop-fronts in the area, the few host bars there seem to be doing a good enough business. The first night in Ting Tong Red when I was on my own, I was kept entertained by Art, a host with very good English and very entertaining. Ting Tong Red is making good use of the fact that the the road is closed in the evenings and have a nice few outdoor tables and couches set up across the road from their main building. Would have been willing to spend a few evenings lounging there.

The next evening I went back and met Joe this time. After catching up in Ting Tong Red, we decided to try out Winner Bar. I was slightly surprised that it seemed to have more staff on hand than the Boyztown bars and a bigger crowd is well, there must have been 10 or 12 customers when we arrived.

That’s about it, except to say that I took a little trip to Eros bar as well. Nice for a little hands-on fun although the smell in the place was a bit off-putting especially when you imagine what it is made up of! There was just me and one other customer there when I was there but we both stayed in separate corners and did our own thing.

[arsenal]

1200 is the amount that most boys are looking for. So if you pay 1500 up front to the cashier it means giving the boy another 200. I tend to tell them in advance how much they'll get.

[RonanTheBarbarian]

Rule #1 - never get between a Thai boy and his food

Well,he didnt let me get between him and his food, it was what happened sfter that confused me.

Maybe he had just been told that there was a second course and that is why he disappeared so quickly?

[frequent]

Maybe he had just been told that there was a second course and that is why he disappeared so quickly?

You hope for rational explanations of human behaviour - let alone Thai behaviour?

[colmx]

You forgot that you also visited Abomb... but I guess that it was pretty forgettable!

[joe552]

Great report Ronan. Brought back a few good memories of our nights out. You're right, I loved the Morlam, and would highly recommend it. And Winner's was definitely a winner in my book, as I offed the same guy twice.

It was good to spend time with you and colmx, and colmx's friend. Cheers.

[Newbie99]

“brought back a Cambodian guy, very handsome and very energetic in bed. “

Care to elaborate? Energetic in a good way?

[Newbie99]

I ran into a similar Cambodian at the Complex, but could not barfine, so I am curious what I missed.