History of Soi Twilight

[Nirish guy]

Actually now that you mention it I seem to remember being told the very same thing - but at the time wondered was that just the usual Thai embellishment in order to aid an off / drink etc, but when you think about it it is also the most likely outcome of any deal that he might have made so I wouldn't be at all surprised. But as half of what he told them was probably made up anyway perhaps it all sort of balanced out in the end.

[goji]

Is writing a book with niche appeal and presumably corresponding low sales volume something one should expect to fund retirement ? I doubt it.

[StevieWonders]

Is writing a book with niche appeal and presumably corresponding low sales volume something one should expect to fund retirement ? I doubt it.

We’re all waiting for your autobiography

[Nirish guy]

On looking up on Waterstones ( large UK book seller) I see the book is out of print just now it seems ( I'll have to go look for my copy in case it's worth a million ! :-)

I did see the one and only review that someone left which I felt summed the book up fairly well, it went as follows :

"The book appealed to me as I was interesting in reading why child prostitution is still occurring and how that situation is. The more pages I read, the more I knew that the book was not going to give me an answer to that. The book is written by a male prostitute that ends up in go-go bars because of his own decisions and mistakes. It is not a story of a stolen childhood. It is a story of a male prostitute and his motivations to be in this industry. Because I got a wrong image of the book when i bought it, it was really disapointing. However, if the cover of the book was honest, I would still have found it interesting. I have been in Thailand for quite a while yet and the cultural differences and barriers that occur to me, are being discribed from the Thai perspective. Therefore, I found it nice to read. A thought the story would be about a boy, not about a man that is 22 when he first sells his body and at age 44 discovers that he has taken the wrong path in life"

[StevieWonders]

Read it via the Kindle App

[Jellybean]

On looking up on Waterstones ( large UK book seller) I see the book is out of print just now it seems ( I'll have to go look for my copy in case it's worth a million ! :-) . . .

I bought a copy of Bangkok Boy at Kinokuniya bookstore at Siam Paragon Shopping Mall in Bangkok. On checking the back cover, I see that I left the price tag on and note that I purchased it for the princely sum of 525 Baht.

BKKBoy.jpg

[RonanTheBarbarian]

You can find a copy to read on Archive.org

Go to the site, click on advanced search and search for title “Bangkok Boy” - they have a scanned PDF copy available.

If you create an account on Archive.org you can then “rent” it (for free) in chunks of one hour at a time. Just keep renting it out again and again until you have it read. Don’t know exactly about the copyright implications of reading it this way, but I leave that to your own conscience...

Incidentally, that search also brings up a book called “Bangkok oh boy!”apparently about the adventures of a middle-aged gay American on the boy bar circuit in Bangkok, which could perhaps be a more entertaining read.

[Oliver2]

Inspired by this thread, I re-read the book a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure many of us will recognise the descriptions of Soi Twilight a decade or so ago and the portrayal of some- some- of the go go boys. Very different, I have to say, from the few I got to know well in Pattaya whose lives were more relaxed....and more fun.. Not so sure about the sections which deal with village life. Some of it sounds like life in Dodge City.
Nevertheless, certainly worth a read.

[JayToff]

This "walk" has to be broken-up into four posts because of the number of pictures. This is Part 1 of a 4 part post.

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
A PICTORIAL WALK THROUGH SOI TWILIGHT

When it comes to Bangkok’s night scene, one can think of a myriad of reasons to want to slap the idiots walking around with cameras, or with their smartphones at the ready. Nonetheless, there are some who capture Bangkok' s nightlife amazingly well without intruding into the fun of revellers. Stickman is by far the best of these. The pictures that he takes in the bars capture the personalities of the girls remarkably and his pictures of facades and street scenes are always atmospheric. Stick does not do gay though. So the areas in which Sawatdee’s readers play will never benefit from his remarkable eye and lens. Fortunately, however, the chaps at the Midnite Hour have diligently profiled some of these areas as part of their record of Bangkok’s nightlife, which goes back to the 1960s in some areas. Their record of Soi 4, for example, goes back to the mid-1990s. With Soi Twilight though, only to the early part of the Millennium. They have been remarkably generous in allowing me to use pictures from their archive for this post on the bars and venues of Soi Twilight. If you are going to use these pictures anywhere else, please attribute them to Bangkokeyes.com

With a dearth of photos on the bars of the 1990s though, I have had to use pictures from adverts in magazines from the 90s. The problem with that is that while I want pictures of neon signage, facades and street scenes, the bar owners would rather have bar boys in briefs in their adverts. So it is that I have been compelled to post pictures of hot young lads in skimpy briefs on here simply to capture something of the insides of the old bars. Fortunately, however, from the turn of the millennium, we get to the really exciting stuff, like neon signage.

I do think that the post would have worked better if the images actually appeared in-line though, rather than requiring readers to click-through on them. Still, that shouldn’t be too much trouble as you should have at least one hand free even while looking at pictures of hot boys in briefs.

A WALK THROUGH SOI TWILIGHT
To anchor this walk through a vanished street, I am including a map of Soi Twilight from 2006. Since the Banana Bar and Dream Boy remained in single locations from 2004 to the end of the soi, they are useful points to anchor discussions on where what was when. Right-side and left-side are based on entering from Suriwong Road. Veterans will note that a few known bars such as Sprite Boys and Boys.com are not on this list. For those, I have not been able to find pictures.

Map of Soi Twilight June 2006.jpg

Before jumping into the individual venues, though, here’s a sequence of street scenes of Soi Twilight from 2004 to 2018 to jog one’s memories and because you can’t have too much of good neon..

2004 Soi Twilight & Twilight Bar.jpg

2006 Soi Twilight.jpg

2008a Soi Twilight Dec.jpg

2008b Soi Twilight September.jpg

2010 Soi Twilight May.jpg

2013 Soi Twilight Sep.jpg

2014 Soi Twilight - March.jpg

2015 Soi Twilight April.jpg

2017a Soi Twilight New Year.jpg

2017b Soi Twilight June.jpg

2018 Soi Twilight May.jpg

[JayToff]

This is Part 2 of a 4 part post.

The bars and venues below are, broadly, presented according to the order in which they first opened on Soi Twilight. As it should, this walk through the historical Soi Twilight begins with the original Twilight Bar…

1 Twilight Bar
The Twilight Bar was opened in 1966 by a katoey named Khun Yosawadee, who had previously run a boy brothel in the New Road area. Twilight was the first bar in Thailand to offer off-boys. She originally opened Twilight on Soi Thaniya 2, in the location that would later become Barbiery and afterwards the original Dream Boy. Somewhere in the early 1970s it moved across Suriwong Road to a spot at the mouth of Soi Pratuchai, which would eventually become known as Soi Twilight.
1 Twilight Signage 2002.jpg
Twilight would remain the sole gay venue on that soi until the beginning of the 1990s, when a number of new boy bars began to open. By the late 1980’s, it had about 80 boys in its stable and offered a degree of raunchiness that the later bars on the soi simply could not match. In 2004, after almost four decades, it was sold to new owners, undergoing a change of name and becoming the Hot Male bar, which continues today.

2 Chardonnay
The second bar to open on Soi Twilight was Chardonnay. Its name was, supposedly, chosen because the middle-letters spelled “Hard-On”. The bar opened in the first-half of the 90s and was located mid-way down the Soi, on the right as you entered from Suriwong Road, where Fresh Beach Boy / Fresh Boys would later be.
2 Chardonnay 1996a.jpg
Chardonnay aimed to provide a more upscale experience than the sleaze at Twilight, with actual show routines and karaoke later at night. Pictured below are the entrance to the bar and some of the boys in 1996. The pictures are from Morakot magazine. Chardonnay fizzled-out at the turn of the millennium.
3 Chardonnay 1996b.jpg

3 New Man
4 New Man, 1997.jpg
The New Man bar opened circa 1995, on the right side, in the upstairs location that most recently housed the Bangkok Massage. Its immediate successor in that location, though, was the X-treme Bar in 2001. Pics from MidWay.
5 New Man, Interior, 1996.jpg
6 New Man 1997.jpg

4 Blue Star
Blue Star opened in the middle of the 90s, occupying the upstairs location that would later become Dream Boy. This was an early venture of the BBB Group that would own Blue Star, The Boys of Bangkok, Dream Boy, Yes! and the BBB Inn. As an upstairs bar, there wasn’t really much of a facade, so, we will just have to make do with an advert of their boys in briefs, c.1996.
7 Blue Star 1997.jpg
In 2004, it would merge with Dream Boy to form the largest and most popular bar on Soi Twilight. Pic from MidWay.

5 Boys of Bangkok
The Boys of Bangkok opened c.1997 and offered some of the wildest shows in Bangkok in its black and chrome interior. It was originally located in the second lot on the right as you entered from Suriwong, immediately after the Banana Bar. The site would later become X-Boys. Picture below of a show in the original Boys of Bangkok location 2004
8 Boys Bangkok 2004.jpg
In 2005, it moved across the soi to the location of the old Yes! Music Pub, below its sister bar, Dream Boy. The new venue offered a large central stage with clear visibility from all the seating.
9 Boysbangkok Nov2006.jpg
As traffic on Soi Twilight eventually began to decline, Boys of Bangkok began to function as an annexe to Dream Boys, hosting the second, late show, which was less scripted, more raunchy and often a lot more enjoyable then the earlier main show upstairs. It was nudity galore downstairs. In June 2009, Boys Bangkok added a statue of Neptune to their façade, giving it the look that endured until its closure in 2019.
10 Boysbangkok Dec 2018.jpg
The bar lives-on in the current Dream Boy on Patpong 2, which has based its exterior façade on that of the old Boys of Bangkok.

6 Dick’s Café
The popular and long-running Dick’s Café opened circa 1998 as the first non-bar gay venue on Soi Twilight. It sat on the right hand side of the soi as you entered from Suriwong, towards the end of the main block of bars. Pictured below in 2007, with the outdoor seating. While the Soi Twilight branch closed in 2019, its Pattaya branch carried-on.
11 DicksCafe Jan 2007.jpg

7 Banana Bar
The long-running Banana Bar bar beer at the mouth of Soi Twilight was a favourite place for people-watching. It was located directly across from the old Twilight Bar. Pictured below in 2010
12 Banana Sep 2010.jpg
They renovated and redecorated several times and with the end of Soi Twilight approaching, it opened an outpost on the nearby Soi 4, where it continues today. Pictured below in July 2017.
13 Bananabarnew July 2017.jpg

8 Future Boy
Future Boy, which kicked-off at the start of the millennium, was once the hottest bar on the soi. At its peak Future Boy boasted of over 100 boys in it stable, with both a large main stage and a smaller enclosed shower stage at the back. Some will recall that Noom, of Bangkokbois fame, got his start in this bar.
14 Future Boy - Entrance 2001.jpg
15 Future Boy 2001.jpg

Located on the right, at the end of the main block of bars,. Its reign as king of the soi eventually ended with the arrival of Dream Boy and the slew of new bars that opened-up. Future Boy closed in May 2010. The site would then be taken over by the short-lived Ocean Boy and then Zeus bars.
16 Future Boy June 2010.jpg

Future Boy managed to have both the best and the worst signage on Soi Twilight. Its multi-lingual neon sign still ranks as my favourite on the soi. Its lower-down fluorescent sign, on the other hand, was singularly uninspiring.
17 Future BoysApr 2010.jpg

9 X-treme and X-Man
The X group of bars that became so prominent on Soi Twilight kicked-off with the X-treme bar in 2001. It took-over the upstairs venue that had previously been the New Man and would later be the Bangkok Massage. It offfered shows and A Go-Go. In late 2004 or early 2005, X-treme rebranded as the X-Man bar, carrying-on under that name until mid-2008 when the venue became the Bangkok Massage, also part of the X group.
19 Xman May2006.jpg

10 Classic Boys
The long-running Classic Boys with its troupe of amphibious urchins popped-up around the turn of the millennium. Located deep in Soi Twilight, where the road curved to the right, its defining feature was the water tank in which shows were staged. Boys were of the twinkier sort, although rarely the best that the soi had to offer. Below, Classic Boys signage in 2006
20 Classic Boys May2006.jpg
In mid-2016, it rebranded as New Classic Boys. Things remained the same old, same old though, although they did put-up new signage in mid-2017. Pictured below in June 2016 as they awaited their new signage
21 Classic Boys New June 2016.jpg
Following the end of Soi Twilight in 2019, it merged with X-Boys to form the new Lucky Boys on Patpong 2