I see - from signs in Tops supermarkets, for example - that the concept of the "personal shopper" has come to Thailand. I met a man at Sooty's New Year's Eve party who lives in Bangkok and has taken this one step further - he has a personal mamasan, but a buyer's agent not a seller's agent if you take the real estate analogy.

This personal mamasan - an ex "fuck buddy" who is therefore familiar with the guy's tastes and preferred activities - can cut through the mamasan-in-the-bar's assertions about every boy in the stable "he do everything" and cut out the whole bar infrastructure to supply the guy's wants. He then has a collection of fuck buddies - a virtual harem - at his beck and call. When he gets bored with any of them he calls up his personal mamasan/shopper to get some replacements. Keeping the guy on a small retainer plus expenses is apparently much cheaper than paying off fees to go-go bars and putting up with demands for tips from pushy bar mamasans

Apparently it was all working very well up until the day the personal shopper had an encounter between his motorcycle and a taxi which put him out of action for a while. This coincided with the point at which my party friend had decided to renew some his collection. He told me of the horrors of taking off, in turn, four boys from a single bar:
"#6 - useless, couldn't get a hard on. Burmese"
"#18 - the only one left I hadn't had who didn't have a tattoo. Not really my type! Burmese"
"#19 - beautiful boy from Laos. Didn't like using his mouth for anything. Most disappointing"
"#35 - too passive. Just lay there and thought of Burma"

10,000 baht later ... (off fee 500 and tip 2000 each one). You can see why he likes his personal shopper.