In the early days when I was smitten with Boy and his brother I opened the purse strings and was very generous with tips for them. If I wanted them to stay sitting with me I knew I had to keep plying them with drinks. We soon worked out that it was better for the guys if I gave them a tip at the end, rather than buy them orange juice all night ; there's only so many they can drink. So after a few hours sitting with me I'd tip them 400-500 baht each. I even bought Boy a pair of shoes.

When you consider the basic wage is 300 baht per day, then I guess they would have been very happy with the tips I gave them, especially as they didn't have to really do much - how hard is it to sit there and smile?

I occasionally bought drinks and tipped their friends working in the bar. I imagine most guys would have picked up a few hundred baht every night -enough to survive.

Every time I went there I'd see more and more guys hanging around. I didn't know some of them were working at the gogo bars.

So come to think of it, some of those Vietnamese guys were probably earning more than some of the guys standing on the stage at Dreamboys who weren't being bought drinks by customers.