Quote Originally Posted by Dodger View Post
Either reopen the bars and other nightly entertainment venues and put the prostitutes back to work, or kiss Pattaya goodbye.
I think it is more complex than that. Suppose they permit the bars to reopen tomorrow and also serve alcohol. How many really will open any time soon? It is not doing the bars much good to reopen if there are hardly any customers to support them enough to at least break even and how many international customers are going to go to Thailand any time soon?

We also don't know yet how many bars even survived to be able to reopen.

Also, they may be looking at a recruitment problem. Many of the boys returned to their home provinces and have had no income whatsoever for months. Just to return to Pattaya they have to come up with the money for bus fare to return, have to pay at least a month rent in advance wherever they're going to stay, have to have money to eat, have to have money for personal expenses, etc. That will be at least several thousand baht. Where is that supposed to come from? None of the bars are going to pay the boys in advance and no apartments are going to let the boys move in without paying at least a month in advance, probably with a security deposit too.

And for the foreseeable future, none of the Cambodian, Burmese, or Laotian boys can even get into Thailand at all.

Again, I hope I am totally wrong, and I'm sorry to be so gloomy about it, but I believe that is the reality. I find it very difficult to be optimistic that the bar scene has much chance of returning to any semblance of normal within the next few years.