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How Can We (Re-)Activate The Board?


elef

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When the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended, I thought ... "hooray, no more wars." Was I ever wrong. :(

 

I remember when I got to Berlin, a couple years after the Wall came down, one of the more popular t-shirts was (and I might have this a little bit wrong): "Ich will die Mauer wieder bauen, aber noch zehn Meter höher" which means I want to build the wall again, except 10 meters higher. Or something close to that.

 

And at that point one of the world's greatest economy's had taken a nosedive in assimilating all of East Germany into the West (comparable it would be like the US assimilating all of Mexico, and giving welfare to everyone). Took a huge toll on everything, and a lot of pessimists thought it would be impossible to really rebuild.

 

Took awhile, but hey. It's always interesting how things pan out.

 

In a way I'm glad I didn't experience Thailand 10 years ago and have no benchmark to compare it to other than the last couple years, as a fucking tourist. :)

 

Cause I like it.

 

Can't wait to go back.

 

But Shibuya is right (good name btw), the world is a little fucked up.

 

But when wasn't it?

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...

 

But Shibuya is right (good name btw

 

 

 

Shibuya (accross Yoyogi park) in Tokyo is where I had lived for 3 years. Something like Silom in Bangkok but more.

 

The name stands for "shibu" = grass field. As in "Toshiba", which means "eastern field".

 

I asked my Japanese friend once, he was not sure. Could be "ya" is like for a shop. Not sure, maybe "shop in the field".

Indeed, it is famous shopping district. Many love hotels there (short time but bring your own).

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In a way I'm glad I didn't experience Thailand 10 years ago and have no benchmark to compare it to other than the last couple years, as a fucking tourist. :)

 

i first visited Thailand in 2000 and had no idea of what could be found in sexual ways,i just thought it sounded like a nice country to visit.

but i soon learnt what was available.

i joined this board after 3 visits to Thailand but i was still a total newbie compared to what i read here.

i probably asked questions time to time but time fogs the mind and besides i tend to visit an area which is not popular with others.

i was probably thought of as stupid by some but i did see info from time to time which was useful in the long-run.

i had never about NEP,Soi Cowboy,Edens,Lolitas or any of those kind of places.

but i read about them and soon ticked various places off my list to visit.

 

ST/LT prices are different from Lady to lady,drink prices vary from bar to bar.

my friends bar charges 300bt for a BF,the same as in 2000,it charges 70bt for a beer,the same as in 2000.

but the bar next door charges 500bt for a BF and 120bt for a drink,so it's difficult to give advice on those kind of matters.the only downside now is that due to the weakness of Sterling against Baht it is now more expensive in real terms.

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I think the internet plays an extremely important role. Around 2000 and the years after the i-net was very slow and there where almost no videos about LOS available, neither did the mainstream tv in the West talk about P4P in LOS.

Which means entering a Gogo Bar was a completely new experience for most travelers. And outside a few forums, there was no information for a LOS P4P newbie available.

 

I think at that time guys just needed to talk about their for outsiders unbelievable experience you could have in a Gogo bar (girls dancing nude, pussy shows, e.g.) and afterwards in your hotel room. And it seems that the P4P scene in the 1990s was much more adventurous, much more "anything goes" in any direction, legal or not even for Thai standards.

Some might know Nick Nostiz's 2001 book about the live of people around the bar scene: Patpong: Bangkok's Twilight Zone in which he describes a completely different bar scene compared to today. Today everything seems to be much more sanitized, with all the closing times, much less nude bodies and nearly no sex shows or dance contests, e.g..

 

Today you can check out the bars on Youtube, public tv brings reportages from Patty frequently, even Hollywood uses Soi Cowboy for movie settings e.g..

Nothing is really new for a traveller anymore. Travelers can check the beer and barfine prices in advance, selected their hotels after reading dozens of reviews, check out which subway train to take via smartphone apps and use Google maps to find every "hidden" bar within 3 minutes, after they read about it online e.g.

 

The adventure is partly gone, due to the internet. We almost always know what to expect, where to go, how to communicate and behave and act in most situations. This is completely different to the 1990s when we travelers had only a vague idea what to expect in any Asian city.

 

And the younger kids communicate much faster today in real-time via Facebook, chat and smartphone. A backpacker goes to a bar, shoots a 3 min video and sends it to his friends back home the same night. 10-15 years ago, if you were lucky someone told you stories about BKK, which sounded to good to be true anyway...

 

Today it is almost impossible not to know about Farang P4P before your first trip, even without any preparation.

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'Broke, miserable and horny' sounds like a pretty good summary of my 'morning after' experience pretty much every time I've come back from LOS. :yikes:

 

Of course, I'm sure I wont live the same 'feast-or-famine' lifestyle when I get my golden nugget in 2014, handing out crisp 100-baht notes to everyone who smiles at me .... :hmmm:

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The mid 1980s was when things were even more open the 1990s, a time when virtually all gogo bars were topless - if not totally nude. When "fucking shows" went on several times a night, DJs blew pot smoke into the a/c when they played "Smoke on the Water", and the shower shows first arrived. That was before the internet, so imagine a newbie walking into a bar for the first time and seeing all that going on.

 

I thought the late '90s were already a lot tamer. Then Purachai came along and nearly destroyed the scene. The world's economy made it even worse, though some bar owners deciding to increase the drink prices dramatically didn't help either.

 

The bar scene is quieter now, and tourists are poorer. Fewer tourists means less interest in a nightlife board.

 

 

p.s. I edited a tourist magazine in the late '80s and knew all of the hotel GMs and the bar owners too. Got a lot of nice freebies back then. :)

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The mid 1980s was when things were even more open the 1990s, a time when virtually all gogo bars were topless - if not totally nude. When "fucking shows" went on several times a night, DJs blew pot smoke into the a/c when they played "Smoke on the Water", and the shower shows first arrived. That was before the internet, so imagine a newbie walking into a bar for the first time and seeing all that going on.

 

I thought the late '90s were already a lot tamer. Then Purachai came along and nearly destroyed the scene. The world's economy made it even worse, though some bar owners deciding to increase the drink prices dramatically didn't help either.

 

The bar scene is quieter now, and tourists are poorer. Fewer tourists means less interest in a nightlife board.

 

 

p.s. I edited a tourist magazine in the late '80s and knew all of the hotel GMs and the bar owners too. Got a lot of nice freebies back then. :)

 

Hitting Bangkok early 1990s without the internet to publicise things was an experience. Finding a hotel on the ground was heard of but about as far fetched as getting kidnapped at the airport or sold into slavery. All truth and urban rumours intertwined. The dark side of Bangkok was little known about and to be truthful, few could find Thailand on the map and even fewer knew how to get there, or even if you could !

 

Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing could ever have prepared you for Bangkok. The bar in Star Wars was more like your local than the bars in Bangkok. As Oz commented on in Auf Wiedersehen Pet "Sex is in its infancy in Gateshead", well, few outside the Playboy mansion could have experienced the hedonistic nature and sheer availability of sex. Compared to wherever you came from, sex was everywhere.

 

When you returned, you half wanted to tell people and half wanted to keep it a secret, just like the map in The Beach two decades later. Those you did tell never believed you or at least didn't at first. You never told women of course. Forums on the internet were the ideal place to express this pleasure in private and most important, anonymously.

 

I remember hearing about someone having been to Thailand. That would be around 1986 or so. This guy had a baby with some Thai girl and he sent money to her. I thought that strange but is was not until a decade later that I found Thailand for myself and some years after that before I lived there. Even later was the realisation of just what it meant; the absent fathers (biological or not), hookers and johns, love and lust.

 

I loved what it was. Sometimes I don't really like what it has become. It is still better than the alternatives but like your youth, the Thailand you knew years ago has gone and is never coming back. The forums you knew have suffered the same fate and the glory days of online forums about Thailand are over.

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