pplover

It is an interesting topic. Personally I think there is a huge cultural gulf between what it means to be trans in Asia vs the West. To make it more complicated I think people are trans on a spectrum. It is controversial and I won't go into detail here but to put it crudely at one end you appear to have extremely effeminate males who are homosexual and want to live as women and at the other you have the masculine straight guys who are fetishists in wigs and dresses. In my view trans/ladyboys are basically effeminate gay men who find it easier to take on a female or third gender role instead of remaining as gay men because there is cultural acceptance of this role in Asian countries to one degree or another whereas there is not in the west. Western culture struggles with ambiguity so the men who in Asia would choose to be ladyboys end up mainly as either gay men or transwomen who actually insist that they are in fact women. In my opinion you are either male or female at birth with the exception of intersex people. The Thai view on this issue seems to be healthy and pragmatic - ladyboys, third gender, second kind of women. In my experience at least ladyboys don't insist they are actually genuine females as transwomen in the west do. What is even more destructive in the west are the straight male fetishists who make the absurd claim to be women and display aggressively misogynistic behaviour that many femininsts unsurprisingly object to. Why on earth would women want a straight male who claims to be female in their sports and places like toilets etc? This situation has become highly damaging to the homosexual transwomen who are now being lumped in with the delusional fetishists. Homosexual ladyboys are very unlikely to be a threat to women as they are totally uninterested in women. The idea that there is a a cohesive trans let alone LGBT community with a commonality of interests is false in my opinion. I will post a selection of YT videos that address the issue from different angles that you may or may not agree with or be interested in but illustrate how messy and complicated the issue is.

The museum is worth a visit. I did a tour on the 2 November with the ex boss of The Strip as my guide. It is small but well thought out and the displays are done to a high standard. It was difficult to find as there was no signage out on the Soi but it is the same entrance as Black Pagoda then up the stairs. I would definitely recommend a visit.

There are far too many of these creepy vlogging chancers jumping on the Thailand bandwagon now. Hopefully this guy will bail out back to whatever Dullsville he came slithering out of.

I agree with that. The Pound was absurdly overvalued late 90s and up to the 2008 financial crash. If you go back to older board posts or to sites like StickmanBangkok from the early 00s and actually read people then writing about costs many prices have not moved as much as you would have thought. People also forget that the late 90s and early 00s were unusually cheap because of a very favourable exchange rate after the 1997 economic crisis. I first visited Thailand in the early 90s and the exchange rate was 50B or so and I remember that beer was expensive then too if you were on a modest budget although accommodation at the beach was much cheaper than now. The early 00s were also fantastically cheap in places like South Africa and Argentina for the same reason. Even Australia was - I remember when I got AUD$3 to the Pound. I could live like a king. There were stories in the Australian media about British backpackers renting out luxury houses in posh parts of Sydney and living it up. Unimaginable now. The strong Pound was disguising the real underlying weaknesses of the UK economy and giving people a false sense of wealth especially when they travelled abroad. Having said all that the Baht seems to be overvalued to me so hopefully it will weaken somewhat.

Looks really good. I think captvinny was right about the old location. I liked it but it really felt like things were on the slide when I went there a couple of months or so ago. Hopefully the outdoor location will pep things up.

Thanks sydneyjohn57. A further point I would make is that prices on the Pattaya lb scene seem very reasonable to me. 1000 to 1500B short time without bargaining very hard on this trip. Inexpensive st rooms. No really annoying hassle for lady drinks anywhere. I actually prefer long time if the circumstances are right but only st this trip. As for hotels. I stayed again at the Pattaya Blue Sky on Soi 5. Great hotel. Best rooms I have had in Thailand. 1200B a night including all taxes. Wonderful roof top pool. Soi 5 is a relatively peaceful location. A minute walk to either Beach or 2nd Road and baht buses. And Soi 6 of course lol. Transportwise I took taxis from Suvarnabhumi and back. 1100B to Pattaya with Mike's Taxis. Original quote 1000B but emailed me to apologise and say now 1100B because of increased tolls. Very good service. Back I used taxi stand outside the hotel. Guys there spoke good English. 1200B but was a 4am ride and a very comfortable big car. Last year I took a taxi off the street from Sukhumvit to Blue Sky. 1300B. The driver turned on the meter and that indicated 1370B interestingly.

My LB friend who has no boobs commented wistfully that she thought that she would have had a lot of sex and a lot of fun if she had been drafted lol.

My recent experiences at Nana. First of all regretted not going into the new Mercury bar as a couple of really good looking lbs outside. It is owned by the same people who run Temptations and Cockatoo. Temptations was fine, no hard sell imo. Some attractive girls in there. Ended up chatting to the lovely Kally/Kelly. Good to talk to, good english. Picked up a lb from Charades. Can't recall her name (cringe - sorry). I initially thought she was a bit fat but in the flesh she was nice and shapely and really sweet. I was a bit shocked that there were only ten or so lbs in Charades if that. A good mix from femboys to amazons but hardly the glory days of 100+ lbs that I read about on the forums from 10 or so years ago. I actually wonder how long Charades will survive. The combination of a big venue with so few staff (and I was the only customer) just cannot be sustainable. I had the same experience in Obsessions a few months ago. Found an attractive lb in there but there were no staff, no atmosphere and only one other customer. Seems to be a weird business model at the moment. More and more lb gogos but fewer and fewer lbs. Doesn't make any sense. Didn't visit Casanovas this time but my last visit there was disappointing. Some good looking lbs but no atmosphere again. Just seemed dead. One other customer. Cockatoo on Soi Cowboy was a bizarre experience. It was the busiest of the lb bars but all the customers were groups of backpackers and girls. When I actually sat down and plonked a lb on my lap they all looked appalled. I was pretty drunk at that point so I just thought fuck you but in other circumstances it would have been uncomfortable. It felt like a zoo where tourists go to see the animals. Again no atmosphere. Far and away the best agogo in BKK at the moment is Billboards (GGs). Overrun with attractive GGs and customers and absolutely rocking but whatch your bill! This all sounds doom and gloom but at the time I still enjoyed myself. However going to Pattaya afterwards casts a harsh light on the lb bar scene in Bangkok. Basically Pattaya is in a completely different league. Utterly superior to BKK. The place is absolutely fizzing with energy and atmosphere. There are gorgeous lbs everywhere. The best lb agogo experience I had was Katoeys are Us in Soi Diamond. For some reason I have always avoided this bar before and bypassed it on the way to Windmills agogo but it was great. A small staff but every single one of the lbs in there was attractive and the atmosphere was fun and relaxed. The lbs were up for it. There were customers including a group of three western women who sidled in but were good sports. A very a very extrovert and attractive femboy went to keep them company and and they loved it. I barfined a beautiful lb (again I cannot recall her name. I have an atrocious memory for proper nouns). Next night I went up to Boom Baby off Soi Buakhao. I suggest that for those complaining that things aren't seedy anymore they head here. This bar has some really sexy lbs. And they are willing to do anything. This is probably not the best bar for wallflowers! I guess that the hidden away nature of BB means it can get away with a lot that more prominent bars cannot. Definitely looking forward to my next trip here. Soi Buakhao and environs seems to be the LB centre of the universe in Pattaya. Everywhere I looked I spotted really gorgeous lbs. Clubs, bars, street walkers Everywhere. Interestingly Pook Swan seems to have reopened as a lb bar and it was full of great looking LBs. This was later confirmed to me by Spy at Pook Soi 6. I had tried to winkle out lbs earlier in the evening in Soi 7 and 8 but nothing caught my attention. I would suggest Soi Made in Thailand is a good hunting ground as I spotted some absolute stunners floating around there, even a super feminine drop dead gorgeous boy! The diamonds in the rough scenario. eg a beer bar with 7, 8, 9, 10 GGs of various ages, weights (lol) and looks and one........... 6ft+ lb stunner dressed like a supermodel with peroxide blond hair down to her bum. Haha I love it! My final night I decided to cut out the bullshit and just head to Pook bar in Soi 6. OMG. The lb bars on Soi 6 seem to be really random in that sometimes they are heaving and other times dead. Pook was absolutely buzzing and crammed full of some of the most beautiful lbs anywhere in the Thai nightlife scene imo and experience. I hooked up with gorgeous Spy. It is a mystery to me how such an absolutely stunning lb has been working in a Soi 6 bar for so long. A bit like Shasha in Charades. Koi has also been around at Pook for a couple of years at least I think and is beautiful too. On this particular night the LBs at Pook just put all the GGs at the other Soi 6 bars to shame. Afterwards I headed for a more or less last drink at Sensations off Soi Buakhao. Again I had low expectations of this bar but on this particular night had a good time with another lovely lb. It is a strange place though. It felt neglected, unloved and poorly maintained. Half eaten food lying around, off draught beer etc. I wonder if it would have been better to have doubled down at Action St and to have tried to turn that little area into a LB hotspot with critical mass rather than get marooned on a side soi. Baby Boom has pulled it off well and imo makes a virtue out of its isolated location but Sensations doesn't seem to manage that so well. I ended up rambling on there a fair bit and got way off topic. My conclusion is that Pattaya is far more fun than BKK. It feels like a living, breathing organism with life and variety while the lb bars in Bangkok and the bar areas in general seem to be becoming like Las Vegas. A red light theme park for browsing but non participating, non paying western, Indian, Chinese and other package tourists and backpackers.

Also has Pook Swan gone back to being a lb bar? Looked like it was full of lbs when I walked past.

My impression at the moment is that Soi Buakhao is awash with some great looking ladyboys. Baby Boom, the two bars on the corner there with Buakhao had a few great looking lbs. Then there were a few gorgeous street walkers there too. Many bars down towards Beer Town had some talent too. Really, really good looking lbs. I was impressed. This area has the best concentration of attractive lbs along with Nana in BKK. I was also really impressed with Kayoeys r us in Soi Diamond. Not a single bad looking lb in there and a good atmosphere too. I didn't see Pattaya or BKK back in the glory days of the mid 2000s but I would say there is no shortage. I'd also make the point that I don't think prices are out of control. I wonder if some people have forgotten how to haggle. That or people are forgetting that they are a decade or two older than they were and have to pay accordingly. I find that even in my 40s I am usually noticeably the most youthful customer in the lb bars. ;)

Almost impossible to believe that a small lb bar with a collection of such stunning ladyboys could have existed. Never seen anything like it at any other bar. Liou has got to be the sexiest ladyboy I have seen. Moo a close second. Both of them in the same bar? Amazing. Only 10 years ago too but time goes so quickly. Sadly I imagine that internet hook ups will mean that great bars like this will never exist again as the most attractive girls will never need them.

It is a pity that Grab and Uber are merging. Now there will be less competition and so higher prices. I have always found Grab to be cheaper in Thailand with a lot more cars. However in Vietnam and Myanmar it is six of one, half a dozen of the other depending on the time of day. Their surge pricing seems not to fully overlap which was good. The main advantage Uber had in Thailand over Grab though was that Uber seemed to cope with English much better and recognise addresses and locations much more accurately. So with Uber you could type in the name of your hotel and it would recognise it whereas Grab would need the actual street address. My mate who speaks and writes Thai tells me that there isn't this problem in Thai. Hopefully Grab will sort this out. Worth mentioning that it is still usually cheaper to negotiate directly with a cab driver if you are going long distance.