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Bidness is slow on Soi Twilight, but that may not be a bad thing.

Bidness is slow on Soi Twilight, but that may not be a bad thing.

Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. But then it is the slow season. There are not many tourists out braving the gauntlet of barkers lining Bangkok’s most famous street of male prostitution. But then tourist numbers are down in light of the recent, and still running, coup. Those numbers were impacted by the country-wide curfew too; even though that restriction on movement has been lifted, those who canceled their holiday plans are not rushing to re-book their trip. And gay sex tourists are staying away in droves thanks to General Prayuth deciding prohibiting the soi’s live sex shows would make everyone happy.

Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. The listless boys on stage in the show bars have gone positively comatose with boredom over playing to a vacant room. The most action to be found on the soi are bar signs on the fritz, blinking neon that was never intended to flash at times seeming to be the only thing moving on the soi. The rub-and-tug boys sitting in front of Bonny Massage have few potential customers to ignore. The cacophony of the soi once punctuated with calls of, “Show Now!” has dimmed; “No Show Now!” just doesn’t have the same cachet. It’s so quiet at times you could hear a fish fart. Which wouldn’t be surprising considering the flooded streets left in the wake of nightly heavy downpours. Which also shouldn’t be surprising because slow season is rainy season. And during the rainy season bidness is always slow on Soi Twilight.

In the gogo bars, there are no little fem boys screeching, “Tip me!” into customer’s laps while being plowed by a co-worker. Any members that would qualify for the Big Cock Show! are discretely tucked away, a not really all that massive bulge the only evidence that they ever existed. At Hot Male the 69 boys advertised out front is a testament to the Thai confusion over doing math, even if you count both heads. And none of those heads are involved in performing that act on stage for the enjoyment of fans. Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. And the penises that work there are in an equally flaccid state.

Time drags on on Soi Twilight, fortunately the drag shows no longer do.

Time drags on on Soi Twilight, fortunately the drag shows no longer do.

It’s the coup. It’s the curfew. It’s the specter of political unrest, maybe even a civil war. It’s the crackdown on corruption, that which once provided the city’s very life-blood. It’s the army’s decision to put a happy end to sex shows. It’s the slow season. It’s the rainy season. It’s the world economy still in a coma thanks to Bush & Company bankrupting the planet. Take your pick, blame who or what you will. It doesn’t matter. Because wherever you prefer to point your finger, the proof is in the pudding: Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days.

Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. In case you didn’t get the message. And the harbingers of doom and gloom are quite happy about that fact. Never mind that bidness is slow all over the country. Ignore the coup, the curfew, the lack of naked boys on stage doing what naked boys on stage tend to do. Because the real reason that bidness is slow on Soi Twilight is that the dastardly bar owners, those greedy bastards, are finally getting their comeuppance for gouging us all over the years. Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days because the prices bars charge for a drink have sent potential customers’ wallets fleeing for their lives. Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days because karma finally kicked in to screw bar owners who charged too much for you to screw the man of your dreams. Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days because Thailand’s sexpats are mad as hell and aren’t gonna take it any more. Or as Jabba The Butt recently put it: “If you want to go to these bars and pay them 380 baht for a drink and 700 baht for an off, be my guest. You certainly won’t have to worry about encountering me in any of them. I think I’ll just stay put and suffer along in the Sunee Plaza bars where most drink prices range between 100 to 120 baht and an off is usually 300 baht.”

Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. And the bar owners are busy high-fiving each other. It took raising off fees to 700 baht and drinks to 400 to keep Jabba and his band of merry men in Pattaya where they belongs. They had to stop putting on live sex shows while raising prices to unheard of levels to clear the soi of the sex tourists who’d try to sneak a peak at the shows for free and then begrudgingly nurse a single drink for three hours when forced to pay the piper. It took bar boys demanding a minimum of 2,000 baht for the shortest of short-time offs to rid Soi Twilight of the cheap bastards who enjoy complaining about rip-off prices more than they enjoy what those prices would give them. Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. And the bar owners couldn’t be happier.

Bidness is slow at Balls. But then when isn't it.

Bidness is slow at Balls. But then when isn’t it.

Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. At least that’s what you’ll hear. And it is during the middle of the week, during the middle of the slow season. As it always has been. On Friday and Saturday nights, not so much. The bars are hopping then. True, there are no live sex shows, but there are shows. They just don’t show what they once did. Or for the nostalgia inclined, they are back to putting on the type of shows that those who’ve visited Bangkok for decades remember from years ago. The shows they all claim to miss. The ones that promised more than they showed. And if you think bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days because the gogo bars are charging $12 for a drink, then you need to come up with a good reason why the beer bars of Soi Twilight that only charge 100 baht are slow too.

But don’t ask the gogo bars owners for help in solving that conundrum. They are too busy collecting big baht from the customers flocking to their establishments, the customers they target, the customers who still believe Soi Twilight and the sex it sells is a bargain at any price. You know, the customers you like to call newbies, uneducated, foolish, or stupid for shelling out that kind of money. Those would be the customers who return to their home countries, happy, satisfied, and spreading the word about the lush lads they scored in Bangkok for the price of a song instead of tales of how expensive Bangkok has become and how sad it is that bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days.

Bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. You can get a street-side table at Dick’s without squeezing through the sardine can-like scrum of elderly farang taking in the life of the soi rather than experiencing it because the latter just costs too damn much. You can book a massage boy at Bonny without standing in line or having to wait for the hottie you’ve been lusting over to finish with his other clients because those in search of a cheaper orgasm have moved to greener pastures. Even if those pastures won’t necessarily end on a happy ending. Because it is the cost and not the service provided that matters.

The gods finally listened and bidness is slow on Soi Twilight.

The gods finally listened and bidness is slow on Soi Twilight.

Now that bidness is slow on Soi Twilight, you can have the seat – and view – of your choice at any gogo bar on the soi because the bars are no longer filled with disgruntled sex-pats and cheap bastard sex tourists taking up valuable space while they sit and wallow in their misery over the money it cost them to be there. In the bars you get more attention than you can handle, and when a certain guy catches your eye you don’t have to rush to book him before some other customer calls him to his table for an hour-long grope session which he’ll tip the boy 20 baht for enduring. Maybe customers agree the prices are high on the soi, but rather than moan about it they seem to be intent on getting their money’s worth; the bars may not be filled but the customers they do have are all smiling and having a good time. Yes, bidness on Soi Twilight is slow these days. And it’s the best thing that’s happened on the soi in years.

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