A reliable guy from Hong Kong

Last month, I met several nice guys while I was on holiday in Thailand, but there's a guy that I haven't written about yet who's worth a special mention.

After my massage at the Babylon sauna in Bangkok, I look round the complex briefly before joining my Thai friend B who's sitting by the swimming pool.

"How was massage?" asks B once I've pulled up a chair beside him.

"Pretty good actually," I reply, and I proceed to tell B exactly what happened.

"So no happy ending after all," laughs B.

"No, but I guess there was a bit of minor stimulation! Anyway, have you looked round all the facilities here?"

"Yes, all very interesting," replies B, "I been once before, few years ago, hasn't changed much I think. But why don't you go see if you find nice guy in sauna or something? Just to test of course! You could try to look at them, and see how they look back at you, if they smile or anything :-)."

"I suppose I could do," I say slowly, not sure exactly what's on B's mind, "will you come with me?"

"No, I seen already, happy here :-)."

B is always so coy when it comes to gay stuff, men, cruising, boyfriends or anything like that. Indeed, I'd love to have a deeper relationship with B but it never seems possible to make any real progress in that direction! We continue chatting for a while, but he seems more intent on reading his newspaper so I decide to go and have a look around the complex again to see what I can find.

After wandering around for ten minutes or so, I decide to try the dark steam room. As I said in my previous post about Babylon, wandering hands in that steam room can be quite good fun, and needless to say that means my hands as well as the hands of other guys! Indeed, after a few minutes I find myself standing next to a guy who's about the same height as me, and soon we start exploring each others bodies :-). I decide to moving round to stand face to face in front of him which, given the way he's tied the towel around his waist, will give me easier access! Even though I can't see what he looks like at all, after a minute or two I wrap my arms around him and give him a hug, which he reciprocates. After a bit more exploring with our wandering hands, we find ourselves hugging again, and we end up standing there for a couple of minutes with our arms wrapped round each other. It feels very comfortable, in the arms of a like-minded guy, and surrounded by the warmth of the steam.

"Why don't we go somewhere more private?" he whispers to me.

"Hmmm, yes," I reply quietly, "that would be nice :-)."

Emerging from the darkness, we're both dripping wet from the steam when we get our first proper look at each other. Of course, this kind of cruising is very much like a lucky dip, because one has no idea what kind of guy one will end up with! But it turns out that the guy I've been hugging is a nice Chinese-looking guy :-), probably in his mid-thirties. We smile at each other, and I get the impression that he's equally happy with the outcome.

"By the way, I'm GB," I say to him, making proper eye contact for the first time.

"OK, my name is C :-)," he says smiling back at me. "Are you British?"

"Yes," I reply, "how could you tell?"

"The way you speak!"

We chat a bit more as we head over to one of the areas where private cubicles are located, and it turns out that he is indeed Chinese, living in Hong Kong. Once inside, we lock the door behind ourselves.

The room is just the standard type of space that one gets in these kinds of establishments. The door and walls are all painted black, and there's a padded mat for us to lay on about the size of a single bed, conveniently located on a wide ledge which is at the same height as a bed would be. On the wall there's a tissue dispenser with a small bin underneath, and apart from that the only other thing is a hook for us to hang our towels on. Needless to say, the covering for the padded mat is plastic so that it's easy to wipe down if it gets dirty for any reason!

Hanging my towel on the hook, I stand there naked and give him a quick kiss on the lips before lying down on the mat. He joins me and soon we're hugging each other again, just like we had been in the steam room but now in more comfort and privacy. We lie there for quite a while, just kissing and cuddling and playing with each other a bit, and things gradually seem to be reaching their natural conclusion when he whispers something in my ear.

"I'm really enjoying your company and I don't want it to end, so let's not cum just yet!"

"OK sure," I say, happy just to lie here enjoying his intimate company.

"Actually, why don't we go and have a drink or something together, and then we could come back here later if you like :-)."

"Um, sure, why not!"

Although I think it's a nice idea, it seems like an unusual request. Usually in these kind of places, if one meets a nice guy and one ends up in a private cubicle, one enjoys each other's company for a while and then one says goodbye afterwards when one leaves the cubicle. I wonder briefly whether he doesn't like me after all, so that perhaps this is just an excuse to leave me in the bar so that he can go and find someone else. But of course, if that is the case it would be foolish to carry on playing with him because it would be likely to end badly somehow. So I decide to take the request at face value. In any case, he does seem like a very genuine guy so a drink with him would be nice :-).

Putting our towels back on, we try to re-arrange ourselves to make our recent excitement less obvious before opening the door and heading to one of the bars. On our way to the poolside bar I run into my Thai friend B who quickly tells me that he's heading home. Although I like B a lot, given that I've now got a new friend this suits me perfectly.

"So do you come over to Bangkok very often?" I ask him once we're seated at the bar.

"Not very often. Actually I was meant to be going away to China for the weekend with some friends, but they cancelled on me at the last minute, so I decided to come here instead. How about you?"

"No, this is my first visit. But from what I've seen so far I really like it :-)."

We order some drinks and chat for a while, and gradually we find out a bit more about each other. I tell him about my banking job, my boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, and I find out that he's got a sales job with a high-tech firm in Hong Kong. After about half an hour we both feel slightly hungry, so we decide to move into the restaurant for a bit of food.

"Actually I'm very impressed with this place," I tell C while we're waiting for our food to arrive. The best gay sauna in London is probably Chariots, but the whole place is focused on cruising so the bar and snacks they provide aren't very good. But the menu here is excellent!"

About forty five minutes later, we head back to find a private cubicle again to finish what we started over two hours ago in the steam room. We don't rush, and we have a wonderful time with each other. Afterwards, for a while we just lie there naked together, holding each other tightly while listening to the music that's being played on the speakers throughout the complex.

Oxygène Part IV by Jean Michel Jarre has just started playing and I'm really relaxing listening to it while holding C in my arms at the same time, when suddenly he has something to say to me:

"Actually, I think I should go. Sorry, but I have to catch my plane back to Hong Kong!"

He'd told me earlier that he was flying home that night, so although it seemed kind of magical relaxing there with C and listening to that tune, I accept that we need to get up because he can't miss his flight! Before too long we're heading to the locker room together.

We take our spare towels from our lockers and make our way to the showers where there turns out to be a queue. Eventually one of the shower cubicles becomes free. C is in front of me in the queue so he goes in, but he then turns and smiles at me and beckons me to join him. We shower together, washing each other's backs, before drying ourselves and heading back to the locker room to get changed.

"Shall we keep in touch?" asks C as we head down the stairs towards the exit.

"Yes, sure, that would be nice :-)."

It's not clear how our friendship can possibly develop given that we live on opposite sides of the world, but at least if we exchange contact details we're keeping our options open so I give him my mobile phone number.

"Thank GB, I'll send you a txt msg when I get to the airport so that you've got my phone number too!"

As we wander together down the street outside Babylon on our way back to the main roads, we spot a free taxi so we flag it down.

"You take this taxi," I tell him, "after all, you've got a plane to catch!"

"OK thanks :-)," he says, and we give each other a hug and a quick goodbye kiss.

"I'll send you a txt msg," he says, climbing in to the back of the taxi, "enjoy the rest of your holiday!"

I watch the taxi turn around, and then as it heads away from me I see C waving to me from the back seat. I wave back to him but very quickly he vanishes from sight and he's on his way.

Later that evening, I reply to his txt msg, and to give our friendship a chance I decide tell him my full name and personal email address. To my surprise, the next day I find that he's used the information to find me on facebook and send me a friend request :-). I readily accept the invitation, but after exchanging a few messages with him the conversation dies so the communication stops.

A couple of weeks later and it's the day that I split up with ex-boyfriend P. That evening, while I'm feeling very unhappy about the break up, I spot a missed call on my mobile phone from an international number that I don't recognise. Luckily whoever it is has left a message, but the connection was very bad and it's hard to make out what the voice is saying. However, listening to the message a second time, to my surprise I realise that C has phoned me all the way from Hong Kong! Immediately I try phoning him back:

"Is that C?" I ask when a guy answers.

"Yes, who is that, is it GB?"

"Yes! Thanks so much for phoning," I say, "it's so good to hear a friendly voice :-)."

"Well, I saw your status update on facebook saying that you'd split up with ex-boyfriend P, so I thought you'd appreciate a phone call!"

We chat for around twenty five minutes. He's quite right of course, on 'big event' days such as when one breaks up with one's boyfriend, it's really nice to chat with someone. He tells me that he'll probably be coming to Europe later in the year, so I ask him to let me know his schedule when it's decided in case we can arrange to meet.

"Anyway GB," he says at the end, "if you ever need someone to talk to, you can always phone me. I think I'm reliable."

The last sentence really rings true with me. Throughout my life, I must have met many thousands of people, but very few really reliable ones. Somehow, through the conversations and emails that we've exchanged, I think I can tell that C really IS reliable. After all the problems that I've had with ex-boyfriend S, ex-boyfriend R and now ex-boyfriend P, I could really do with finding a solid and reliable boyfriend.