It may be a factor that in China, the “happy ending” massage parlor (and its sister, the faux salon) are extremely common. Cities will have entire districts of them.
But it’s probably like any other ethnically dominated business, from Vietnamese nail salons to Indian hotels. Someone does it, figures out how to make it work, and helps their friends and family open similar businesses.
How to tell legitimate theraputic massage providers?
How can they survive ? by paying thai students piece rates.
If the Thai sits there all day and has no customers, they get $0. or perhaps a gift, enough to cover lunch and dinner.
I was talking to such a lady recently, I mean she went to Temple to pray on New Years Eve and Day , western, and will repeat on Lunar New Year too, to cover all bases… Apparently there’s a boom in the use of legitimate Thai massage…
They are also cutting in on the skin care, manicure , nails business, taking it from the chinese and vietnamese businesses who lose their staff to better jobs and can’t treat their staff so bad.
My SIL is a LCMT. If the name on the shingle has that title, it’s legitimate.
She works in a chiropractor’s office.
In their ethics class, they do receive training on what to do if a client wants anything sexual. It generally involves saying “You have 5 minutes to get dressed and leave this building, or I am calling the police.”
My first ever massage was in Vegas. After driving about 2,000 miles in two days, and seeing this huge billboard advertising Swedish Massages, I knew what I needed. So off I went.
I don’t think she was Swedish, but she was young, blonde and pretty. It was a great massage. She offered me more, I declined and she was a bit puzzled.
And that was my introduction to Swedish massages.
So technically speaking if you advertise “Asian Massage” and proffer up a tattooed former felon from Novosibirsk or an old babushka from Vladivostok, you are good to go, as both are clearly from Asia?
Heh heh. He said dissemination. 
There really are legitimate massage places in Thailand. But there are also the naughty ones. The “soapy massage” parlors are all brothels, pure and simple. But many of the regular massage places do not offer anything sexual. One giveaway that they do is if many of the masseuses are sitting outside, and they’re young and scantily clad. If you see a shop with some old frumpy mamas, those are almost certainly legitimate.
And of course, if it’s just “Thai traditional massage,” then it’s legitimate, because that’s done while you’re wearing a sort of Chinese pajamas. But at “oil massage” places, you can often get at least a handjob, because you’re all naked and getting rubbed everywhere. but not all oilies offer sexual services, so you can’t count on that.
Wow. If they’re working off debts to mobsters, I see no kind of happy ending.
a columnist (now ‘blogger’) for the SF Chronicle once (early 80’s) mentioned his encounter of a map of SF from 1870’s or so which noted not only the location of the brothels, but the ethnicity of the ‘girls’ in each.
Nothing new.
Professional paid massage with “extras” is generally classified as prostitution and is illegal most nearly everywhere. Just how zealously the police enforce this, varies widely from city to city and even from time to time.
One “conventional wisdom” on the subject is that police tend to crack down on those kinds of massage establishments during election campaign seasons when the Mayor is running for re-election.
Practitioners having the “CMT” label (or similar, like LCMT etc.) are not necessarily “legit”, although they more likely are. There are certainly workers in the biz who took a professional massage class and got their CMT certificates, fully intending all along to practice in happy endings.
I took such a professional 100-hour class (that was a bare bare minimum required to get legal, back several years ago) and got my CMT, but I saw others advertising in my area with CMT’s but their ads made clear they did more than just that. I saw one rather explicit ad (on Craigslist or some such venue) that specifically named the massage school she went to – it was the one I went to, which largely supplies the professionals for the Sonoma / Napa / Calistoga massage resort areas.
In that area of the world, there is also a substantial gay community, and a thriving massage business among them too. Gay men, I’ve learned, are much more casual about that sort of thing, and full-body massage for gay men, by gay men, commonly really means full-body, with no parts left untouched.
Note, by the way, that a CMT certificate is simply a cert issued by the massage school certifying that you’ve taken and completed their course; it also comes with a transcript that resembles a transcript from any college classes. It is NOT a license to practice, which one must then get separately, typically from the local police department after a background check. A CMT certificate is one prerequisite for getting the license, though, usually.
Apart from the 77 countries on this list:
I want to point out there is a middle ground- Asian style, where you can get a good massage and maybe a handjob, but no sex.
In nicer neighborhoods, these seem to be the rule. The ladies tend to be middleaged, and not wearing scanty clothing.
Well, I was just thinking in terms of in the United States.
The OP talks about “rub and tug”. What do you think the “tug” means?
Yes, of course. But in some of them, you can get more than just a 'tug".
Where I am there has been a curious renaissance in massage parlours.
When I was young, “massage parlour” was pretty well understood code for a brothel. Our main sleaze street was replete with them, as well as the suburbs. The legit masseuses got peeved about this, and then a set of well publicised busts pretty well drove the idea of fronting a brothel this way out. Indeed brothels became much more overt. This was a long time ago, when there were essentially very few Asian immigrants compared to now, and sex workers were almost all Caucasian. There was no association between Asian massage and prostitution. Indeed the concept of any sort of Asian massage at all was pretty much foreign to anyone’s experience.
Fast forward to the last five or so years. Our main sleaze street is again replete with massage parlours. All very clearly Asian in styling and ownership. Given the number and location it is very hard to believe they are all not offering “extras”. OTOH, there are also huge numbers of clearly legitimate businesses that have sprung up as well. Very clearly so - as noted above - with very open views into the premises, and clearly no opportunity for anything unexpected to be on offer. Again, almost all are offering various Asian styles, but Thai is well represented.
This does bring to mind a visit to Taipei many years ago. There were two noticeable establishments. Hairdressers and Barber Shops. Hairdressers opened during the day, and had large brightly lit shops with wide windows and lots of chairs in front of mirrors on display. They shouted “we cut hair!”. Barber shops however tended to open in the evenings, had little on display, if they had windows they were curtained, and they always had an attendant (male) at the door. It was very clear that if you wanted a quick trim, this was not the place to go. Curiously both hairdressers and barber shops used the traditional striped pole to advertise their business.
Must be a Chinese thing. I was warned about barber shops in Beijing.
but there was one barber shop here in Bangkok that actually had Viagra listed on the menu of services. I think if you had inquired into that, then the discussion may have segued into other matters. But that’s not common with barber shops in Thailand.
The common mark of a shady salon in China is a pink light.
Something for the weekend Sir?
This was usually code for offering condoms for purchase in a bygone time.
One suspects that the barber shop was offering little more than accoutrements for your expected weekend exploits, and was kindly offering some help. Well at least offering to sell you some blue coloured pills.
Most of the girls in those places are imported by sex trafficking rings. And when police raid them, they usually find an arrangement that falls somewhere between economic slavery and literal slavery.