Flick open the menu at the "Barbara" in central Bangkok and a picture of a blonde woman unwrapping her dressing gown beside a picture of fried garlic prawns tells you it is no ordinary restaurant.
"Truth is often stranger than fiction," the menu reads -- a better description of Chuwit Kamolvisit, owner of the coffee shop and adjoining massage parlor, than of the dishes on offer.
An accountant who graduated from one of Thailand's most prestigious universities, Chuwit has made millions since hopping a decade ago from the property business to the sex industry, one of the few areas unscathed by Asia's 1997 to 1998 economic crisis.
After a series of publicity stunts to expose corruption, a short jail term and a kidnapping he blames on bent policemen, the self-styled "massage parlor king" is plotting to become Bangkok governor in August elections likely to center on morals.
Alarmed that nearly a third of Thais lose their virginity before they are 18, the government is ratcheting up a social order crusade popular with the middle class. It is considering a 10pm curfew for teenagers and whether to shut nightclubs two hours earlier at midnight.
Chuwit has led sex industry employees on protests against the plans, which he says will ruin Bangkok as a tourist magnet. He dismisses establishment politicians as hypocrites.
"We don't need dinosaurs," Chuwit said. "And I know secrets about them no-one else knows. They used to come here all the time before, but then suddenly they became family men overnight."
A musty office in a warren of bedrooms at the Copacabana, one of Chuwit's six massage parlors, serves as campaign headquarters for his First Thai Nation Party.
A golden Buddha image sits on one shelf and on another is a photograph of five women in evening dress draped over a portly, moustached Chuwit sporting a flowered Hawaiian shirt.
Windows are plastered with "We love Chuwit" stickers that will take an anti-corruption message to voters in the hope of upsetting candidates put up by the governing and main opposition parties.
The central plank of Chuwit's policy is to cut police numbers drastically to keep the men in uniform busy fighting crime rather than pushing paper.
He is undeterred by polls giving him just under 5 percent of public support. Chuwit's nemesis, Deputy Prime Minister Purachai Piumsombun, who heads the government's social order drive, leads with 36.7 percent.
"I'm in the massage parlor industry. I clean bodies," Chuwit said. "And in politics, I'm going to clean some dirty people. I want to make Bangkok a city of happiness, a city of joy."
But Chuwit now wants to get out of the lucrative massage business because he has fallen foul of the police and they are making life difficult.
Undercover police had sex with five masseuses at a club last September and arrested them for prostitution -- dubbed the "get laid and raid" sting by Thai newspapers. Another club was shut down because it had more rooms than its license allowed.
A bribe would have done the trick in the past, but the police now only take them from others and shun him, Chuwit said.
Chuwit's relations with the police began to deteriorate at the beginning of last year, when they arrested him for sending men to bulldoze bars on land he owns in central Bangkok.
He argues a company that sublet the land evicted the out-of-contract tenants. The case is still pending in court.
Angry at his treatment, Chuwit told reporters he had been paying high-ranking officers 12 million baht (US$300,000) a month to keep his massage parlors up and running -- an accusation the police have denied vehemently.
Thais were stunned, but only because the claims were so open. Surveys showed 60 percent of the public lost their already low levels of confidence in the police but many believed Chuwit's comments would shame them into reducing corruption.
Then Chuwit disappeared, to be found staggering but unharmed by a truck driver two days later. He insists he was drugged and abducted, but police say it was just another publicity stunt.
"I was kidnapped by four guys. They said `stay cool, don't talk anymore,'" Chuwit said. "It was absolutely the police. They didn't ask for money, they just wanted me to stop talking."
The publicity caused a 70 percent fall in Thai clientele at Chuwit-owned Victoria's Secret, Emanuelle and Honolulu, but Hong Kong and Singapore businessmen still flock there, he said.
In the "good old days" Chuwit was making 30 million baht profit a month from each massage parlor, which all gave a full return on investment within two years. Polls show 27 percent of Thai men regularly buy sex even though prostitution is illegal.
But Chuwit's clubs, in a busy area of Bangkok housing embassies and investment banks, still receive dozens of job applications a day from budding masseuses.
Next to the account books on Chuwit's desk, one form marked "approved," came with the comments: "Average body, yellowish skin, good-looking, nice manner, beautiful breasts."
At 2,000 baht (US$50) for a basic jacuzzi and massage, a masseuse could make around 80,000 baht a month before tips for "extras," if she had three clients a day, Chuwit said.
A police sergeant's monthly salary is around 10,000 baht.
"You have to face the fact that Thailand's still a poor country. If people could earn enough, no one would sleep with someone they didn't know," Chuwit said.
"I tell the girls to save, but they have to send money to parents, aunts and uncles because they are the only earners."
With business down, only a dozen women with numbered tags sit on the red velvet steps in the "gold fish bowl," waiting for men to appear on the other side of the glass wall to make a choice.
One offers a tour of Copacabana's suites, some with three bedrooms with jacuzzis and saunas, that open onto a living room with large-screen television and a dining table.
She opened a door to a "special" room, with two giant four-poster beds and two adjacent bath tubs, and giggled, "I don't know why, but this room is really popular with policemen."
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