Geylang... Singapore's Dirty Little Secret!

From Johor Bahru (JB), it is a short and cheap (less than US$1) trip back to Singapore. So while I was in JB, Hakimi, my gracious host, and I went back to Singapore for a Saturday night in their infamous red light district, Geylang! I know what you all must be thinking, how could a country where it is illegal to chew gum possibly have a red light district? Well, I'm not sure how or why the officials turn a blind eye to this, I can only suggest that Asia is Asia and sometimes things don't make a whole lot of sense. It really is a peculiar thing though. While we were there we sat, watched and had drinks at an outdoor cafe type of place where lots of guys pick up girls. Here we saw a gang of policeman enter the scene. We thought they were there to arrest everyone. But as the case turned out they were just there answering a call about a drunken customer sleeping at the table! Crazy! They simply truned a blind eye to everything else around them.

Geylang, like everything else in Singapore, has a very methodical setup. Each street has a different type of girl on it so that you can choose your taste accordingly. One street for Indians, another for Vietnamese, yet a different one for Thai, and the list continues not short of transsexuals, Chinese, westerners and all others in between. Some streets the girls line up, other streets (like the transsexual street) they are hidden away. On these streets, girls are not permitted to see them. I found this quite odd because if you were going to sell yourself, who does it matter who you sell to? But I guess it does in some circles. At each place they would not even talk to me, I always had to send Hakimi in to do some reconnaissance work for me to find out the answers to our many questions. I think he might have enjoyed this part.

We stayed all night and took the first train back to JB in the morning. It was an exhausting night in a crazy place and such a surprise being in Singapore! One more experience under the belt :)

For more pictures, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/find.barlow/GeylangSingaporeSDirtyLittleSecret#