Gridskipper

A while back, I wrote about the go-go bar scene in Hong Kong's Wan Chai red light district. These palaces of neon and sex are seen by the locals as tourist traps rather than reliable places to score. After I published the post, I heard from a blogger named "Spike." His site, Spike In Hong Kong, chronicled his journeys through Hong Kong's underbelly. The blog's gone now, but Spike sent me some of the information from his archives describing exactly what happens inside these gaudy brothels — and also information on the more hidden "freelance" hooker scene in Wan Chai. After the jump, hear an expert's view of the Hong Kong sex scene. (photo)

In Wan Chai, there are a number of discos and bars that fill up with "freelance" prostitutes on a nightly basis. I put the word "freelance" in quotes because quite often, these women are brought over to HK by pimps. The pimps provide the visa, an airplane ticket, and a place to stay. In return, the women pay them off on a daily rate, which often adds up to up to three times the amount the pimp has laid out.

These women come from all over the world. Most are from Thailand and the Philippines, but I have also met women from Korea, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, and South America. I don't want to appear to be racist, but it's a fact that in Wan Chai, when you're in a bar and see women who are Asian but not Chinese, the odds are strong that they're "working."

Some bars are more low-key about it than others. The rule of thumb is that if the bar has commission drinks, the girls will go up to the guys. If you offer to buy a girl a drink (or she asks you to buy one for her), she'll request something called "tequila rock 'n roll." It costs HK$140, or US$20. When the waitress brings the drink, she will slip a little piece of paper into the girl's hand, trying hard not to let you see it. At the end of the night, the girl brings all the commission slips to the bar and collects HK$80 per slip.

That's how it works in most bars. One of them works things differently because it's basically been taken over by the triads. A year or two ago, some girl got smart and printed up a whole bunch of fake commission slips and gave them out to her friends. The bar got taken fo HK$100k or so before they caught on.

Back in the 90's, if you went to these bars, the women were mostly maids on their day or night off. If you were looking for a hooker, your basic options were the expensive night clubs, the rip off go-go bars or "a rub and a tug" at some dodgy sauna. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that if you wanted to get laid, it was cheaper to fly to Manila and stay in a five-star hotel for the weekend than have a single night out in Hong Kong.

I believe that the turning point was the Asian currency crisis in the late 90's. It was around '98 or '99 that Southeast Asian women started turning up in increasing numbers in Wan Chai on short-term tourist visas. Sometimes, these women were sex workers in their native countries; more often it seems they are poor, down-on-their-luck women looking to make some fast cash away from the watchful eyes of their friends and families. The good ones can make as much in a month as they can make in a year back home. The unlucky ones barely earn enough to pay off their pimps and may go home practically empty-handed. The past few years has seen a larger influx of the eastern Europeans and South Americans but I can't identify a "tipping point" there — there were always some, working in the nightclubs or prowling the casinos in Macau - but now you see dozens of them in the HK discos and seemingly more every week.

Because these girls are freelance to some extent, they have the freedom to say no to you. Some will just give you the cold shoulder, others might use the excuse that it's their time of the month, or that they just work off commissions. Each girl is different. Some are hardcore and strictly in it for the money, others are actually looking for steady boyfriends — either to get out of "the life" or for some form of stability in between working nights.

In terms of price, your mileage will vary. It can also change according to the time of day. The average price for Southeast Asian girls is HK$1,000 for short time or HK$1,500 for all night. I've heard of some girls going for much lower, while the non-Asians will try for double. The Chinese girls will say, "you should pay me more, I'm Chinese, not some Filipino." When some Thai girl says to me that she wants HK$2,000, I will always respond by saying, "you know I've lived here a long time, I know the prices."

Where do you take your new sweetheart? If you're not staying in a hotel and you can't (or don't want to) bring her back to your home, there are a number of "love hotels," nearby spots with hourly rates. The girls know them all and they don't require ID.

It's all illegal. True, in Hong Kong, prostitution is legal, as long as it is one woman who is a legal resident working on her own. "Living off the earnings of prostitution" — being a pimp — is illegal. And for someone who is in town on a tourist visa, work of any kind is illegal. So all of these girls are working illegally and they are liable to arrest and deportation.

The police raid these places on a semiregular basis. You'll know when they are there — the music will stop, the lights will come on, and the cops come in force to check IDs for illegal immigrants and overstayers. Every now and then they'll send in some undercover cops to work the bar and, if I recall correctly, in the course of their duties, courts have said it's okay for the cops to get a handjob "collecting evidence," but not full-on intercourse.

So that's the Wan Chai disco scene. Hong Kong also has a wide selection of brothels, escort services, saunas, expensive nightclubs, internet cafes, and streetwalkers. Commercial sex is widespread here and not in any way just limited to white guys.

Tomorrow: a look at the go-go bars along Lockhart Road.