All stories about "Wan Chai"

Yesterday we posted part one of an email from "Spike," whose now-defunct blog covered the goings-on in the vice-filled Hong Kong neighborhood of Wan Chai. Yesterday's entry was about the "freelance" prostitutes who approach you in bars and try to get you to buy them a drink -- today's Spike looks at the flashier go-go bars, where "model dancers" sell hundred dollar handjobs.

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)

Not far from central Hong Kong, the Wan Chai neighborhood has earned a reputation as one of the world's best red light districts. The area is much tamer today than it was in its heyday during the Vietnam War, when visiting American servicemen spurred a boom in Wan Chai's brothels and massage parlors. Although the area these days is far from the den of sin it was when it was immortalized in print with the 1957 novel (and later movie) The World of Suzy Wong, if you walk along the stretch of Lockhart Road just South of the Star Ferry pier at night, you'll see loads of ladyboy streetwalkers and semi-legal girlie bars. I visited Wan Chai to take pictures, check out the clubs, and meet the people who buy and sell sex in Hong Kong.