Mr. Quek, an ice-cream vender, begins work at a little past seven in the evening, selling cones and wafer sandwiches from the back of his van on Lorong 14, a side street in Singapore’s red light district, Geylang.  The legal brothels have been open for a few hours by then, attracting a smattering of customers who have braved the tropical heat to satisfy a craving, but it is the women from China, Thailand, and Indonesia who work illegally that draw the crowds.  As Mr. Quek prepares for business, they do the same, lining themselves up along streets and in back alleys, decked out in glimmering evening gowns, snug jeans, and Cellophane tight miniskirts.  Men pass by; the women flirt.  Occasionally there’s laughter.  Perhaps a deal is struck, and the couple walks across the street to the Amazing Inn, which rents rooms by the hour. 

I learned about Singapore’s red light district ten years ago from a story in “Strait Times,” Singapore’s government-owned newspaper. On the front page was a bold headline:  "20 Armed Youths Smash up 4 Brothels."  It came as a surprise to learn that there were four brothels in Singapore, where “Playboy” is banned and, until recently, it was illegal to sell chewing gum.  (During negotiations for a free trade agreement with the U.S., the Wrigley Company lobbied successfully for access to a potential market of four million gum smackers.)  I had assumed that the brothels were operating illegally and the criminals—customers, women, and pimps—would be severely dealt with, perhaps even caned, a traditional Singaporean punishment in which a water-soaked rattan cane is delivered to the buttocks of an offender. 

All of the disapproval, however, was directed at the assailants who had disrupted a typical Singapore night of eating and drinking under a star-filled sky.  Their actions were a threat to public order, and to drive home this point the reporter quoted the most credible eyewitnesses to the attack, brothel keepers.  (Customers were apparently less willing to go on record as witnesses.) One brothel keeper, Johnny Sim, said of the attack, “They just ran in and started smashing the glass windows. There were customers in my brothel.  People were screaming in panic and trying to get away."  A competitor of his, William Koh, said that the men had used "vulgar words" while wrecking his place and that his "Thai girls were so scared that they did not dare to come out of their rooms for hours."  He didn't understand why "these people" had attacked his brothel, because he was "just trying to make a living" and never "disturbed anyone." 

Neighbors were also shaken.  Grace Phua, a “housewife” living in the Familie Mansions, a complex of condominiums near the scene of the crime, said, "I am shocked to hear that such a thing can happen in Singapore.  Until someone is caught, I don't think I will go out of my house after 10 pm.  What if I get attacked?"  The last sentence of the story was a plea by the police for any witnesses to the crime to contact Staff Sergeant Wong Lip Wing of the Central Police Division.  The police suspected that the thugs had been out to extort money from the brothel owners, something far more menacing than what went on in the buildings.

Intrigued by this story, the next day I rode the MRT (Singapore's clean and efficient subway) from the City Hall interchange, where I was staying at a nearby hotel, to the Kalang station, three stops to the east, and walked over to the scene of the crime from there.  I had a good impression of Geylang right off.  It was not the pristine Singapore I was familiar with, the one marketed on tourist maps which corral people toward shopping areas along Orchard Road or in the Colonial District.  The sidewalks of Geylang Road, the main thoroughfare, were teeming with men from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia who were dressed in overalls, sarongs, and blue work pants.  Newsprint, discarded cigarette packs, and beer cans had collected against the curbs.  At every corner there was a restaurant or coffee shop.  Under the awnings of these shops, seeking respite from a merciless sun, sat men—and a few tough looking women with tattoos and chipped red fingernails—who  were drinking coffee or beer and slurping noodles.  Under their tables scrawny cats waited for scraps of fish and shrimp.  In most countries, Geylang would have been a place to avoid.  No one, however, paid much attention to me, and, feeling completely unthreatened, I didn’t hesitate to wander about.

I soon found Lorong 8, the side street where the brothels which had been busted up were located.  The lorong was lined with concrete slab two-story residential homes.  Potted plants were at the entrances, and late model automobiles—Toyotas, Nissans, even a few Mercedes—gleamed in the afternoon sun. A couple of children in uniforms–white shirts and blue shorts--passed me on their way home from school.  I began to understand what the brothel keeper had meant about just wanting to make a living in pleasant surroundings.

I came to the brothels, which are in buildings almost identical to the homes I had passed, distinguishable only by larger than normal street numbers on their doors and discrete "Welcome" signs that also list business hours.  At this time of day, the brothels usually would have been open, with touts standing at the entrances encouraging passersby to come inside.  But on the day after the crime, their windows were all boarded over with plywood and lonely "Closed" signs were hanging from doorknobs.

More »