Sex, spas, sleaze: what Orchard Road of Singapore hides in plain sight

In one of them, located beside the security desk, a middle-aged lady wearing a lime green halter top and beige miniskirt performs a series of jumping jacks in full view of passers-by.

A bar hostess outside a bar on the third floor of Lucky Plaza in Singapore. Photo: C Lee

Her eyes dart occasionally at male tourists, cajoling them to join her. For those who do stop by to chat, she gesticulates towards a partitioned room behind her and indicates that "it's safer to talk inside" while pointing to the CCTV cameras near the unit.

On the floor above, a group of toddlers run amok at the lobby of Concorde Hotel while other hotel guests read, dine and natter.

Orchard Road, the barber's pole of capitalism in Singapore, is a conglomeration of contemporary urban lifestyle cliches that is home to world-renowned hotels, Michelin-star restaurants and global brands such as Hermes, Cartier and Apple.

Yet, beneath this well-curated veneer of glitzy malls and high-end living lies a thriving sex trade catering to tourists and locals alike. In a country with strict anti-vice laws and legalised brothel areas, the existence of a covert sex trade in a high-end shopping district touted as the "Milan of Asia" is something of a social anomaly.

"I've worked at Orchard Road for more than 30 years and till today I get tourists who get so surprised when they see the seedy side of Orchard Road," says a 63-year-old tailor at Orchard Plaza who asks to be known only as Richard. "As long as there are desperate men around, there will always be sex even in the cleanest of places - you can be 100 per cent assured of that."

The vice central of the shopping belt is Orchard Towers, only a short walk from the Shangri-La Hotel and St. Regis where US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stayed, respectively, for their recent summit.

Bar hostesses look on from a corridor in Cuppage Plaza. Photo: C Lee

Built in 1975, the 18-storey office building is notorious for its assortment of girlie bars, massage parlours and seedy nightlife that occupy four storeys, earning it the nickname "Four Floors of Whores".

A visit to the building after midnight on a Friday is illuminating. Four law enforcement officers attend a report of disorderly conduct outside a hostess bar on the second floor, while less than 20 metres away, three massage parlours continue to operate with scantily clad women on high stools calling out to male passers-by.

Outside the building, taxi drivers roll down their windows and offer to take male tourists to places where they can have "extra fun" depending on their budget.

But if Orchard Towers is an open secret, there are many other lesser-known spots of sleaze along Orchard Road, most of which coexist quietly, if somewhat bizarrely, with family-friendly services.

At Far East Plaza on Scotts Road, throngs of families tuck into hotpots and sizzling hotplates at a Muslim food place named Puncak while three massage parlours located just behind the eatery carry on with their business having Vietnamese and Thai women proposition men.

University undergraduate Nasruddin Islam Ramli, 26, frequents the eatery with his grand-aunt and brothers and he says that there is a mutual respect for the space that allows everyone to coexist.

"It's a well-known secret that there are spas here that offer sexual services, so I know which routes to take and what corners to avoid when coming here," he says.

A bar hostess on the third level of Lucky Plaza. Photo: C Lee

"The women from the spas don't approach couples or families. So as long as that level of respect is there, I think most people don't mind that the sex trade is a few metres away."

The tilt to sleaze is partly due to the low rental rates in this mall, according to a report in The Straits Times newspaper last month, part of an overall slump in visitors experienced by malls along Orchard boulevard.

A study this year by real estate service provider Savills Singapore revealed retail vacancy rates of 8.4 per cent at Orchard Road, which is higher than the island-wide rate of 7.4 per cent.

The Orchard Road Business Association declined to comment.

The exodus of retail and F&B shops are making shop owners desperate enough to rent out their units to just about anyone willing to take them.

But it is not just the low rental rates that fuel the surge in vice. It is also the promise of big money in the human-trafficking trade.

Earlier this year in nearby Lucky Plaza, a cashier was brought to court for pimping out bar hostesses at his pub. By paying a S$300 (HK$1,700) "bar fine", customers were allowed to engage in sexual services with the hostesses from the Philippines.

For now, most of the Orchard Road sleaze occurs in the older malls, such as Ming Arcade, which is across the road from Orchard Towers.

Rows of women line the shops located in the upper levels of the building after dark, approaching men for "happy massages". A 42-year-old shop owner from the same building who asks to be known as Mr Cheng says that vice is unavoidable given the reputation of hostess bars in the building.

A lady at a massage parlour in Orchard Towers. Photo: C Lee

"You have army boys to older men coming to Ming Arcade for cheap beer and good fun so it's a place that everyone knows about. If you want to clean up the place, you need to start with the bars, but the reputation of the building is already gone so who will want to take up the unit even if you do away with the bars?"

With expat enclave Forum The Shopping Mall, known for its child- and family-friendly outlets, located just across the street, Cheng predicts the days of old Orchard malls as places of vice are numbered.

"There are plenty of older shopping malls around Orchard that will probably not stay around for long. This is prime land so I'm sure there will be plans to revamp the space in the next few years," he says.

For the regular tourists, these malls are usually not on their itineraries. But some continue to thrive by offering bespoke, targeted sexual services for foreigners.

At Orchard Plaza, another ageing building, the Singapore sex trade forms what local netizens refer to as a "Bermuda triangle" of vice, along with the Concorde Hotel and Cuppage Plaza, an enclave popular with male Japanese tourists.

Brightly lit sex shops brazenly advertise their wares, offering the ladies who bring Japanese clients a small commission.

Bar hostesses outside a karaoke lounge on the fourth floor of Cuppage Plaza in Singapore. Photo: C Lee

Just across the street is Cuppage Plaza, also known as "Little Ginza" for the Japanese bars and restaurants that cater to a specific clientele.

Vietnamese women and Filipinas greet throngs of Japanese salary men at night with loud exclamations of "Konbanwa", Japanese for "good evening".

Hostesses in skimpy tops strategically position themselves beside the escalator landing areas to lure men into the bars. Most of the bars here cater strictly to Japanese men.

Over in a famous five-star hotel off Orchard Road, the clients are mostly Caucasian men. The hotel bar turns a blind eye to the Russian and Thai women who enter after midnight, sidling up to men waiting for company.

By the time the clock hits 4.30am, many have left the bar to proceed to the rooms above, or to grab a cab at the hotel's lobby area.

A former police officer who used to patrol the Orchard Road belt says it is common to get reports of altercations and incidences because of the sex trade.

"The irony is that you don't have to look far to notice the sleaze that takes place along this stretch of road," he says, asking not to be named. "A walk up the wrong flight of stairs or missed turn at a corridor of a notorious mall and you'll see what I mean.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2018. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.