Singapore has been a little island of ‘civilised’ heaven amid the muck of Malaysia, Indonesia and the surrounding wok-faced fucked-up countries. That means that ‘low-life’ in SG is like top end compared with surrounding shitvilles. I understand high-rollers wanting to pick low lying fruit hanging from Orchard Towers but down and gritty Geylang has always been my favoured knock-shop-land.
It had a closure last year
External Link/Members OnlyBut hopefully the beneficent SG dictat will be allowing free-range fanny to fulfil fancies once more.
I think news from exotic locations will filter through slowly. Who knows what changes covid-19 will have brought about? One possible outcome will be an increase in covert arrangements, quiet words with mamasans, or the quieter Geylang SW scene, as these flourish independently of lockdowns on walk-in knock shops.
Places like HK may see a bigger shift with the new authoritarian regime. Will we see closures of the bigger, dollar-drenched venues? Or will police go for the sweet — formerly unofficially tolerated — market scene? My guess is that the ‘yellow sign’ brothels will be first hit: easy to identify, not used by high-flyers and so lacking political clout.
A similar thing (hitting the middle tier) could have happened in SG but for two salient facts. SG, obviously, is not ideologically opposed to healthy capitalist prostitution. But it also leads Asia on vaccination metrics (
External Link/Members Only).
The biggest worry for Singapore I should think will be the number of non-citizen foreign workers. But the approach to covid & hookers is likely to be fact-based.