BATS

Well, I've now been to the Jakarta version of Maggie's in Beijing. One of the guys who was here on a previous trip kept telling us about this club called BATS in the Shangri-la hotel. According to him: "The women outnumber the men 5-1 and they're all hookers. You can't even make eye contact with anyone in there as they'll be cracking onto you straight away. It's a great place for a single guy". I was inclined to take this with a pinch of salt perhaps, but it was an interesting enough description to warrant a look.

So, Saturday night, me and the two guys from home that are still here took a wander out to this hotel to see this infamous club. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I got in, but it was disappointingly normal looking at first. Then you start to notice that a lot of the girls have that look in the eye, not "I'm out looking for a good time" but "I'm looking for a customer". As the night went on it was easy to spot all of the goings-on - young fairly pretty-looking local girls dancing and getting all up close and personal with these older western men, who in normal circumstances wouldn't get a look-in probably. Was sort of sad to watch actually, all these middle-age men chasing after some pretty little asian entertainment for the night.

Angelo, my project manager, kept pushing me to talk to a few of these girls - was almost like he was wanted the weekend status report to read "Got Kieran laid" :-P There were a few nice looking girls tehre all right, but I wasn't really in the mood to chat up a woman of negotiable virtue, and besides, Angelo was starting to piss me off. If I'm going to talk to someone I'm going to talk to them, and I don't appreciate being pushed into it. Eventually he sort of manoeuvred me into a spot where I had to talk to two girls or look really rude, so I decide "what the hell" and started chatting away (as you do). Revenge was mine though, as after a few minutes of chatter one of the girls leaned over and said "I think your friend is cute", pointing to Angelo! Was nice to watch him squirm after him pushing me to talk to someone all night!

Sure enough though, despite his insistence that "they're probably not all on the game", the topic of money came up near the end of the night, so our next task was to extricate ourselves and make our exits. All in all, not sure would I go back, but was an interesting experience!