Surviving Orchard Towers

Where Florida has Disneyland, Paris the Eifel Tower and Japan the Para Para machines, Singapore has Orchard Towers. Think of it as our perennial winter wonderland, a vortex that just intoxicates you with the scent of vice, that you slowly find yourself faced with an addiction.

They call it the ‘Four Floors of Whores’, Singapore’s dark underbelly situated just at the fringe of Singapore’s famed shopping district. This incidental hub of vice has been the silent playground for the lonely accidental tourist and curious young men.

Beyond the squalor of pervasion, perfumed and sustained by the foreign sex workers, Orchard Towers is beyond just a carnal circus of travesty and a looking glass into the world of transsexualism. For the untrained and misinformed, this would eventually be a slaughter house for the clueless foreigners and locals alike. Who better to cleave the knives over your heads than the Ladyboys?

Thankfully for you, you have me and a guide on how to milk this place for everything it is worth. I give you, the guide on surviving Orchard Towers.

If you think this place is the congregation of filth and decadence, then you are probably right. I can’t deny that despite my growing approbation for the place. I am a sociologist by major and thus, it’s the underlying mechanics which governs the place that intrigues me, and maybe the occasional bar top dancing.

While I cannot deconstruct this shrine of lubricity and profligacy, I will offer you a look at humanity behind the masquerade of madness. Or maybe not.

Warning: Long entry ahead.

1. Ladyboys

If Orchard Towers ever decided to host the SEA games and needed a mascot, it would be a Transsexual in thongs holding a plank card that says, “I love you long time” and fine prints that read, “You, me, hotel, 100 baht”.

Nothing defines Orchard Towers better than our Thai imported Ladyboys, and if you collectively put them together, you would have enough silicon to qualify as a natural resource.

Ladyboys are also one of the funniest people to talk to if you do not have homophobic inhibitions or moral stamps to abide by. Beneath those mountains of silicon, endless legs and waist that will put anorexia to shame, are very real people with emotions, and a huge appetite for sex.

For nostalgic sake, here’s my Ladyboy test.

2. Racial Composition

All Orchard Towers needs is a front door security and you’d think you walked into a South East Asian embassy. While Thais make up the vast majority, you can also find Philippinoes, Indonesians, Viets and the occasional Malaysians. They all just need to wear soccer jerseys and you’d have yourself the Tiger Cup semi finals.

3. Tipping

While direct monetary tipping is not blatantly practiced, women working at the club earn tips through having the customer buy them a ‘ladies drink’, which are exorbitantly priced. A glass of fruit punch can cost as much as $18 and you don’t even get to keep the glass or get a complimentary handjob with it.

Buying a ladies drink is one way to keep the lady with you long enough for you to pass off as interesting enough for her to devote her next half hour sitting there with you instead of running off to the first Caucasian prey that steps through the door.

4. Club Romeo and Crazy Horse

Located on levels 3 and 4 respectively, these are the only two transsexual themed clubs. If you’ve been to Romeo enough, you’ll also realize that nothing else conceptualizes the analogy of a carousal corporeal skin fest, just short of an orgiastic coitus by the bar, or maybe there already was.

These are the flag-bearers of pruriency. Lewd, risqué and a carnal delight for the few who can swallow this magnitude of obscenity like communion on a Sunday morning. I know I can.

You have to remember that these are women with surgically constructed vaginas, with only a very small percentage of them still having waste meat hung between their thighs, but when you see the Caucasian men caress them, you actually wonder if they know what they are getting themselves into.

I once saw this Caucasian man finger one of the ladyboy’s pussy as if he had found the lost city of Atlantis. And that was in full view of everyone in the club. It’s amazing to see their face smudged with arrogance and pride. Do they even know what they just messed with?

Romeo and Crazy Horse offer us the closet substitute to the famed streets of Patpong. While you do not have side shows of women squirting goldfishes from their pussy or pulling out razor blades, you do get women (physically, not biologically speaking) dancing under neon lights with prop poles. And more often than not, you get a wardrobe malfunctions, like maybe every 10 seconds.

Personally, I prefer Romeo because my friend works there as a DJ and she spins great hard trance tracks. However, people at Crazy Horse seems so much friendlier. All the ladyboys there greet me by reaching for my crotch.

If you are a man and you really had to for some perverse reason, absolutely had to like all other normal women died of vaginal cancer, REALLY must fuck a transsexual, then you should at least know what to expect.

Disclaimer: I know this for a fact because I am very well loved by ladyboys, but largely because I did a sociological research paper on them when I was still at NUS.

Ladyboys practise discriminant pricing as if communism never existed. Mao Zhedong will flip in his grave if he ever knew this. I also generally believe this is a direct correlation to stupidity.

For starts, local men here pay anywhere between $100 - $150 for a fuck. Japanese or any other foreign Asian male would pay between $150-$200. For Americans and Europeans, the price starts from $200 and can reach as high as $400.

Did you just say, “What the fuck”? Yes, you read it right. That was my sentiments exactly. I didn’t understand why would anyone want to fuck a surgically made woman, when $150 would get you a decent girl in Geylang plus a good ass licking. Naturally, I thought this was incredulous and decided to ask my ladyboy friend on this.

Me: "Why do men want to have sex with you?"
Ladyboy: “I can suck cock better than any women.”

Best.Answer.Ever

5. The Patrons

For ladies going there, your best bet to not be mistaken for a working lady there, is to go in a track suit. Anything short enough to expose your knees is a flirt with an abstruse culture, with consequences beyond your ability to handle.

While you will not get molested, you might get harassed, but there is nothing a quick knee to the groin cannot solve.

6. The Women

While Orchard Towers is flooded with surgical vaginas, we must not discredit the other good fraction of real women who have traveled from various neighbouring countries. Some even look like they came straight from the village riding a bicycle.

I’m serious. Some of the girls look so bad, you wonder if the pub doubled up as a maid agency in the morning. Some of them have figures that would earn them as a stunt double for a Gummy Bears commercial and they have thighs so huge, you wonder if they are here to dance on poles or to kick a field goal.

Personally, I gather that the girls tend to look better the higher the bars are situated, but that’s just me. Taste is relatively subjective because I’ve seen girls, who only need to wear white with black polka dots to qualify as a cow, and yet are still being hit on by less discerning Caucasian males.

While it’s not impossible to find gorgeous women, who are actually being born with a vagina, they are few and far between. The only thing that entirely beats this in terms of rarity, are obese dancers and I wonder how they actually made it onto the plane here without being kicked in the face.

I’ve actually seen a whale working as dancer. Not impressed? These dancers have to dance on a circular table top with a steel pole in the center and to get up on the table, these women actually need a decent amount of dexterity to scale the table by mounting the chairs.

When you see how much difficulty some of the slim girls actually have doing this, you absolutely wonder how that fat fuck of a whale managed to get up without tearing a tendon or stocking, and all that while wearing heels. Impressed? I know I was. I was also convinced that, that was David Blaine in a 300 pound body suit.

7. The Clubs

While the clubs operate under a different name, they all cleave the butcher’s knife the same way when it comes to buying drinks. To begin with, the culture in all the clubs are the same. When you’ve been to one, you’ve been to all. The only breathers for novelty are the live bands and how little clothes the women wear.

There are about 3 decent joints there that are worth stealing a peek and they are spatially divided between the first, second and forth floors. There is no need to name drop. You cannot possibly miss them and it’s not like Ochard Towers is some mega mall that you will get lost in. From the front entrance, you can look up and see almost the entire place, and very often maybe a couple of panties too.

8. The Drinks

While buying drinks is a great way for you to get to know the girl, it’s not some mandate scribbled at the entrance. You don’t have to buy a drink for anyone, you just need the girl to be interested in you.

I can’t teach you on having game, because I was born able to miraculously speak Thai and they love me to bits, but I can teach you how to say ‘No’, when they try to peddle you a shot.

Girls will go round carrying a tray off Kahlua milk and tequila shots, which go for $11 per shot. Sounds reasonable? Not when you factor in that there is almost zero alcohol content in them and they have probably been diluted with tonic. If I remember my economics correctly, this is called, a Rip Off.

This is obviously made so because these drinks are meant for the ladies. And less alcohol equates to being able to drink more, which in finality rolls in the cash for the clubs. Hit the gravel and ring the buzzer, because we have a winner here and a true example of an astute business marketing, supported and made lucrative by idiots. In this case, the male population.

Usually, a simple ‘No’ will suffice, but at times when the person peddling these shots is either deaf or stupid (maybe both), because they cannot understand ‘No’ and they are not ugly enough for you to punch their face in, we need a different approach to get the answer across.

Taking that they are deaf since they cannot hear me when I say ‘No’, I generally proceed to work on a miracle, and this was an actual event,

Girl: “Buy a drink.”
Me: “How much?”
Girl: “$11.”
Me: “What? Does it come with a free handjob?”
Girl: “Buy a drink.”
Me: “Ermm no thanks.”

Girl: “Buy ME a drink then?”
Me: “Are you crazy? I won’t even buy me a drink.”
Girl: “But you can buy me a drink.”
Me: “I tell you what, I will do a trade with you. I will give you some serviettes for one glass.”
Girl: “Buy me a drink. Okay?”
Me: “Do you not understand me? I will give you these napkins and throw in a few ice cubes for one glass of tequila.”
Girl: “No.”
Me: “You obviously do not understand the dynamics of a barter trade, that’s why you never progress and you are still selling shots.”

She stormed off immediately after mumbling some expletives, which I believe to be some hex. It’s a miracle, I made the deaf hear again. I am one amazing human being.

9. The Bar Fine

If you don’t know what a bar fine is, then I hope you do not have a penis, because these are important words for men, like ‘steak’, ‘soccer’ and ‘abortion’.

A bar fine is what you pay the bar to buy out a girl’s time in the bar, which means you can take them out of the club. This is applicable only to real women. You do not need to pay the bar if you are taking a ladyboy out. Hell, they will even follow you out of the place like you had a $50 bill tied to your dick, by just simply winking at them.

Yes, you can actually take some of the girls out for something as ‘low’ as S$360. Do you know how many times for this amount of money will you get your ass licked by some Chinese national? I will question your stupidity on this but some people actually do. Morons.

If you really want to take them out, just wait till the bar closes and you can use that money to impress her by buying 50 Sausage McMuffins for breakfast.

10. Love

If you lose your heart there, you’d also probably lose half your pay cheque and brains. Just so long as you are fucking a real woman while doing the above, I will generally try not to laugh at you.

If someone tells you they love you and you feel like you might feel the same way, you might want to check with me if she’s told me the same things before.

While Orchard Towers serves as a sanctuary for the sexually deviant, there are places in there, which serve up a fest of disguised decency. It really isn’t that bad when you’ve been properly orientated. Remember, you can keep your dick out, just as long as your brain can co-function with an erection.