If the blazing neon lights of P. Burgos Street in Makati testify to anything, it is the failure of Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim's clampdown on prostitution. He may have turned the once notorious Ermita into a virtual ghost town, but the owners of the bars Mr Lim once referred to as 'dens of sleaze and immorality' simply upped shop and decamped to a new venue.
If anything, Manila's girlie-bar scene has thrived since Mr Lim's crackdown. Instead of one red-light district, the city now has three. P. Burgos Street, a stone's throw from the glass towers of Makati, is the most popular, closely followed by the 'brothel bars' of Pasay and the upmarket karaoke lounges of Quezon City.
According to Mr Lim, it should never have come to this. The Philippines' economic boom, he believed, would spell the end of prostitution.
If anything, prostitution is thriving, says Cecilia Hofmann, head of a non-governmental organisation called the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women. It has become one of the Philippines' boom businesses, protected, she alleges, by corrupt police officers, military personnel, bent immigration officials and a tourism industry that needs quick dollars, even if they come from the pockets of sex tourists.
'Too many important people are making too much money from the sex industry to want to close it down,' Ms Hofmann says.
'The government pays lip-service to doing something about it but only because it is worried about the country's image abroad. The truth is, prostitution is one of this country's greatest little earners.' Most of Manila's girlie bars are fronts for prostitution. It is the same as in almost every other Asian capital: men buy scantily clad dancers US$7 (about HK$54) 'hostess drinks' before choosing which woman they want to take out for the night. The bar charges a 'bar fine', usually about 2,000 pesos (HK$590). The woman negotiates her own rate.