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SCMP Reporter

TOUCH down at Singapore's pristine Changi airport and you may be surprised to spot in the arrivals lounge bookstore No Money, No Honey, an essential guide to sex in Singapore, stocked alongside the many glowing biographies of the republic's patriarch, Lee Kuan Yew.

 Leave the airport and you may be even more surprised to discover you can now hop on a guided bus tour of the premier red-light district, Geylang.

 Much to the Singapore Tourism Board's (STB) apparent dismay, a chain of budget hotels has begun providing tourists and curious locals with an alternative glimpse of some of the city's more exotic sites.

 Passengers get to peek at brothels, call girls on street corners and a chain of karaoke bars owned by a jailed underworld loan shark.

 Tour members don't get to actually enter any of the brothels, but they may be informed that the current going rate is S$80 (HK$133) for half-an-hour and most hotels in the area conveniently rent rooms by the hour.

 Not surprisingly, the tourist board has declined to endorse the tour.

 'When you ask Singaporeans about Geylang they say it's dangerous and don't go there. But actually it's very safe,' says Terrence Ng, marketing manager of Hotel 81, which manages a chain of 10 budget hotels in the district.

 'Geylang is very colourful. You see brothels, temples and mosques all intermingled, providing a very strange contrast between lust and virtue.'  The area is rich in old Malay and Chinese architecture, antique shops, restaurants and food stalls. The adventurous may try turtle soup, regarded locally as an aphrodisiac.

 Geylang may well be one of Singapore's more lively areas, but by international standards it is still exceptionally tame for a red-light district.

 In fact, there aren't even any red lights. Brothels can be distinguished from other properties by the exceptionally large size of their street numbers.

  Even more curiously, brothels operate only on even-numbered lanes. No one really knows why, but everyone obeys the rules.

 Apart from the big numbers, it is difficult to distinguish a house of ill repute from an ordinary house from the outside.

 There are no pimps outside, and all the brothels obligingly close at midnight.

 In fact, it is relatively easy to drive through the area and not notice anything unusual at all.

 These days Singapore authorities appear to accept that a certain amount of prostitution is inevitable.

 Brothels are not licensed as such, but hard-to-get entertainment licences are required for any music or dancing and scrupulous health and safety checks are carried out. Vice squad officers also keep close tabs on red-light areas.

 And the tour, costing S$25 per person, has proved popular.

 'There has been a lot of public interest,' said Chu Poh Yong, a Hotel 81 director, despite the tourist board's reluctance.



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