What I liked about this particular woman was that despite being one of the better-known hookers in town she was brutally honest about it. I think she simply had no reason to lie to herself or anyone else. This suited me at the time. I had no wish to corrupt a poor local girl with my white man’s money (or lack of). This woman had been corrupted long before I arrived on the scene, she was a bad as they come. I guess this eased my conscious—she knew she was a prostitute and she didn’t care what anybody thought. She was as willing to take from me as I was from her.
This woman had a mouth on her that never stopped. She cursed worse than me, drank more than me and was a lot nastier than me. She had a scorpion tattooed on her thigh and it suited her. She also dyed her hair blonde and idolised Paris Hilton. For this story I’ll call her Paris, she would enjoy it.
I met Paris on the beach one day. She was with a customer and was demanding that he pay to get her nails done. The customer was cowering under Paris’s tongue and she was enjoying the crowd watch her rip into him. It was funny and I was laughing along with the rest of the people sitting around. Paris was being a vicious bitch and the poor guy was not only embarrassed that the woman he was with looked so much like a hooker but was also embarrassed that she was treating him like an idiot Westerner who would hang out with a hooker.
Paris noticed me watching and when the customer got up to buy her something, we exchanged a few words. She asked where I was from and where I lived. “Australia and Seminyak,” I replied flippantly. I actually lived in a small, sparse hotel room in Kuta, but I had learned it was better to keep my address a secret. She smiled when I said I lived in Seminyak and I should have taken the hint. When her client returned with her gift, Paris went back and sat beside him and resumed her abuse.
The next time I saw Paris was as at a well-known pick-up spot in Kuta. I would find out later that she hung out all the time but it didn’t bother me, she was what she was and I was looking for company. I entered the club, walked over to the bar and ordered a drink. Paris noticed me and promenaded over. She had a walk on her that screamed, “I’m a hooker and proud of it”. I loved the honesty in that strut, and decided to take her home. She marched up in her high heels and mini skirt, placed a hand on my shoulder and introduced herself. “I know you, we met on the beach. I noticed you looking at me, buy me a drink.”
I refused. I had just arrived at the club and I had a budget, so, despite my attraction, I wasn’t about to be told that I had to buy a drink from the first girl that came up to me. “No thank you,” I said, and turned away from her and went back to cradling my beer by the bar.
Paris smiled and laughed knowingly. “You will buy me a drink,” she said and then she walked off into the crowd.
I wasn’t certain Paris would return but I was willing to take my chances. I waved her goodbye, turned my back on the bar and settled in to watch the throng of drunken tourists cavorting around the club. She returned ten minutes later with a man in tow. The guy looked like a tourist of the European variety. He was well dressed and handsome in a parted-blonde-hair kind of way. He ordered Paris a drink and she gave me a smart-arse smile.
I ignored her and her would-be companion. I was uncomfortable so I scanned the crowd and tried hard to look like I was scanning the crowd. Paris accepted a colourful drink from the milk-toothed tourist then she turned her back on him, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hello.” She then lifted her cocktail to her brightly coloured lips, took a sip and looked at me over the rim of her glass waiting for me to reply.
I took a good look at her. She was sexy in a painted-up-prostitute kind of way. Pointing to her companion with my eyes, I asked, “What about him?”
Paris trickled laughter and poked at the ice in her cocktail glass. “I’m not interested in him, I’m interested in you. He’s here to get you jealous and …” Paris held up her drink like a pro “… to buy me this.”
I looked over at Paris’s companion. He seemed nervous. I could tell he was uncomfortable with the scene and with my presence. I told Paris I didn’t care about her companion and I was certainly not jealous. “Stay with him if you like. Have another drink, you will be coming home with me,” I said with a confidence that only comes with alcohol.
Paris smiled, flicked her hair then placed an arm about my waist. “I knew you wanted me,” she said happily. The milk-toothed tourist fled the scene and Paris and I finished our drinks and walked out of the club together.
When we arrived at my home I could see Paris was disappointed. Seminyak residents are considered wealthy and I lived in Kuta and had unintentionally conned her on the beach.
She walked inside, dumped her purse on a table, turned to me and said, “Your house is shit. You live in Kuta and Kuta is shit.” Then she tore into me about my living conditions.
I ignored her and got myself a drink, sat on the bed, and let her ramble on for a few moments. When I’d had enough I said, “Fuck off and find somebody else, I’m sure your little friend with the blonde hairdo will take you home.”
She thought about it for a moment, then walked to my bar fridge and pulled out a Mix Max vodka mix. She opened the drink and sat on the bed next to me. “You’re very lucky. Normally I wouldn’t sleep with you,” she said. I don’t know why but I found her nastiness intriguing and funny. Perhaps in the same way you might find it intriguing and funny to put a scorpion in your bed, and after our first night together I knew I would keep Paris around for a while.
In the end we had sex, I paid and she left. It should have been a perfect relationship by Kuta standards, but it didn’t end there. We started a nasty boots and all relationship, and yes, of course, it did sometimes involve payment, but the sex was good and I enjoyed the repartee. She would visit about once a week, she would start to complain and I would threaten to kick her out. And then we would fall into bed and have crazy sex.
Paris was a bitch but she had a deep respect for money, so every time she came to visit she would complain about the security at my hotel.
“Fucking Balinese. I hate the fucking Balinese,” she would say as she stormed through my door, threwing her clothes on my bed and helping herself to the contents of my fridge. I was intrigued. I thought the Balinese were wonderful people who were above doing anybody harm so I asked her why she hated the Balinese so much.
The hotel where I lived was owned and staffed by Balinese; this meant the security were also Balinese. The problem was that the Balinese security would not let Paris into the hotel complex unless she paid them, and the problem we had with this was that I did not always pay Paris. We’d got to know each other over a period of time and for whatever reason we enjoyed each other’s company. Paris would ask for money if she needed it, but on many occasions she let it slide. The security would not take this as an excuse however; they expected Paris to pay a fine anytime she came to my hotel.
I wasn’t happy with this situation and I took to meeting Paris at the front gate and walking her out when she left. This solved the problem to some extent but after more discussion with Paris I learned the practice was rife throughout Bali.
Anyone working in Bali who is not from Bali, including prostitutes, must carry an identification card, and when a person is found working without one of these cards they are imprisoned by the local Balinese Banjar. They will remain incarcerated until they come up with an acceptable bribe. Unless a prostitute is with her client, security at most hotels will ask for this card when a prostitute tries to enter, to get her card back the prostitute then has to share her takings with the security.
Security in Bali is therefore a very lucrative job and the Balinese keep a very tight rein on it. There are frequent brutal and violent power struggles over security positions that tourists don’t see. A lot of these battles stem from the clubs, but I have heard of them happening in the hotel environment. Most security at the hotels and nightclubs are Balinese and most working girls are Javanese or at least from outside Bali—this is slowly changing on both sides but mainly it’s stil
l the case. These Javanese working girls are exploited ruthlessly by Balinese security.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
An interesting phenomenon, which was recently exposed in the fascinating film documentary “Cowboys in Paradise”, is the large number of Western and Japanese women who come to Bali seeking the attention of young men, both Western and Indonesian. Some of these women seem to have a bee in their bonnet about Western men living in Southeast Asia but they believe their own actions are beyond reproach.
I was once accused of paying Indonesian girls for sex by a forty-year-old Western woman who was sleeping with male Western tourists in their twenties. This accusation was levelled at me while we were sitting in a large group of people and for no other reason than because I lived in Bali. I was still in my no-payment phase but my accuser refused to accept this.
On another occasion, a forty-two-year-old Australian divorcee boasted to me about her latest conquest: a nineteen-year-old Western boy. I didn’t judge her but I did make a note of the fact that she complained about Western men dating younger Indonesian girls.
On yet another occasion a Western woman, who had booked a friend’s villa, rang all her friends and stated she would not stay in the house because the owner was sleeping with children. She claimed the victim was a child when in fact she was twenty-six, she was the owner’s long-time girlfriend and she had a five-year-old son from a previous marriage. Obviously the accusation hurt this man’s reputation and his business.
I have met Western women who come to Bali for two weeks, pick up a different bloke every night, and then go home to their families to play wife and mum. This seems to happen on a rotational basis and the two-week girl’s holiday away from hubby and the kids is generally an organised triple-S tour: shop, spa and sex.
Female tourists also love young Indonesian boys. They pick them up, pay all their bills and buy them clothes, drinks and food. For whatever reason, a lot of these women see this as normal; they are just helping the poorer partner in the relationship keep up. That is until a man does the same thing. This they term as prostitution.
Surprisingly this is most prevalent among Japanese women, who seem to love Indonesian boys, and you often see a beautiful young Japanese girl traipsing around with her Indonesian boyfriend. As for the older Japanese women they are somewhat careful about these liaisons and they are generally carried out behind closed doors.
I was told once that this is a dominance thing. Japanese girls are given very little respect or power in their country, and creating a relationship with an Indonesian and controlling the finances allows them a level of power that they would otherwise not receive. I was told this by one of the legendary Kuta cowboys, Bali’s beach gigolos. The guy that told me this has gone as far as marrying two Western women and living in Australia with both, and he also has a child with a Japanese girl. He has since given up this lifestyle and wants to marry an Indonesian girl.
For Western women this happens more than most people would believe, and although it has been going on for a long time Western women are now becoming a little more blasé in these endeavours. I have no problem with this, but it can be a case of glass houses, especially when I hear the problems Indonesian women have with Western women when they try and settle down with their Western men in a place like Australia.
The other thing about Western women that surprises me is that they attempt to pick up Indonesian working girls. Only recently, a friend’s Indonesian girlfriend told me that two Western women had tried to pick her up in a nightclub. This was not the first time I had heard of this and a lot of working girls have had similar experiences. Timi, a girl I know who works as a masseuse, tells me that Western women often ask for happy endings. Timi works in an upmarket, supposedly legitimate, spa; the place is exclusively for women and Timi studied hard to get the job so she did not have to give happy endings to men. I questioned Timi relentlessly about this and she swore that it was true and that it was happening in spas all over Bali.
Personally I couldn’t give a toss what female tourists get up to; I only mention it because male tourists get such a bad rap.
He is Heavy and He’s not My Brother
Living in Bali can break a lot of people. I don’t know if this is exclusively Bali’s fault, or if a large majority of people who come to Bali to start new lives are already wounded, but I have seen a lot of people pushed to the verge of a breakdown and their plans for a new life in tatters.
A good friend of mine who came to live in Bali resorted to stealing money when things got tight and he was found crying in a corner when caught. Another friend ended up delivering restaurant food for the equivalent of two dollars a delivery after he lost his house and all the money in his bank accounts. He was sixty years old, fell in love with the wrong girl and trusted the wrong Indonesian. He lost his life savings and without enough money to fly home he eked out a life living like a local.
The stories of expats who have lost everything are numerous and a lot of these people spend their time wandering the streets of Bali like lost souls. Sometimes somebody will step in to help, which unfortunately, for the most part, leads to the Good Samaritan being stung. The person who stole the money and cried about it went on to steal from my family when we helped him. Lesson learned. As for my friend who got a job delivering food, I would have loved to fly him home but there was no way I could afford it. If I bailed out every person who was broke in Bali I would be bankrupt as well. Sometimes all you can do is buy them a beer and a feed, give them some words of encouragement and be on your way. This may sound harsh but the reality is that in Bali it’s the survival of the fittest.
One friend told me the story of a mate who went with his young bride to live in Java and on arriving at their new home, which he had paid for, he was told that the girl’s three brothers were going to move in. This worked for about a month until the brothers decided to confiscate the guy’s passport and bank cards. They then held him to ransom and forced him to become their personal slave. He was given a small room at the back of the house, was beaten, made to clean up after everyone and was forced to fetch food and alcohol that was paid for from his accounts. This may sound like a case of a stupid older man falling in love with a younger woman and, of course, it was. The man in question was in his late fifties and the woman in her late twenties, but by all reports he was a nice guy who wanted to give the girl some kind of life.
The girl was a prostitute who had been selling herself around Bali for years; he apparently felt that he could help her and her family by moving with her to Java. Eventually this guy managed to get word to a few friends and three of them flew to Java to retrieve him. They applied enough pressure to get the passport returned but unfortunately the bank accounts had been emptied so the friends flew him back to Bali at their own expense. Sadly he died shortly after his return. Then, because he had been broke and had no relatives, the three friends had to pay for his burial.
This is just another Bali hard-luck story and there are thousands of them. I sat in a pub one night with a young guy who had just experienced the same thing. He was twenty years old and had gone to Java on an exchange program, but when he arrived in Java his passport and belongings were confiscated. The young guy managed to escape after a month but as he regaled his story he broke down and sobbed; he flew home to his family the next day.
These stories are Java based and Bali is a little less isolated but Westerners get themselves into trouble here all the time. One of the main problems Westerners have is they believe their safety is secured by their generosity. Recently a friend told me that he didn’t expect any problems in Bali and he didn’t need to be careful because he had a local tough watching his back. I inquired as to how he had achieved this.
“Whenever I see Abraham I buy him a beer, no one’s going to fuck with me while I have him in my corner.”
Abraham is a five-foot-nothing local guy who is missing a lot of teeth, has a reputation for being connected, has apparently spent time in jail and is ofte
n seen carrying a knife; he is also a little past it and is something of a sad character who has a drinking problem. He does project a sense of danger, but, I have no doubt Abraham wouldn’t care less that some rich white person brought him a beer if trouble started.
Westerners often fall into this trap. There is a saying that money doesn’t buy you love. It does in Indonesia; the problem is the measure of the love your money buys. Loyalty, friendship and love are commodities in Indonesia, but what many don’t realise is they are traded on a rental basis—the contract is valid while you pay, if the money dries up so does the service.
Another trap is the family association. I now try and avoid contact with any person who tells me they have “Indonesian family”. I don’t know how many times I have had the conversation but I have grown bored of trying to explain to disbelieving Westerners that their Indonesian family may not be all that they seem. What is more likely is that the Indonesian family sees the association as a business opportunity. A typical conversation may unfold like this:
“They’re my brother/sister/family, and they will always look after me. They have never asked for money.”
“Why are they your family?”
“I get invited to all their ceremonies, I even went to their daughter’s wedding.”
“Did you take a present?”
“No, I was told that most people give money so I put a few hundred dollars in an envelope and gave it to the bride’s mother.”
“OK, as I understand it this is common practise at some weddings, but do you think you may have been invited because you are a rich Westerner and your gift is probably going to be larger than most?”
“My family wouldn’t do that to me, I have known them for years. I have been coming to Bali for two weeks a year for the past six years, and I met them on my first trip up here.”
Bali Raw Page 5
