John Mee – Some programmer in Sydney

Ok, yesterday I walked around the city. My initial impression upon arrival was that this filthy dirty city wasn’t as bad as they said. But after a walk around its not so good. The river is basically an open sewer that people shit, wash and possibly even drink from! You can stand on a bridge and watch a few turds float by, see someone having a crap and ten metres downstream, some one is having a wash. Needless to say it stinks. A few more metres downstream someone is catching fish and crabs. One street away there are huge mansions with immaculate gardens and a BMW next to the two huge german shepherds.

Just for something different to do a kiwi – another one with no money; he’s waiting here for a money order to come through… It’s been 3 weeks – and I went with 3 good moslem boys who learn English here. (There is an english school attached to the hostel, they charge the Indo’s 50,000 rp ($35)/month to come here for conversation classes, and charge us to stay here and rope us into teaching English – Pretty good scam really). We went on the back of their bikes to where one of them live. We’re a real hit with the locals. We sat down and were instant celebrities – surrounded by dozens of kids and adults alike. We didin’t speak bahasa, and they don’t speak English, so we just smiled, guestured and stared at each other.

They live in narrow streets in tiny houses about 5 meters wide, right next to each other. They say there are no fights or domestics. They all know each other, like in a little village. Amongst the labyrinth of little streets we found a little courtyard with all washing across it and the homes facing inwards.

After that we went of to “Dolly” the red light district. Honest we just went window shopping. The kiwi had a go two weeks before and picked up gonereah (dribble dick). Cost him $15 for the girl and another $100 for the doctor/medication. Lets hope he didn’t pick anything else up.

There were two streets full of brothels, complete with red lights. A big window where the girls are all sitting on a couch. The guys go in and sit on the opposite side and survey, over a beer. There are girls of all ages for all tastes, the youngest probably 16, the oldest maybe 40. We only saw 2 that were probably blokes once. I’ve got to admit some were very good looking – some ugly as sin. All along the street are vendors selling condoms and aphrodesiacs.

I think the story goes along the lines of, the moslem guys can’t get married until they are 25, the girls 22. Of course there is no sex before marriage. So apparently, from the age of about 17 they start going to the prostitutes. One of the guys we were with admitted that he was a regular visitor, the other wouldn’t say and the third was willing to pay for us to have a go, so long as he could watch! There were plenty of customers – and no shortage of girls.

After that we went to a nightclub, there’s not many around, a lot of the locals don’t drink, so its $2 for a coke, $6 to get in (we were exempt since we were white and the owner of the hostel has an uncle? who runs the place). Beers are double the street price. It was quite a good club as far as clubs go. A big dance floor with lounges all around. If you’re not dancing you just lie back in your couch and watch. Most surprising was that there were more guys dancing than girls. Something unheard of in Oz. Great lighting. Everyone smokes – everyone (except maybe the odd girl). There is cigarette advertising everywhere, particularly the Marlboro Man.

I drove the becak to the club and back. It was great. A bit of exercise at last.

No wonder I never write. If I write, I want to write everything. If I write everything I’ll spend more time writing than doing. Arrrrgh.