Philippeno Girls

Last Friday night, myself and a three of my buddies ended up going to a hostess bar.

What is a hostess bar?

Often frequented by seamen, a hostess bar employs girls that will sit and talk with you (and possibly do other things for the right price) if you buy them drinks. At the bar that I went to, we could drink beer for 2,000 won ($2 US) each, but the drinks for the girls cost 10,000 won. As well, the only drink that the girls could have was watered-down tequilla.

After sitting for a few minutes drinking beer, a trio of very beautiful girls sat down with us. I must say that these girls were very good looking. There was nothing wrong with their looks at all. While two of my friends were talking dirty to these girls, who were also sitting on their laps, I ended up having a nice conversation with "my girl". We got along really well and I was able to find out a lot of interesting things.

The girl that I was talking to told me that this was only her third day on the job. She was making about $600 US a month and has to work from 6pm to the morning (anywhere from 4am-7am) every day (I make about $2000 teaching 25 hours a week). She has a six-month contract, with the option of extending it. For every drink that someone buys her, she gets $2. 17 girls in total work at this bar, and they all live in fairly close quarters on the above floor. She told me that she really didn't like her boss very much, that he was kind of a slimy bastard. Judging my the type of the bar that it is, I would have to assume that she is right. What kind of righteous man would possibly own a bar like this?

Later on, I asked her why the other girls at our table quickly jumped onto the laps of my amigos, while she was fairly concervative with me (I had not asked her to sit on my lap and made no major physical advances toward her). She told me that she doesn't feel right about that sort of thing, and that she often rejects men when they ask her such things. I asked her why she acts so conservatively. She responded to my question by saying that she was a Christian, so she didn't feel right about acting physically with men unless they were her boyfriend. We talked about that for a while, and I told her that I was confused as to why she was working in such a place if she was a Christian. Surely many men had made her offers of love for money! Again, she told me that she would not to such a thing; money was not worth selling herself out. She further replied by telling me that $600 is actually quite a bit of money in the Philippenes, so she sent a lot of it home to her family. She also told me that she doesn't plan to renew her contract in six months. She wants to go back home, she told me. Often, she continued, she gets very sad because she misses her family. It ended up being a sort of meloncholly conversation. At the end of the night, we exchanged phone numbers and I went home.

It was definitelly a conversation that I didn't expect to have in a hostess bar, yet it was very much worth having.

Kind of a surreal night.