I was on a business trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently and I was quite surprised to find out that many of the hostesses working in the pubs were Singaporean girls.
It was a rare sight as I always thought people from Singapore will never be a ‘bu’ elsewhere
It was a strange encounter, to say the least because I had always thought that people from Singapore are very well off and will not need to rely on working as a nightlife hostess to earn money.
I was in a pub in Dubai, and the hostess greeted me with a very friendly “hello” and immediately from the accent, I could tell that it was one of my fellow country person.
I was shocked, as I had never seen or even heard of a Singaporean woman working as a hostess overseas. I asked her how she ended up here and she told me that she had left Singapore to pursue a better life in the UAE.
A lot are working part time, have other jobs in the UAE
I was intrigued by her story and decided to do some research. I soon found out that there were many Singaporean girls working as hostesses in UAE pubs.
It seemed that these girls had left Singapore in search of better opportunities, and the UAE had provided them with just that.
She also told me that almost all of the Singaporean girls working as hostess there had day jobs elsewhere and only came out to do this at night for more money because they were not earning enough from their day jobs.
Some of these girls were from the airlines and a lot of them were actually expats who have office jobs there while some were married to the UAE and ended up divorcing with their partners.
She herself hold a day job in the UAE and came out to earn some extra income.
We often laugh at Siam bu & Viet bu, but our own people are doing the same
This also got me to think that some of us look down on the Siam Bus and Viet Bus who left their hometown to come to Singapore in search of a better life, but our own people are doing the same overseas.
In fact, it takes a lot of courage to leave a comfort zone to seek a better live elsewhere and improve on your own finances.