My friend Ken and I have known each other since secondary school. We grew up in the same Tampines block and stayed close even after we both got married. Two years ago his wife left him. She packed the bags, took their two children, and moved back to her parents’ house in Johor. She told him she was tired of his drinking and late nights. Ken was left alone in his three-room HDB flat.
Not long after the divorce was finalised, Ken started going to pubs along Syed Alwi Road and a few spots in Joo Chiat. Those areas had a string of small pubs that employed hostesses on work permits. Most of the girls were from China, Vietnam and Thailand. Ken went there almost every Friday and Saturday night. He would sit at the bar, buy them drinks, chat them up, and wait until their shift ended. Then he took them back with him. Sometimes it was his flat in Tampines. Other times it was a short-time hotel in Geylang Lorong 18 or 20. He paid them extra, usually a few hundred dollars for the night.
I found out he had STD/HIV one evening when we met at a kopitiam near his block. He looked thinner than usual and kept coughing. Later that night he pulled a small bottle of pills from his bag and showed me. It was his antiretroviral medication. Ken said he caught it from a girl he met at a pub even before his wife left. He had known for more than a year but never told her. When I asked about the hostesses he was seeing now, he shrugged. He admitted he never used condoms with them and never told them his status. He said it was their problem, not his. He claimed he had slept with at least 40 different girls in the past six months.
That did not sit right with me. I knew two of the hostesses personally because I sometimes dropped by those pubs with other friends. One was a China girl named Xiao Lan who worked at a Syed Alwi pub. The other was a Vietnam girl named who worked in Joo Chiat. I messaged both of them the next day over Wechat. Both confirmed they had gone with Ken in the last month. Lan said she had been feeling very tired and had a rash on her arms. She was already planning to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Xiao Lan was angry and said she had been with him twice and now regretted it.
I joined the WeChat groups that the hostesses from those Syed Alwi and Joo Chiat pubs, I told them to stay away from him and to go for testing in Singapore immediately. Within a few hours the message was forwarded to other groups. Some girls replied saying they had also been with him and were now scared.
The next weekend the situation changed fast, Joo Chiat the mamasan warned all the girls on shift and told Ken to leave as soon as he walked in. A Syed Alwi Chinese girl from one of the groups later told me that several hostesses had already gone for testing because of the warning. A few posted in the group that their results came back negative, but others were still waiting for the full results.
Ken called me three days later. He was shouting that I had ruined everything and that the girls were avoiding him everywhere. I told him he was the one going around infecting people without telling them. He hung up on me. After that he stopped showing up at the pubs in Syed Alwi and Joo Chiat. I have not spoken to him since. I still see updates in the WeChat groups from time to time. Some hostesses have thanked me for the warning. Others have said they are getting regular checks now. I do not regret what I did. Ken made his choices and I made mine.