On a Saturday evening at around ten pm in March 2014, I stepped into Geylang after nearly five years of not having visited the area. Geylang is Singapore's designated red-light district and also a food haven, a district where both sex and food are consumed. The district boasts of many renowned food stalls selling a variety of food including durian: a fruit well-loved by locals but which may not sit well with foreigners. Locals frequent the area, though women are often accompanied by males or large groups to avoid being mistaken for one of the many sex workers that walk the streets of Geylang.

I was not prepared for what was to come. The busy, chaotic and heavily littered streets of Geylang were a far fetch from strait-laced Singapore. Business signboards written solely in Mandarin – an unusual sight in Singapore – peppered the pavements. Throngs of migrant workers (both Chinese and other nationalities) walked the streets, crossed the roads with no heed to traffic signals, squatted or sat on the pavements, puffed away on cigarettes with cans of Red Bull and talked loudly, many drunkenly in the overcrowded open-air coffee shops or Chinese restaurants. Nervous-looking young men plied their wares of contraband cigarettes, packets of what could be male enhancement pills, sex toys, condoms and pornographic DVDs at street corners and on the pavements. It was a scene I had never seen before in Singapore. It seemed like all the laws of the state which everyone had to abide by in all other districts were flouted vehemently in Geylang. The ubiquitous signs of “no smoking except at designated places”, “no spitting”, “no littering”, and “no loitering” were nowhere to be seen, and practised by no one.