Drinking with pretty escorts on boats or in secluded sections in fancy restaurants has become a new trend among the nouveau riche in the Mekong Delta.
Part 1: Delta nouveau riche splurge on drinking, women
Part 2: Nude bath with 'ecological' girls on island beach
With the increasing economic integration, smart farmers in this area have learnt to start businesses to export aquatic produce.
Others may own large ponds where they farm shrimp or tra catfish.
The escorts themselves, mostly young, good-looking women, are not prostitutes but, in this conservative country where casual relationships and flings are frowned upon, neither are they considered “virtuous.”
They inhabit a world somewhere in between the two and apparently go this to get some easy money. They are often workers at local factories, some single and others married but whose husbands do not know about their “jobs.”
For spending a night drinking and singing with rich men, one could get around a million dong, or 50 US dollars, which is more than half a factory worker’s monthly salary.
Some do end up in hotel rooms for bigger sums.
On National Day on September 2 a rich Can Tho City exporter named Giang invited some of his close friends to go on two motorboats to Tan Loc Island for drinking.
“I know the restaurant there; it is private and romantic thanks to fruit orchard,” he assures his friends.
They moor at a restaurant on the island where a table is laid out with food. Some waitresses nicknamed “country flowers” surround the table.
They are invited to sit between the men. Introductions are made quickly and the temperature rises in direct proportion to the beer consumed.
After they all drink half a dozen cans of Heineken, the men get on the boats to cross the Hau River into Dong Thap Province, and the girls agree to go with.
Their new venue is an aquatic produce processing company belonging to a friend. The group sits around a table in a large garden with many ornamental trees each worth hundreds of millions of dong. The table is beneath a wooden-made dome from the central region, formerly used by kings.
It probably costs several billion dong (a billion dong equals US$48,800).
“What a day with drinks and entertainment and nice girls,” one of the men says loudly.
After an hour there, the group and the new friend speed in their boats to Long Xuyen, a town on the Hau River.
There they separate into pairs and go to hotel rooms.
Hired cars and drivers await them outside to take them home.
Male clients and two young girls get on a hired boat to leave their party for a desert beach nearby at the Gieng Tien in Phu Quoc Island of Kien Giang Province (Photo: Tuoi Tre)
Drinking in forests under mosquito nets
While some rich men prefer drinking with girls in restaurants and private villas or on boats, others choose to go deep into the forests and sit around a table under a mùng trâu (a big mosquito net meant for buffalos) with girls.
A rich man in Ca Mau recruits young women to entertain his friends and customers at parties he throws in Vo Doi forest in the province. They are all workers in his factories or students.
In the world of the parvenu, it appears everything is a commodity that can be bought, morals and ethics be damned.
A girl named Tran Thi Loan, 21, in Bac Lieu, admitted, “I go with the men 3-4 nights a week and get VND700,000 or a million once. I sleep at day time and go out at night.”
“Men pass my contact to their friends and so I always have clients.
“Is it good or bad? It’s all up to me. No one can force me anything. But it’s joyful to eat and drink and sing and get good money,” she added.
To be continued
Second part: "Ecological" girls
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