THE NEPALESE TAKEOVER OF WANCHAI (AND HOW IT CAN BE A GOOD THING)

Hong Kong owes the Nepalese population that once lived here so much, and yet they have been pretty shoddily treated over the years by a different governments that forgot too easily and a city that always relegates Third World minority groups to a secondary level while embracing many losers from the West and offering them the keys to the kingdom to rape and pillage the land.

The Nepalese Gurkhas Brigade of the British Army, for instance, are very much unsung heroes who were key in stemming the flow of illegal immigrants to Hong Kong and maintaining stability in this city for all those years before 1997 and the Handover to China.

The Nepalese community in Hong Kong is small, peaceful and hard working with some of my best and trusted friends being from this country that has fought so hard to be recognized and be part of Hong Kong.

While there are those who work hard opening up bars and restaurants in the Soho and Lan Kwai Fong districts, there are those Nepalese who have decided to flirt on the edge of darkness and are spreading their businesses throughout Wanchai like a case of the clap.

The new Wanchai

Wanchai, that area in the bowels of Hong Kong where mostly drunken expats walk on that wild side of the town and stumble into girlie bars/clubs like Escape, Players, Rio and the new Joe Bananas are all run, managed and owned by Nepalese- one group of Nepalese.

Nothing wrong with this as Hong Kong has always been about entrepreneurship and one group of Nepalese has had the “vision” to see what can be had in exploiting those willing to pay for a walk on the wild side.

From the bar girls of “The World Of Suzie Wong” era and iconic bars like Pinky’s Tattoos- barely existent these days and extremely tacky looking places with aging carnival barkers outside who must have been part of this area when sailors visited the city on shore leave- are, today, the big clubs- the very much low-end versions of the city’s legendary escort clubs of the Nineties like Club BBoss and China City with its cavalcade of upmarket Eastern European girls and big spenders.

Call them what you will, but Ina, Svetlana, Irina and whatever they wished to call themselves from places like Lithuania and the Ukraine were glamourous, they were fun to be around, they made respectable girlfriends and became the great loves of many of Hong Kong’s most well-known married businessmen.

Whatever happened to Back In The USSR?

For reasons that remain grey, these girls from Eastern Europe are gone while the opulent looking and gaudy clubs they housed closed their doors almost five years ago due to a drop in business and spiraling rents.

The Eastern Europe girls- and not the great fillies of yesteryear- have been relegated to the playing fields of Macau while a few leftovers who have stayed on make the rounds of the five star hotel lounges hoping for the best- but their best days when they could demand HK$12,000 for “a short time” are behind them.

Facelifts and Botox can only get an aging call girl only so far.

Have the Eastern Europeans been driven out?

Has the move to Macau been a calculated one involving the Vegas boys running the casinos over there?

Where do the Mainland China girls fit in?

Is there a turf war? Or is this simply a friendly division of the escort services pie?

Is the police aware of everything that goes on in Wanchai- the poor side of town?

Or, just as they turn a blind eye to the gangs of Nigerian coke and smack dealers working the Central district of Hong Kong, do they sit watching with a hands-off policy?

Those mysterious deaths of tourists after a night in Wanchai

Though, on the surface, it’s all about letting it hang out at “safe havens” like Dusk Till Dawn and Spicy Fingers- the latter appears to be on its last legs after a recent mass staff walkout- there is an undercurrent of danger following the mysterious deaths a few years ago of tourists- on three separate occasions- who were found in a major five-star hotel after returning with lady friends from Wanchai.

The cases were closed shut somewhat quickly.

Should these deaths have led to a far more thorough investigation about visas granted, especially to working girls- and an increasing number of trannies- from South America, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and The Dark Continent- PLUS background checks on those hiring them to work the clubs in Wanchai?

Again, we come down to the “Nepalese-ing of Wanchai” and how one particular group of Goodfellas control their countrymen by offering them jobs- and work visas- to be bouncers, waitresses and managers in their clubs.

Work visas in Hong Kong are gold to many from Third World countries and it must be said that these bouncers and security staff are excellent, make worthwhile friends and can help clean up some of the joints that don’t belong to them.

The rotten apples

As with every minority group anywhere in the world, there are always the rotten apples who can spoil it for everyone, and the Nepalese community have a few of their own.

For example, the jokes continue about the well-known Nepalese “entrepreneur” who managed to fleece at least one group of naive Indian businessmen into investing millions in at least three clubs in Hong Kong- including what was to be the new Joe Bananas BEFORE the NEW new Joe Bananas- and seeing each one fail.

He then disappeared, but is said to be back from his exile and trying to work his usual act again in Wanchai as there is a sucker born every minute.

What’s the end game?

The bottom line is that Wanchai is not only cheap, nasty and populated by mainly old, drunk, lonely foreigners on the make, it’s unnerving when one cannot distinguish who’s really wearing the white hats and what other businesses are taking place in some clubs NOT run by Nepalese apart from the expected sex trade?

Here is where good old fashioned Nepalese muscle should drive out these foreigners and clean up “their” Wanchai as their reputations are at stake along with the image of the average Nepali.

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