Pinkan, a prostitute we “hired” by driving through Dolly. Photo: Coconuts Media
In November 2014, Coconuts TV went to Surabaya to film a documentary on the aftermath of the closure of Dolly, once Southeast Asia’s largest red light district.
Coconuts Jakarta’s Andra Nasrie came along for the ride and in this series he recalls his journey deep into the Surabaya sex trade and his encounters with three very distinct sex workers.
In the finale of this three-part series, ‘Dolly Revisited’ (check out parts 1 and 2), Andra hires a taxi to see if there is any truth to rumors about a ‘Drive-through Dolly’.
It was obvious that, even with Dolly having been closed, prostitution was still happening all throughout Surabaya. But with the brothels all boarded up, I wanted to see for myself how one could still hire an underground ex-Dolly prostitute. I had heard rumors about a ‘Drive-through Dolly,’ and it turned out to be exactly what it sounded like.
I hired a cab at around midnight to drive around the Dolly area. Within minutes of driving slowly on the narrow road, we were hailed by three pudgy middle-aged men. I instructed the driver to pull over, but they told him to park inside a dark alley instead. The cab driver turned his head to look at me in the backseat, and I guess my adventurous spirit prevailed as I returned his questioning look with a nod.
“Sorry we had to get you inside, we’re worried because we heard there are journalists sniffing around,” whispered one of the men to me as I got out of the cab.
A part of me was petrified that they knew who I really was, but I had to play it cool to avoid suspicion. I took out my pack of cigarettes and offered it to the three gentlemen. I even went as far as lighting the cigarettes for them. I don’t smoke, but our Dolly fixer Fuad handed me a pack of cigarettes before I left on my daring solo drive quest. He said they might come in handy.
As I tried not to inhale the fumes into my lungs while still looking like a natural smoker, one of the men took out his phone and sorted through photos of the girls available for hire that night. He only showed facial portraits of the girls and some were, admittedly, quite pretty.
“This one is high-class, skinny girl from Bandung, she’s available right now,” said the man in charge of negotiating with me, while the other two remained guarding the entrance to the alley.
“How much?” I asked.
“Rp. 500,000, but you have to find your own hotel,” he said.
“Deal,” I replied immediately. I was in no mood to haggle.
The man signaled for the other two to call the girl. One of them then rode off on a motorbike to pick her up. The next 15 minutes were excruciating as we waited for the girl. I could not break my cover, so I initiated small talk with the negotiator. Politics, rising fuel prices, Jakarta vs Surabaya, we talked about it all. He even offered me a cup of coffee, which I respectfully declined.
When the girl arrived, her face was nowhere near as pretty, nor was she as skinny as the negotiator had led me to believe. She was a rather tall, heavyset woman who had put too much white powder on her face – presumably to look as white as her portrait suggested – and wore a really tight purple tube top dress that struggled to cover her breasts and crotch at the same time.
She didn’t seem all that friendly. Her eyes were fixed on her Blackberry and not once did she try to make eye contact with me as we rode in the backseat of the cab, returning to my hotel. She seemed so unwelcoming that I’d definitely think twice about groping or making out with her in the backseat, had I actually hired her for sexual services.
I couldn’t reveal my true motive for hiring her before we got to the hotel. If she was as opposed to journalists as her colleagues, I could be out 500 grand. I had to play it smart. Unfortunately, smart was awkward.
“So… would you like a bottle of water?” I offered politely, after 5 minutes had gone by in silence.
“No, thanks,” she replied with a forced smile.
Cool.
We arrived at my hotel soon after, where Fuad and the Coconuts TV crew had been waiting to see my catch. Fuad greeted the sex worker as soon as we got out of the cab and explained to her the real reason we hired her in the local Javanese dialect.
After some hesitation, Pinkan – as she wanted us to call her – agreed to an interview in my hotel room.
Pinkan telling us how she ended up in Dolly
“I arrived in Surabaya from West Java to become a sales promotion girl three years ago. I got knocked up and then gave birth when I was 21. I had nowhere to go so my friend who stayed near Dolly offered to put me up for a while,” Pinkan recalled.
“Being close to the area, I was offered to work at a brothel, where I remained until this year,” she continued.
Now with Dolly shut down, Pinkan says that she, like many of her sex worker friends from Dolly, went underground in order to make ends meet for her and her two-year-old baby boy.
Unlike Wulan, the sex worker we interviewed two nights before, Pinkan said she didn’t actually mind working independently. With the current arrangement, she earns a bigger cut from the money earned.
“From the Rp. 500,000, I keep Rp. 200,000 and the three brokers get Rp. 100,000 each,” she explained, confirming that the three men I met earlier were brokers, not pimps.
When she worked at a brothel, Pinkan says some of the money went to a pimp as well, in return for protection and a steady flow of clients. But on the whole, Pinkan said she earns more money now, even if she only serves an average of two or three clients per evening.
Pinkan said she’ll stay in the industry for as long as her baby can’t understand the moral implications of her work. But she admitted she hasn’t given much thought to what she wants to do a couple of years from now, especially given that she doesn’t have many skills applicable to conventional employment.
“I dunno, maybe I’ll start an online shop or something,” she said.
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