(Above pic: Miss Na-li - Cheated by Geylang clients, worried about marriage prospects)

They come here seeking a better life, hoping to make money or find a husband.

But they often end up stranded and desolate with no one to turn to for help, mainly because – as most of them are fully aware – they are breaking the law.

Some, however, claimed that they are victims of rogue agents who misled them into believing “there’s a pot of gold in Singapore”.

Miss Ke-er is here on a student’s pass but confessed that she “has yet to attend a single English lesson” in the private school. She paid only the first instalment of her fees.

Each day, she starts work at noon in a massage parlour, providing “any and every kind of service to anyone who is willing to pay”.

Around 6pm, she rushes home to a three-room flat in Chinatown for a change of clothes and a quick bite before heading for a KTV lounge on Havelock Road.

At this lavish nightclub, she morphs into “someone whom even my parents will not be able to recognise” and “sell my voice, my smiles...even my body”, said Miss Ke-er.

Her “lifestyle” turned out to be quite different from what she had been told.

She claimed: “The agent in China said we didn’t have to worry about finding work here, but that it was more important to ‘land on the shore’ first.”

With her parents’ help, she raised nearly $14,000 – part of the sum was to pay for the security deposit – by borrowing from relatives, friends and a moneylender.

Miss Ke-er said: “I didn’t want to end up like my parents, working from morning till night and earning barely enough to put three warm meals on the table.”

She also wanted to earn more to keep her brothers, 15 and 11, in school.

“What I couldn’t accomplish (in studies), I hope my brothers can,” she said.

Her first shock on arriving here came when the agent took her to a “seedy-looking bar” in Geylang.

Miss Ke-er said: “It wasn’t like I was dumb. I knew there were ‘sacrifices’ that had to come with the easy money, but I just didn’t expect the place to look worse than some of the karaoke lounges back home.

“I was also uncomfortable with the way the bar owner kept smiling lecherously at me.”

She worked all of three days there before asking the agent for a “transfer”.

Miss Ke-er said: “That was the start of a bad mistake.”

She claimed her agent told her she had to fork out another sum of money for grooming services, which included vocal and dance training.

“By then, it was too late to turn back – I could not let my parents down. There were debts to pay and I couldn’t simply walk away. I had no choice but to agree.”

She got three days of lessons.

She now pays the man about $500 a month from her earnings and reckons it’ll take another eight months before she can clear the debt here.

The first few months were terrible, said Miss Ke-er.

“I threw up every other night, and each morning when I looked at myself in the mirror, I wanted to smash the reflection.”

She also caved in and offered sex to a Singaporean businessman who had been her regular supporter at the nightclub for four months.

He paid $1,200 for taking her out and the extra service – half of which she quietly pocketed and did not give to the mamasan.

Miss Ke-er said: “I’d sacrificed my dignity, my body... I didn’t see why she (the mamasan) was entitled to anything for doing nothing.”
Her family is in the dark about what she does.

“They only know I’m working in a nightclub, earning about $3,000 a month. I tell them it’s just drinking and singing with the customers,” she said.

“My mother is doubtful but I always assure her that the strict laws in Singapore don’t allow any hanky-panky.

“But no one’s really complaining because each month I send home $2,000 to $2,500.”

Yet what she really wants now – even though she has settled into a better routine – is to return home.

By comparison, Miss Na-li, a 20-year-old from Shenyang, started on a rockier path.

She came here shortly after her father’s death in 2008.

She said: “We didn’t have any assets except for the house, which we sold to settle my father’s gambling debts.

“It’s just my mother and me – two women with no skills. I decided that I might as well take the risk and come here.”

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