It's a mild spring evening, and Macau's nightly rituals – including the selling and buying of sex – are just beginning. Girls from eastern Europe – many of them heavily made up and with their hair dyed blonde – are taking up their positions at the tables outside a cafe on one of the pedestrian thoroughfares.
At a glance they might appear to be merely tourists. Their clothing is modest – usually consisting of a sort of 'uniform' of blue jeans, high heels and tight fitting top – but it's their eyes that give the game away. Even as they sit chatting to each other, their eyes are elsewhere, focusing on every man not already accompanied by a female as he walks down the street. A similar routine is performed every night, though usually by Chinese girls, in a cafe near to a well known down town hotel.

Patrol
At the street cafe tables, the European girls take it in turns to get up and walk a few yards down the street and then loiter on the corner near one of the more up market tourist hotels, almost like sentry duty outside an important public building.
For these girls, this luxury hotel, and others like it, are indeed important buildings to be guarded carefully. Just like a casino, once the girls get inside, they have the chance to win a cash prize. Indeed the odds of doing so are a lot better than at the casino baccarat tables.
"I can make 5,000 patacas in one night if I am lucky," says Irina (name changed) one of the bottle blondes on duty at the bar tables earlier. The only reason I'm able to talk to her is that I have struck lucky. She has separated from her friends and is sitting in a cafe, grabbing a snack. There's a slight trace of an American accent in her English, which she says she learned from a businessman boyfriend in Europe.

Troubles
She is still quite young, probably in her mid-20s, but there's a certain hardness to her. Whether this is connected to the work she does or simply reflects her mood that night is hard to say. She's also wearing a lot of make up: more than is probably necessary for a woman of her age, and she smells strongly of cigarettes, a stale, burnt, smell that her perfume cannot mask.
She's suspicious of me. Her eyes move up and down me, trying to work me out. I don't look Portuguese, or Macanese, but I am a gweilo. Could I be from immigration or the police? Her instincts seem to tell her that if I'm not a prospective client then I could spell trouble.
I've engaged her in conversation after sitting at the next table with a cup of tea. That first exchange is important. I don't want it to seem like an interview. That will either scare her off or produce a demand for money, and I want this to be what she really thinks, not what she thinks I want to hear.

Risks
I try a high risk strategy. After saying hello, I ask her if Macau is a dangerous city, then tell her a true-life story about a female friend of mine from university days in Europe who was murdered by her boyfriend in a so-called 'domestic' incident.
It seems to do the trick. The words come tumbling out, almost like a relief.
No, she says, Macau isn't dangerous. People are polite; sometimes quite nice. In her own country, there's always trouble – especially for women.
I ask her if she's met many Chinese men. The look of suspicion returns. I realise I've gone too far too quickly, and steer the conversation back to her homeland.
"A lot of the guys back home drink so much." she says. "And then they can get nasty. Here, people don't drink so much. They like to eat, and they like to go to the casino.

Beauty Business
I ask her how long she's been in Macau. "One month," she replies. She says she's sharing a small flat with a girlfriend who came out with her. I ask her what she does for money.
"I work as beautician," she says. Glancing at her own make up, which is rather garish and obvious, I wonder how likely that is to be true, but I say nothing.
Has she dated any local people, I ask?
She smiles: "Sometimes yes. Chinese guys are quite generous. They will take you for a party in their hotel, and sometimes to the casino. They will give you free drinks – sometimes all night.
I try my luck again. Do they give her presents?
"Yes" she says. "Sometimes they will give you money just to spend time with them. I can make 5,000 patacas in one night if I am lucky."

Companions
This sounds like a lot of money just to sit with someone, but I make no comment.
I say there seem to be quite a lot of girls in Macau from Mainland China and Thailand who also like to spend time with men. I ask if this makes it harder for Irina and her friends to find male companions.
"Actually Chinese guys seem to like us. I think they like spending time with a European girl," she explains.
I mention that I've seen some European girls meeting male 'friends' on the street. I ask why the girls don't go to some of the smarter bars and hotels if their aim is to meet rich men.

Bars
"Sometimes I go with my [girl] friends to the Mandarin [Oriental] but it's necessary to speak good English if you want to meet people there. You have to dress nice too. The drinks are also very expensive in this bar. Unless you meet someone who will buy you drinks you can spend a lot of money.
"Some of the other hotels have nightclubs with hostesses. Those places don't want us there."
A security worker at one hotel says it's not unusual to see a girl who's been asked to leave a lobby area for loitering return half an hour later in the company of a guest. This makes the girl completely immune from trouble. Even at up market hotels no one wants to offend and perhaps embarrass a guest who may have considerable wealth and influence.
I've been told by Government officials that in common with many jurisdictions, prostitution isn't illegal in Macau, but third parties living off the earnings of prostitution – what's known under Macau law as 'pimping' – is.
I ask Irina about triads.
"Those guys don't bother us, and we don't bother them."
So they do exist then, I ask? She laughs. "Everybody knows they are here. They can get you girls, drugs, money – anything." A say that if it's so blatant, why don't the police round them all up?
"These guys make things better for the police. When they [the triads] are here there's no trouble. If someone owes money or causes trouble for the Chinese girls, they fix it," she says, dropping slightly the pretence that what she does is a purely boyfriend-girlfriend arrangement.

Triads
The idea that the presence of triads in Macau means less trouble for the police, rather than more, seems strange, given the regular gunfights that took place between gang members in the streets and casinos of the territory in the early 1990s.
But this idea is echoed by a community worker who's spoken to many Mainland women who work in Macau's sex trade.
"You have to look at it from the police point of view. At the moment they are under-staffed. They could have a war against the triads, but for them it's not worth it. In a way, the triads keep order – certainly as far as the sex workers are concerned. If a client won't pay, or causes problems, the girls know the triads will step in and sort it out, without the police needing to get involved."

Partners
I meet the community worker, John (named changed) in the lobby of a Macau hotel. He tells me the sauna in that very hotel has triad 'partners', and points out the stream of good looking young women – some of them foreign – arriving for their 'shifts' upstairs. He also indicates to me what he says are men acting as lookouts outside the hotel – either for signs of trouble or signs of business.
I mention to him that Carlos Avila, the director of Macau's Financial Services Bureau, has stated firmly to me that he doesn't believe organised crime is involved in Macau's sex industry.
"I really believe that he believes it," says John. "But it doesn't match what the girls who work in this industry see every day."
I suggest to him it's very easy to make sweeping and perhaps sensational claims about organised crime and triads, but harder to produce evidence.

Stories
"My evidence is the girls I work with. Too many of them are telling the same stories, with the same facts, for them to be making it up," he states.
"It goes like this. The triads don't take over a sauna or a massage parlour. They don't need to. They just become a 'partner' with the people who run it. In return the business knows it can get help if there are problems with customers or anyone from outside. There are plenty of criminals on the Mainland who would like to get in on the action. Working with the triads here is an insurance policy. The reason we're not seeing people shooting each other in the street like in the 1990s is that at the moment the economy is good. Everyone is doing well.

Trouble
"You need to look at it like this," he continues, "what advantage does Macau get by causing trouble? Our image has already been hurt by [Banco] Delta Asia. We don't want more problems. The politicians and the police chiefs probably don't even know about it [triads]. From the view of the police on the street, if things are calm and any problems are sorted out quietly by the triads, why spoil things? I'm not saying that the police are taking bribes. I'm just saying that if the streets are calm and quiet with help from the triads, why would you [the police] want to report to your bosses that they're here?"
Even if that's the case, I ask him, doesn't it mean there's a price to be paid somewhere along the line if people look the other way while the triads work? There's no such thing as a free lunch.
"Macau is changing," says John. "We've got all this foreign money coming in. The way it was before – where you just relied on knowing the right people – doesn't work any more. One day the gangs and the outside companies are going to meet each other. Then the Government will have to do something."

Clean Up
Changes are already in hand. Macau now has a Commission Against Corruption similar to the one set up in Hong Kong. During Chinese New Year, 11 customs officials were caught allegedly demanding bribes from an air cargo company and now face prosecution. Macau's security secretary Cheong Kuok Va announced recently an eight per cent pay rise for junior ranks in the police that could take effect as early as May, to combat a 10 per cent shortfall in staff.
Like many of the challenges facing the territory, the causes are complex and deep rooted. But in the end, as with so many aspects of modern life, it could be the market that decides the direction society moves in. The same globalisation that allows Eastern European women to travel thousands of miles from their homelands to work as prostitutes in Macau could in the end be the death knell of Macau's long-standing and dishonourable gangland culture.

by Michael Grimes