Bali’s Café’s and Karaoke Bars

Cheaply built cafes are scattered around Bali, they dot the island like beach umbrella’s dot Seminyak beach. They exist on the fringes of most towns and villages and they are often utilized by local men seeking to socialise, sing, and obtain sex. These bars tend to be dark, dingy and sometimes dangerous and they generally serve up warm beer along with their less than enthusiastic hostesses.

Most cafes and karaoke bars that are operating in Bali run on the same system. When a customer enters he is approached and asked if he would like a drink and company. If the answer is yes, the waitress then organises a few women to be paraded and the punter is expected to choose his acquaintance for the evening. He is then required to buy her drinks while she is in his company. Because the women that work in this setting receive a commission on any drink the customer buys, they often pour and drink as fast as veteran alcoholics.  Working at cafe is a very hard lifestyle for these ladies and a number of them end their evenings by throwing up.

The majority of the women that work in smaller cafés are poor and they speak limited English. They are often recruited from rural areas and they are offered work contracts that include travel and accommodation expenses. They are then required to pay back this money back over a set period of time. And because they are given a wage that barley covers their living expenses they discover that this unmanageable. Unfortunately a number of these women then find themselves trapped and they spend far more time working in these café’s than they originally planned or they were promised.

There are also a percentage of women that are labouring in smaller remote cafes because they have put themselves out to pasture. These women have realised that they can no longer work the tourist strip because they are too old or they are visibly sick with H.I.V.  Because of this some of the smaller outlying Karaoke bars could be considered to be hotbeds of the virus. And it has been documented that the sickness rate in a few of these smaller rural establishments runs as high as 50 percent.

There is currently a push by the government to shut these places down and they are randomly raided with Bali’s Governor claiming that they promote prostitution and drug use. It is generally the working girls that get caught up in these raids and not the proprietors of the café or Karaoke bar. The girls then end up with little more than a fine of about one hundred thousand RP (AUD $ 10 .00), before they are released to continue working. 


©Malcolm Scott