📸 Photo

SNOWING IN BALI

would go with Ricky to pick their own number; others would ask him to go to the aquarium alone and deliver the girl to their hotel.

Ricky happily obliged, but never wanting to get it wrong and miss out on his fee, he always asked for specifics on ‘style of body’ preferences. ‘Fat body or sexy Coca-Cola body?’ he’d ask, drawing the shape of a Coke bottle with his hands and whistling for impact. He never bothered asking about breasts, because in his experience, ‘All tourists like big boobs.’

It wasn’t only at night that Ricky found sex tourists, it was any time. This was business and westerners were rich, often stupid, prey. With his chirpy sense of humour belying his cunning, he worked to win tourists over. If you wanted to go fast, he’d floor it, zigzagging in and out of traffic, or go as slowly as you liked. He was super-charming, always asking, ‘Tomorrow you need taxi?’ Whenever he got the chance, he’d tell a guy, slyly if they were with their wife or girlfriend, that he could organise a lady. Often he’d conspire to drop a wife or girlfriend off to shop in the up-market Seminyak boutiques, then escort the guy to a brothel.

It’s money, it’s my work, it’s good. I take the wife shopping, drop her off and then the man, husband, goes to massage. Happy ending. Massage just one hour. The girl shopping is normally two, three hours, so the husband already has massage, happy ending and go. After, she ask, ‘Where you been?’ He says, ‘Bintang (supermarket), restaurant.’

– Ricky, taxi driver

One night, pimp Nyoman’s girls were all busy with customers, except for pretty 21-year-old Linda. They were parked at the edge of the beach in front of the Padma Hotel. It was a