Prostitution on the rise in HCMC A group of sex workers are pictured after a police bust in this file photo. Surveys by prostitution combating agencies show that around 50 brothel owners, 85 pimps and 3,500 prostitutes are currently operating in Ho Chi Minh City. According to the city’s Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs on the Jan 11 workshop on combating social evils, prostitution isn’t restricted to sexual intercourses between sex workers and their clients at hotels, restaurants, discotheques and karaoke parlors. Prostitution is mostly prevalent in the form of sexually provoking acts commonly performed at disguised cafés, barbershops, health care centers providing massage, sauna and traditional therapies and spas. High-end call-girl rings involving actresses and models who offer sex for some thousands of USD each time also aggravates the situation, the workshop heard. Male and gay prostitution, and sex trading activities involving foreigners and local sex workers operating in other countries is also on the increase. In addition, street prostitution in which the girls offer sex solicitations in public both by day and night and ply their trade around a host of streets citywide is also thriving. * Red light district in Ho Chi Minh City According to Lieutenant-Colonel Nguyen Van Nua, from the HCMC Police Department, in addition to Vietnamese-owned restaurants which offer ‘bia om’ services, in which the girls drink beer and spend the night with their clients, more karaoke restaurants owned by Koreans or Japaneses are providing similar sex activities exclusively for their natives in the city. The ladies' dens for foreigners mostly cluster themselves in Districts 1 and 3 in the center of the city, with all of the ladies being conversational in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and English, and willing to spend the night at the foreign expats’ homes or in hotels and charging high prices, Tuoi Tre reported. There are approximately 950 hotels, 1,630 restaurants, 28 discotheques, 739 karaoke parlors, over 7,000 cafés, 336 massage parlors and 760 barbershops citywide, Nua added. * Vietnam ladies' dens for foreigners According to the police, the current hotspots include Ngo Van Nam, Hai Ba Trung, Tran Quang Khai, Dong Du streets in district 1, Nguyen Trai, Le Hong Phong streets in district 5 and D2 and D5 streets in Binh Thanh district. Streets such as Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Hoang Sa in district 1, Tu Xuong, Nguyen Thong, Hai Ba Trung in district 3, Nguyen Chi Thanh, Dao Duy Tu and Ngo Quyen in districts 5 and 10 have also increasingly seen prostitutes publicly waving down passers-by. Prostitution is getting more sophisticated, with more foreigners working as sex brokers and sex rings operating blatantly via the Internet and in other countries, according to the surveys. “To track down and bust these dens takes a lot of money, while funding for solving prostitution cases remains inadequate,” Nua noted. TuoitreNews