From the crumbling backstreets of Chow Kit to the gleaming highrises of Sultan Ismail Road, ladies of all ages and ethnicities patrol the dark alleys, fancy clubs and dingy massage parlours of Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur, cruising for customers and surviving on their wits, born in some cases out of true desperation but in other cases out of lifestyle choice. Veteran writer and author Ewe Paik Leong uncovers a hidden world of KTV lounges within hair salons, massage parlours that offer services beyond the therapeutic and food courts that transform at night into whirlpools of vice, drawing both young and old, the curious and the regulars. In a series of fascinating encounters and interviews with high-end nightclub hostesses and their mamasans, freelance escorts, surreptitious streetwalkers, urut batin ‘therapists’ and more, the author confronts head-on important issues of trafficking, poverty, heart-wrenching misery, wayward morals and even black magic. This is Kuala Lumpur Undercover.