A fortune-teller once predicted that I would end up working in the sex industry. The idea seemed scandalous at the time but five years later I found myself sitting on the wrong side of one of Hong Kong’s notorious topless bars. My trusty regular, a Dutch sex shop owner, and I were sitting out the graveyard shift, discussing the merits of nipples as thermostats when, as if he’d read my mind, he leaned across the bar. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘my mother was the greatest hooker in all Amsterdam and she was never ashamed of it.’ I laughed. Hearing myself, a humble topless barmaid, compared to Amsterdam’s finest was confirmation that destiny had caught up with me.

After university, I watched the corporate world pick off my friends one by one and bailed out as quickly as possible. In Hong Kong and Japan I found a subculture of young British women. Using the Far East as a base, they work for a few months as nightclub hostesses, then head off on their travels until the money runs out. Then they go back to the clubs and start again. The handover of Hong Kong has caused problems for them, but anyone who’s been working there since last April should be able to carry on for a while. Many others will move on to Japan.

To anyone with exhibitionist tendencies who is also workshy and greedy, hostessing sounds like the finest game in the world. Hostesses are paid up to £30 an hour for ‘entertaining’ businessmen. All it involves is wearing a silly outfit, drinking heavily and impersonating Madonna on the karaoke. The only skill you need is the ability to pretend you’re in love with the man sitting next to you. My family had some difficulty believing this wasn’t a front for blatant prostitution, but the travellers I met in Thailand assured me that nothing more than verbal prostitution was required, so I bought a ticket and went to Hong Kong, to see for myself.

Nightclubs in Hong Kong aren’t like British clubs. The entertainment is built around cabaret, karaoke and girls. Most are several floors up, guarded at the entrance by any number of burly Sikhs – the smarter the turban the more exclusive the club. Having been turned away by four golden turbans and three silver ones, I was let in through a door flanked by two skinny guys in plain red headgear. A beautiful young girl dressed as a fairy princess showed me up in the lift and into the huge but – considering it was late on a Friday night – disturbingly empty club. What I didn’t realise was that most of the clientèle was tucked away in the myriad ‘VIP rooms’ which lined the outer walls, singing away the week’s stress. I waited in a quiet corner to see the manager. Someone brought me a glass of Chinese tea. I didn’t touch it for fear of drugs or enormous bills. An old man came shuffling over to my table, sat down and started talking to me in extremely strange English about his losses on the stock-market. Eventually I realised that he was the manager and was offering me a job: and did I have any friends? He only had one other English girl (nowhere to be seen) and a small troupe of 16-year-old Russian dancers to satisfy the demand for Western flesh. We drank beer together and he let me into a karaoke room to practise. Then he asked if I’d like to try on the uniform. After a few beers the see-through belly dancer’s outfit seemed quite attractive. It was only later that I learned how inevitably the tasselled skirt would tangle itself around the legs of the very person I was trying to get away from. How the bow at the front of the chiffon top was begging to be undone by drunken fingers. How genuine the risk of pneumonia was in the enthusiastically air-conditioned club.