A glimpse of Zouk, a popular disco in Singapore

Caucasian men (read: blond, blue-eyed, tall, single or attached) are hot property in east Asian countries. From Tokyo’s swinging Roppongi clubs to the crowded buxiban (English conversation schools) of downtown Taipei; from Phuket’s white hot beaches to Singapore’s party spots on Emerald Hill, these men know they are on to a good thing.

The good thing being an adoring little group of attractive local women out to woo, date, and if they get really lucky, eventually marry one of the blue-eyed boys.

In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, there is a derogatory term to describe these young and not-so-young women: the “sarong party girls” (SPGs in the abbreviated lexicon of our time).

The term, of course, comes from Jim Aitchison’s immensely popular 1994 satire on Singapore called Sarong Party Girl.

SPGs, like their sisters in other parts of east Asia, follow a strict sartorial code. They like to dress skimpy, sarongs naturally being the preferred historical outfit teamed with halter tops. These days the sarongs aren’t compulsory and anything casual yet minimal does just fine.

At Nok Jo’s barbeque shack tucked away in a dusty Phuket bylane one hot June evening, I saw some Thai SPGs prettily dressed in lycra tanks and silk hot pants knocking back chilled cans of Chang’s with a small group of raucous farang (Caucasian) men.

The local media have long portrayed SPGs as shameless, gold-digging, really nasty hussies (to put it politely), who will do just about anything to snag that unsuspecting innocent Caucasian man.

These days, at least in Singapore, the much-maligned SPGs have finally found a loud voice in spunky Miss Izzy: an opinionated SPG passionate about her commitment to the sisterhood and utterly reluctant to stay closeted.

On Miss Izzy’s website, scattered among the controversial essays on sexual choice, the death penalty and religion, is a selection of naughtily naked or tastefully half-naked self-portraits.

Miss Izzy makes no excuses for being an SPG; instead she lists her well-researched reasons for loving ang mo (the term means Caucasian in Singaporean slang) men: 1) Expat salaries are way more attractive than what the local guys earn; 2) Local men are abysmal. To paraphrase Miss Izzy for a family paper, male Chinese Singaporeans are woefully inadequate in certain areas of the anatomy, while Indian Singaporean men most commonly suffer from a problem of erectile dysfunction; 3) Local men — Chinese, Indian or Malay — rarely have their own apartments, preferring instead to live with their mothers... Like they say, there always are two sides to every story.

Postscript: Singapore’s version of “OK TATA Horn Please” are these slick exciting graphic advertisements splashed across buses and taxis, like the striking red, black and white Biennale cab grafitti promoting the biggest art event of the year.

Or the mammoth Olympus digicam ad with the open-mouthed shark hanging over the edge of the bus against an ocean blue background with the tagline “Built for the Extreme”.

The artwork is designed by Moove Media, a Singapore company that manages outdoor media (ads on the “move”) plastered on taxis, buses and around railway stations.

These days whenever I get into a taxi covered in Biennale graffiti, I promptly get the chatterbox cabbie to talk about Moove Media — a great concept, but even greater is that it is a wonderful way to distract him from the volley of questions he’s about to fire at me on everything from my “Indianness” to Bollywood movies and the authenticity of the Indian food sold on Serangoon Road.

After stints in Tokyo and Taipei, the writer is currently based in Singapore, where she works as a freelance journalist