Orchard Towers is notorious for being a shady building in a very well-developed Orchard Road. The most prominent being the murder case. Nonetheless, this fact may not be known to tourists in the area.
Reddit user u/PmMeAgriPractices101 shared about his encounter with a drunk man at around 5:30am near Orchard Towers. The drunk man (who is also a foreigner) approached the Redditor’s wife and 2-year-old son. What is more concerning is that the drunk man showed particular interest in the child.
Here is the story.
I’ve been staying in SG for the past few months, and I mostly just stay around the Marina Bay area. My wife and kids came over last week to visit me, and since my room was not big enough to house all of us, they stayed at a hotel on Orange Road.
I was with them earlier today, and at around 5am we decided to walk to the nearest open 7-11 outlet to get a bite to eat. Before we left the hotel room, my 2 year was awakened by our moving about, and so we thought about just bringing him with us. What could go wrong?
“we simply thought these were yuppies hanging out after a night of drinking, and we thought nothing of it”
So after a few minutes of walking, we noticed that there were a lot of drunk 20s people out in the street, both local and foreign. We did see a bar that was about to close, so we simply thought these were yuppies hanging out after a night of drinking, and we thought nothing of it. Some young women even said hi to my kid since they thought he was cute.
After a few meters, we reached the 7-11, but we saw that it was closed and will open at 6am. Since it was around 5:30 at that time, we decided to just wait for it to open. I remembered I passed by an ATM a few meters back, so I told my wife to just stay at the 7-11 entrance with my kid, since I wanted to withdraw cash. At this point, I wasn’t paying much attention to the crowd since I thought these were still the yuppies from the club, but while I was in line at the ATM I noticed that the crowd changed to be more middle aged dudes and scantily clad women.
“This stuck me as odd because I thought we were nowhere near Geylang.”
It took me a while to withdraw money since the dude in front of me was shitfaced and had trouble putting in his pin. He had a girl beside him and they seemed to be negotiating about something. It clicked, these were ladies of the night and their patrons. This stuck me as odd because I thought we were nowhere near Geylang. But being somebody who worked around the seedy streets of Manila before, this didn’t really phase me. These girls were trying to make a living, and these guys were lonely and looking for companionship, I have no problem with this and I wish them all the best.
After getting my cash from the ATM, I saw my wife and kid just outside the booth. Apparently some drunk foreign guy was bothering my wife and kid at the 7-11 entrance. He was particularly interested in my 2 year old, trying to reach out and touch him. Some locals were trying to dissuade him from doing this, but he shouted “I don’t care!”. My wife was getting worried because he was a big guy and he had them cornered, but thankfully she found a way to leave and the locals blocked the guy from following.
The locals were trying to apologize to my wife (they might have known the guy), but she was very shaken and she just wanted to get out of there so she really wasn’t able to talk to them.
After telling me this, I was actually more surprised than upset.
Since I work nights, I’ve been going out a lot to buy food at 7-11 and have never seen this happen (this might because I’m a heavyset scary looking dude, lol). I also realized that we actually went to Orchard Towers (I’ve never been here, so I really didn’t know where we were until I looked at the sign of the building), so the scantily clad women and middle aged guys now made sense. What strikes me as odd is that even if there were a lot of “available” women milling about, drunk dude was more interested in my 2 year old. I don’t want to judge people, so I’ll just leave it at that.
I did go back to the 711 outlet, not because I wanted to confront the guy but because I still wanted to buy something to eat. The guy was still sitting in front, and it was still closed. My wife saw another 711 open across the street so we just went there.
I guess this thought me a lesson. Even if people say Singapore is as safe as Disneyland, we still have to be careful, especially women and children. My wife and I also want to thank the local dudes who helped my wife get away. If you guys are here, know that your actions are appreciated!
Source: Reddit
