"The first man was someone who looked like he was in his late 50s or early 60s, and he was so shabbily dressed.

"His pants looked like it was going to drop, but the sides were held together by an elastic band." He didn't quite fit her perceived notion of what a customer would be like, she adds with a sigh.

"I have a great deal of respect for the elderly and I couldn't see myself having sex with someone who reminds me of my father," says Ms Ye.

"All his teeth were gone. I couldn't take my eyes off his toothless mouth as he spoke in a strong local accent.

"I knew I couldn't do it, so I turned him down."

As he walked away dejected, she thought about backing out. She rejected another three or four men who walked in.

She remembers starkly another man who walked up to her door several times.

"He looked so dirty and off-putting in his torn and tattered clothes. I made up my mind right away that there was no way I'd have sex with him.

"I told him, you come here looking for girls, you should at least clean yourself up."

The man hurried off to wash his face before returning to her door again.

"I was shocked, so I told him that I was actually on holiday," she recalls. "He was smart to call my bluff but really, I couldn't do it with him."

Such incidents helped deepen her respect for the women working in the Ten Yuan Brothel, so named because of the rate they charge. Ten yuan is about S$2.00.

"Another worker would have serviced him," she says.

Her first customer was an 18-year-old, a regular at the brothel.

"He's paid for the other women before and has his favourites. But seeing that I was 'new', he decided to approach me.

"We chatted a bit and I asked him why he'd have sex with women who are old enough to be his aunts. 'Do you not worry about sexual diseases?' I wanted to know, too.

"But he didn't seem to understand what I was saying. Maybe he felt worried that I was going to talk too much. He was about to walk off.

"I quickly told him to come in and that I'd do it for free. When I insisted that he wear a condom, he reacted like, 'What's that?'

"That's how it is in the rural areas - most of them don't even know what a condom is. I helped him put on one that I'd prepared earlier."

Another customer was a middle-aged man who had three layers of clothes.

Her voice drops as she relates: "His clothes had holes everywhere but they were clean.

"As he stripped, my heart went out to him. You could tell that he'd been feeling cold because the clothes barely covered him."

He also put on a brave front and asked Ms Ye: "You are so beautiful, are you sure you are willing to do it with me?"

When they began to have sex, he started to shiver.

"I didn't know know if it was from the cold, or whether he was tense, but I just felt so sorry for him.

"So I hugged him tightly," she says.

"I just wanted to keep him warm, physically or emotionally."

It was an act that touched the man.

"When he left, he told me, "You are the best person among the people I've met so far. Thank you'.

"But if you ask me, I don't think I really did anything extraordinary."