Her face heavily made-up, Bella Saphira struts a darkened length of cement path along the Krueng Aceh river in Indonesia's Banda Aceh, wearing a loosely flowing dress but no Islamic veil.
Elsewhere in the staunchly-Muslim province of Aceh, which has been gradually implementing Islamic Shariah law, Muslim women are required to cover their heads -- but then, Saphira is not a woman.
She belongs to Banda Aceh's small community of transvestites, who stake their claim on this riverside stretch every weekend after dark in an area where courting couples met before the December 2004 tsunami.
Tonight about 30 waria -- Indonesian transvestites so named because they have the characteristics of a wanita, or girl, but are born a boy or pria -- congregate and chat. Some are in full drag, others wear men's clothing but wear carefully applied make-up.
Wafts of cheap perfume mix with the pungent odour of Indonesia's clove-flavored cigarettes. Pieces of costume jewelry strategically adorning ears, necks and wrists glint under flashes of headlights from passing cars.
"We're just here to sit and gather together. We're not here to earn money but to get satisfaction," says a smiling Kiki Yohana, whose manly features are barely covered by a thin sheen of foundation.
Kiki, a 23-year-old who works as a waiter on the outskirts of the provincial capital, wears a T-shirt and jeans.
"Kiki likes it this way. If I dress up, I'm afraid I'd run into relatives. I have a lot of relatives here," she said as she explains that the masculine clothes are not because she fears capture by the Shariah police.
The Wilayatul Hisbah regularly patrol the streets of Banda Aceh in search of improperly dressed or unveiled women, as well as gamblers, drunkards or members of the opposite sex being affectionate in public.
More than 200 Acehnese, both men and women, have received public lashings across the province in the past year, paying for infringing the Shariah introduced as part of broad-ranging autonomy handed to the province by Jakarta in 2001. Others are given verbal reprimands.
But no transvestite has been at the receiving end of the lash.
"I am not afraid. We are only sitting together here," said Yohana, who has been detained twice by the Shariah police but released after getting a thorough lecture on morals.
"They came by earlier, but they didn't say anything," said one of the long-haired waria squatting nearby, wearing a woman's Muslim tunic and pants.
Declining to give her name, she said that on busy Saturdays when the weather is pleasant, about 60 men, including some from outside town, gather here.
"They are very daring in offering their services. Even for 5,000 rupiah (US$0.50 cents), they are willing," she said with a giggle.
Yohana said she is here not to earn money "but for pleasure."
From pedicab drivers to police, young and old, she says plenty of local men from many walks of life, frequent the area to pick up the waria -- who are otherwise shunned in every day situations.
A local gang provides protection in return for "donations."
"If anything happens, they protect us, and we donate money to them," Yohana explained.
Each transvestite gives 5,000 rupiah to 10,000 rupiah (about US$0.50 cents to US$1) each night to the gang members but if they are broke, they promise to buy them drinks when they are cashed up, she said.
RSS