Singapore Girl

This is the true story of a long-vanished Singapore and the dangerous carnival known as Bugis Street. In 1975, James Eckardt cut a raffish figure as he stepped off a sailboat in Singapore en route from Manila to Jakarta. Little did he know that he would become enchanted by a fun-loving Singaporean nymph named Milly who would take him in hand to explore the exotic wonders of her city. The fun would turn into hopeless love, one Eckardt would desperately chronicle in a 36-hour, drug-laced writing spree and entitle Singapore Girl.

The yellowing carbon copy would sit in an envelope for thirty years as the author went on to become Thailand's most famous expat writer. And then on December 19, 2004, an email arrived that would lead Eckardt to discover what had happened to the Singapore girl, who, at the time he had loved her, had not technically been female. Following a sex change and a long career as a female stripper in Paris, Milly finally returned to Singapore in 2004 to make peace with her long-estranged family. Once again, Milly was rejected by her family so she climbed the stairs to the roof of the family's twenty-five story apartment block and jumped.