On January 30, 2025, authorities in Brunei shut down an unusual kind of beauty clinic. It was not operating from a hospital, medical center, or even a beauty salon. It was operating from a hotel room.
According to Brunei’s Ministry of Health, a foreign woman had been advertising IV drips for skin whitening and slimming, along with thread lifting and filler treatments, through social media. When enforcement officers entered the hotel room, she was in the middle of administering an IV drip to a customer.
But reducing the case to “someone got caught giving suspicious IV treatments in a hotel” misses the more interesting part. Court records later showed something much more modern: a temporary, almost pop-up form of cosmetic medicine built around social media, messaging apps, portable supplies, and rented hotel rooms.