Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (13 page)

As this man was brought into court Robert and I looked at each other and just stared, in total shock and disbelief and disgust.We were absolutely horrified.
What the hell has he done?
I wondered. Whatever it was it must have been something really dreadful to end up looking like that. Perhaps he was a serial killer, or a rapist? The chained man sat at the back of what I now realised was the courtroom. Embarrassed, I stopped eating my orange. I had thought we were in a waiting room.

There were lots of officials sitting around at the front of the room, all wearing the typical military-style clothes of office. Eventually one official took a piece of paper and handed it to one of the seated individuals. From nowhere I heard my name, then Robert’s.A policeman whom I recognised from the station strode to the counter and was handed two pieces of paper, which he brought over to Robert and myself. He handed me one of the sheets and told me to sign it.

I had no choice. Nervously, I signed and was given a copy. Several weeks later I discovered that what I had signed was simply the paper to remand me in custody. We were bound over for
11
days while the police drew up formal charges. Prosecutors would have
84
days to bring the case to court and in the meantime we would have to wait for their decision, going to court every nine to
11
days for further remanding.

Following the proceedings, we were taken back the way we had come in, past the screaming hordes. Now it was official; we were prisoners. Robert was taken to a cage on our left as we walked. Later he would go to Klong Prem Men’s Prison. We said, ‘Goodbye and good luck’ to each other and strangely enough I think we both meant it.We would need it. Despite what had hap- pened he was still my reminder of home.And anyway fear had got the better of us, so saying goodbye was just a way to ease our in- securities about the future.

I was on my own now. Step, step, step, down a little corridor I was escorted by the guards, past lots of officials doing paperwork. We came to yet another set of bars that ran from the floor to the ceiling.There was a gate in the bars and an office stationed there, partitioned off by even more bars.There were bars everywhere I looked. Two female officers stood idly by, wearing military uni- forms and rubber flip-flops on their feet. They came out, signed some papers and took me into their custody.

Without a word they tipped the contents of my bag out onto the floor. One of them grabbed hold of all my underwear, stuffing it into a plastic carrier bag.With a broad smile they put my carton of cigarettes to one side and took the rest of my clothes, putting them aside also.A few items of toiletries and some make-up were stuffed into the carrier bag, along with my album of family photo- graphs.

Everything else was placed back inside my travel bag and taken to their office area. ‘No can, no can,’ they shouted, together.The

strings of prayer beads were also taken off me.Was I really so unde- serving of such a holy object?

My small shoulder bag was searched but they missed a packet of cigarettes I had placed in the inside pocket. They left me with oranges and a bag of biscuits inside my shoulder bag.A rub-down body search followed; then I was told to remove my shoes.They opened the gates, shoved me through the bars of the cell and the gate clanked shut.

The room held around
30
people and I immediately thought

they all looked subhuman. Everyone wore dark brown dresses, like sacks. Each creature was barefoot and dirty and they scuttled around on the floor.Two girls sat over by a wall and one appeared to be grooming her friend’s hair for head lice. My shoes had been confiscated. I was in the same situation as the others. A tentative expectancy hung in the air.

Olivia and Victoria were standing on the other side of two sets of bars. Noticing them, the guards looked at them and said to me, ‘You have two friends, we give them your bag?’ Before I had a chance to reply my bag was passed through to them. It was my only connection with my old life and although there was nothing of any importance in that bag, watching it being passed to two virtual strangers, my heart sank. My life was disappearing with it.

When the gate shut I went over to where Olivia and Victoria stood. The gap between us was about
12
feet wide and the light was not good, but it was good to have them near.

‘Can you contact my grandfather for me?’ I asked. I worried about what he would see on television. If he knew beforehand it wouldn’t come as such a shock. I gave Olivia my brother’s address and telephone number.

‘Tell him to call my grandfather, please.’

She did call my brother and he duly warned my grandparents.

I wondered how Robert was getting on, whether things were the same for him as they were for me. The pain in my stomach had

intensified during my time at the police station, and at the court I was barely able to walk upright. It was the same in this holding cell. My stomach was in knots.

The holding cell had no natural light, and the air was oppressive and musty. It was such a dirty area, smelling like every bad toilet I had ever been in.To one side were two, small sectioned-off areas housing Thai-style toilets – basically, a hole in the floor with large tanks of water beside them.

I could feel the thick air in my eyes, on my skin and up my nose. While all the Thais were completely disinterested by their sur- roundings I sat alone and looked around in stunned amazement.A woman came over to me and began to speak in English. Her name was Anna and she was Nigerian. Anna had heard me talking to Olivia and Victoria and she told me that I could order food from them.

‘Whatever you want to eat you can have,’ she said. ‘I’m not hungry.’

She looked at me peculiarly. Food was the last thing on my mind but Anna was desperate for me to order something. The prison provides no food or water for people going to court and because Anna had no friends, family or contacts on the outside, she’d had nothing to eat or drink that day.

Anna was going to court because her husband had told her to go to Bangkok and bring back a bag that a friend of his would give her.Whether she knew what was going to be in that bag or not, I don’t know, but a year after I met her she received a life sentence –

99
years – for attempting to smuggle a kilo of heroin out of the

country.

I still had the bag of cookies and oranges but it never crossed my mind to give them to Anna; I assumed that everyone’s appetite would have waned like mine. Little did I realise that most of them had been in prison for months, some of them years, and they were as hungry as dogs.

‘You will be going to Lard Yao tonight,’ said Anna.‘Tomorrow

you will see the two other British girls who are there for smug- gling heroin.’

Lard Yao was the women’s division of Klong Prem Prison.The notorious Bangkok Hilton. She was talking about Patricia Cahill and Karyn Smith.

Anna lost interest in me shortly after and I felt terribly deflated, alone and by myself. One of the officials, who was fat, abrupt and quite aggressive, came over to the bars and shouted out a few names.Those girls who were called scrambled over to the bars and promptly dropped to their knees, then sat with their legs to one side on the floor. Obedient and prostrate, they looked like zoo animals before the trainers. It was awful.

The officer handed out pieces of paper from the court and some of the girls appeared quite happy at the contents placed before them; others looked miserable. The smiling prisoners had just been informed they had been offered bail and they were

going home that evening. Bail had been denied to the rest and they had just received another
11
-day remand hearing. A few others were given the official document to confirm the sentence that had just been handed down to them by the courts.

Relatives passed rice, fruit, cola-in-a-bag and other Thai delights to the guards who proceeded to check them, before they were passed into the cage of women. The frenzy around the opening of each bag was pitiful, but even then I guessed that it was not only food and drinks being passed through in plastic bags. Lighters, cigarettes, money, snuff, pills and powders were all smug- gled beneath egg fried rice and vegetables.

Those who weren’t smuggling ran to the back of the room, promptly sat on the floor in a circle and ripped open their gifts, shovelling food into their mouths.Throughout this rather surreal feeding frenzy I remained silent. Hours had gone by since my last cigarette and I was beginning to feel twitchy.Then I remembered the ones the guards had overlooked. Some of the prisoners were already ahead of me, smoking in the toilet area. They must have

smuggled in their own. I took out my cigarettes and, for the first time since my arrival, the girls took an interest in me. I offered the pack to one girl, hoping she might take one and talk to me. No such luck. She grabbed the packet and, in Thai, called the rest of the women over.

They scuttled to the toilets while I waited a few seconds before plucking up the courage to follow behind them. I asked for one of my own cigarettes. I squatted down alongside them. It was the most wonderful, delicious cigarette. We hunched down lower before crawling out of the toilet. I offered the girls the bag of cookies and oranges and within a few minutes the whole lot were gone.We sat there smiling. I had broken my first prison rules.

At
5
.
30
pm all the girls gathered their shoes and lined up at the

gate.We were leaving.

seven

Prisoner 228/36

Dear Mum and Dad

... I have spent the whole afternoon on the verge of tears, again... I’m doomed. A life sentence here is
100
years and most people seem to be getting life from the courts. Most pardon applications are being refused… and ‘the death sentence’ means death here... one of the teachers from the university came by to see me yesterday, he brought soap and shampoo with him and I found the whole thing totally embarrassing. I can cope with this weird world of walls but when the real world shows itself to me I crumble...

Love you both Sandra

Letter home, June
1993

A gloomy, pearl-coloured light descended as we were driven through the city in a lorry with a cage on its back.The people in the streets watched us, pointing us out to their children.We were public property to be ridiculed and held up as degenerates.

Two handsome young men sat at the back of the lorry, both holding rifles, as it rumbled through the streets.
Perhaps I should make a run for it, in the hope that the guards will shoot me dead.
In a consoling almost paternal voice, one of them told me that they only ever shoot fleeing inmates in the back of the knees to stop them. They would rather they served their sentence to the full than kill them.

An hour or so later the lorry pulled up reluctantly in front of Lard Yao; as if it felt the unwillingness of the women it carried. There were so many women on the lorry that I had trouble seeing the large, very stiff pair of pale green gates, past bodies and bars. The gates opened and the van pulled through.

This is it, I thought,
this is real prison
. There were more bricks and bars and fluorescent lights than I had ever imagined, followed by that unmistakable rasp of rattling metal keys that would stay with me throughout the following years.We were shoved off the back of the lorry, counted by two officers, and passed and piled into a narrow, damp and dark, concrete cage.Tiny frogs, less than a centimetre long, jumped around on the ground. Nothing much else stirred.

The curious thing was that the prison already felt familiar, as if the memory of the other women who had passed through still lin- gered. All around me women, young and old, started ripping off their clothes and shoving each other to get to the front of the queue that had formed. I kept my clothes on and remained at the back.

A heavy, steel door opened. Five women passed. I could see through the door. There was grass and a tree. There were pretty grass lawns and flowerbeds.
Oh, how wonderful!
I thought.
This isn’t going to be so bad.And at least I will be able to see the sky.

Another five women passed. Five more, then another five, until there was just a couple of others and myself left. My turn. I was scared but I was also eager to get into prison to see how bad or good, it really was. If there are trees…

The door opened and I spotted a blonde head on top of a blue uniform. She was an Australian girl named Nola Blake. What a relief to see her little blonde head amongst all the dark-hairedThai girls.Too much eye make-up, skinny as a rake, wrinkled and kind of hard-looking, Nola knew her way around the prison. She was one of the prison trustees and had been asked to meet the
farang
– the foreigner – to act as translator. Nola was wearing a blue

uniform because she was a sentenced prisoner. She spoke fluent Thai.

‘Welcome to the Bangkok Hilton.’

The prison was calm but to me it appeared totally chaotic.The rest of the
1
,
700
prisoners were all locked in for the night, but everywhere there was the sweet-foul smell of hot bodies. Everyone was given a very intimate and thorough strip-search by another prisoner. I was handed a thick, brown denim sarong, the colour of a remand prisoner, and a shirt. This was my uniform. Most of the few personal belongings I had left were taken away by Man Kwillean, a Hong Kong Chinese woman I later nicknamed Rifkin, the name of the prison grass in the film
Midnight Express
.

Rifkin emptied my carrier bag and leather bag out on the floor, took my watch and the few pieces of jewellery I had, but allowed me to keep the book of family photographs, filled with pictures of my family and the new baby at home. My shoes and clothes were stuffed into a leather bag and that was the last I saw of them. I felt like I was free-falling.

I was given a small, stained sandbag for a pillow. Nola walked me over to a slimy, green concrete area for a wash. Directly in front of us was a massive, blue-tiled water-tank on the ground but there was no water inside apart from a little pool at the bottom. I had a toothbrush and soap but I couldn’t figure out how I was meant to wash from the tank with the dribble of water.