Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (14 page)

There was a cadre of bored-looking women milling around, all of them topless.They wore short sarongs around their waists, but looked like boys.

‘That’s the tomboys,’ said Nola, when she saw me gawping. I had never seen anything like it; they had coarse, home-made tattoos, covering their bodies in a swathe of blue and green lines. Some had rough love hearts and symbols, while others had gouged words like Smak, instead of Smack (heroin), on their arms, legs and torsos.

The presence of the tomboys freaked me out.Their eyes were

bloodshot and wild. Nola kept laughing and joking with them in Thai but I had no idea what they were talking about. Besides, I was too busy trying to figure out how to wash.

‘Have you got a bowl?’ Nola asked. ‘No.’

Off she went and brought back her bowl while I stood around staring at everyone, stunned.

The plastic bowl Nola brought me was about six inches in diame- ter. It was used to scoop the water from the tank and throw it over you, the typical Thai way of washing.This is how I would shower. But how would I get the puddle of water out of the tank? One of the tomboys placed a bucket under the tap, and it quickly filled up. She was dunking the bowl into the bucket.

In Lard Yao Prison a bucket is like gold; they are expensive to buy and getting one is an indicator of your privileged status.When you get one you do almost anything to keep it.

Nola told me the ‘boys’ showering at the tank liked the look of me so I should just go ahead and share their bucket of water. Prudishly, I didn’t want to take off my clothes, and the heavy sarong made washing properly rather tricky.After a long day in the courtroom holding cell, I was hot, dirty and tired. I scrubbed my teeth with the plain brush. Nola went off to get me a pair of thin, cotton shorts and a T-shirt; my new pyjamas.

‘Have these,’ she said. ‘They’re better than the things you’re wearing, they’re awful for sleeping in.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you hungry?’ ‘No.’

‘OK.’

I felt like a child. On Thursdays, she said, the Christian mission- aries come to visit and are allowed to bring in food with them. Nola had a burger in her bag, and would I like half? A burger! In here? Fantastic. My hunger pangs returned. On the floor of a

deserted building, as the lights flickered and a guard strolled by, I ate my first proper food in over a week.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked. ‘Seven and a half years.’

‘What?

‘Seven and a half years.’

No way
, I thought,
no way. That’s not possible.
No wonder she looked so exhausted.What had I been doing for the last seven and a half years while she’d been in this place? I was horrified. It wouldn’t be possible for me to be in here for that length of time.

In the darkness I stared unbelieving at Nola. I had been in Bangkok for two years and I had never known that she, and women like her, had been here all that time.
Shit, Sandra, I thought, that’s terrible.

Nola had been arrested in Bangkok after heroin had been dis- covered underneath her baby in a pram. She had been caught along with her husband and a Thai local who were all heroin addicts. Over the next few years she proved to be quite a distant friend to me but that night, sharing a hamburger, we felt like bosom buddies.

‘Seven and a half years,’ she said again.

A loud siren sound pierced the air and Nola said it was time to go upstairs. She took me to a room where an officer was standing, waiting for us. The officer opened the gate. Like a losing prize- fighter, I rocked slightly before turning around to look for Nola but she was gone. Slowly, tediously I walked a little further. The room was packed tightly with bodies. Despite the numbers I felt so alone.

Lit with three long fluorescent strip lights, the room was incredibly bright. No one paid me much attention. There were over
70
women in the room and most of them were kneeling over their pillows, hands clasped together, chanting in rhythm to the

sing-song voice coming over a loud speaker somewhere.

‘You,’ someone snapped.‘Sit. No walking.Thai people praying.’

The voice, unravelling with anger, repeated herself again in broken English. I sat and looked around, amazed at where I was. I was in the remand room.This was where I would attempt to sleep for the following three and a half years.

Each night between
70
and
120
women slept in that room, an

enclosed block on concrete stilts, which was roughly
26
feet square – I paced it out over the years – with bars down two walls opening out onto the prison courtyard.We would lie side by side, and head to head with legs overlapping up to our knees, squashed together in rows.Women sometimes had to sleep sitting upright, others slept in toilets, while many barely slept at all.They stayed up all night crying because there was nowhere for them to sleep.After a while I would get used to waking up entwined in the arms and legs of the woman next to me. Conditions were cramped and primitive.

The only way adequately to explain what it’s like sharing a room with
70
to
120
women is to say ‘Close your eyes and imagine everyone in a crowded train lying side by side for four years in a

space not much bigger than two carriages.’ None of it was ever pleasant.

Twenty minutes later and the praying ended. A Thai woman, the ‘mother of the room’ – a prisoner who took charge of sleeping arrangements, money and cleaning of the room – walked to the far side next to the toilets and made a row of women shuffle up.

She pointed to a
15
-inch space and told me that was where I was

to sleep.Two linoleum squares on a concrete floor was my bed.

I sat down and the people in the row rolled their eyes at me; they had lost
15
inches of space because of me and none of them looked happy about it.The rest of the women in the room, those situated away from me, breathed a collective sigh of relief. I hadn’t been put in their row.

What the hell would I do now? Despite my nerves I smiled awkwardly, shrugging my shoulders as if to say,‘Well, here we are, it’s not very nice is it?’

Everyone looked awful. Ragged, pitiful and diseased. One woman, roughly in her early fifties, had two-tone long hair. Half of it was jet black and the half nearest her scalp remained deep grey, five inches of grey. How long had she been in here? She had obvi- ously run out of hair dye a long time ago. Her eyes drooped into huge bags of dark flesh under her forehead. She waved a hand to no one in particular.There was an obvious craziness about her that was unsettling. I felt as though I’d been given a starring role in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.

It was virtually impossible for me to sleep. I was poked every hour or so by the person next to me who shouted,‘You stay in two squares.’ OK, OK, OK. From now on I was going to do as they said and teach myself to sleep like a sardine in my two squares. I was sure I could hear rats scrabbling around me somewhere.This was madness and it would probably kill me for sure.

The only thing worse than the lack of sleep was the pain in my stomach that refused to go away.A toilet roll belonging to one of my neighbours was the perfect solution and I rammed it under my ribcage, to force the pressure. It was made-to-measure. The only thing worse than my stomach was the heat. It was unbearable.

I woke the next morning in a daze. Here I was, prisoner
228
/
36
– the
228
th person arriving in LardYao in the year of Lord Buddha
2536
(
1993
), and the noise of the prison startled me. I did not want to have to confront whatever it was. Water was being splashed around in the toilet area as people moved in preparation for the day ahead. It was around five in the morning.Already colonies of strange-looking insects had incubated around the toilet area – and anywhere else wet for that matter – adding to the unsavoury atmosphere.

A large group of women stood over and all around me, but none of them were looking at me; instead they were all queuing to use the toilet.There were two holes for over
70
women. Some of them stood chatting to a friend using the loo, but most just stood

blankly.To get to and from the toilet each morning usually took an average of
20
to
30
minutes.

While this was being done the rest of the room were putting their beds away. Large towels and tiny pillows all had to be folded in a certain way and stacked in exactly the right place in the centre of the room. Once all the beds were away the women sat around until the gate opened, waiting to be let out.

As the sun came up I heard the heavy iron gate clanking and the sound of garbled voices. Lard Yao was now officially open for busi- ness. Prisoners swarmed everywhere like locusts.

‘Go shower,’ ordered the mother of the room. I followed some women who carried buckets, home-made bags, cats, shower bowls, large plastic cups of water and sheets of plastic.
My God!
I thought,
how could there be so many women?
I went down the steps to where Nola and I had eaten the burger.

Everyone imagines that they know how it is in prison, how prisoners act and react to such an environment, but they don’t. I thought it would be quite easy to adapt and get used to it all. I had thought that I would know what it would be like and I was so wrong. What I sensed immediately is that prison is not like the movies, or television dramas. It’s far more insane, terrible, emo- tional and disgusting than any of those.

The empty space from the previous night was now full of people and they sat around on plastic sheets wearing sarongs, or stood in corners undressing. Many prisoners were almost naked. One woman combed her pubic hair while another scraped at her tongue with something blunt. Some sat, others dashed around. Over by the tall prison wall, hundreds of women showered under the sky and I could see they were already ankle-deep in dirty water. I saw a face I vaguely recognised.

My God, it’s her!
I recognised that face, pale skin and blazing red hair. It was Karyn Smith, the Brummie girl I had seen on the tele- vision over two years earlier.

Karyn was wearing the regulation shorts and shirt that every

other prisoner wore. She stood there in front of me beaming a huge smile that I can still see to this day.

‘You’re English?’ Karyn asked. ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so,’ I replied.

‘Never mind this lot, I’m not going to work this morning, come with me.’

Karyn had heard I had arrived the night before and had made the effort to find me.
It was kind of her to search me out
, I thought, although I later realised that most new arrivals in prison relieve the monotony of prison life. It was only those inmates who had been inside for years who usually avoided new arrivals because they were such hard work; they need looking after and tended to be a terrible emotional strain.

Karyn was in prison with me for six months and we became good friends. During those first few arduous weeks she helped me settle much better than I could ever have managed on my own. Gradually, though, I noticed how hard and abrupt she was.

‘Have you always been the way you are now?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she said, sighing. ‘But the trick is not to let these fuckers take the piss.’

‘I don’t want to end up as hard as you.’ But I did.

Karyn and her co-defendant Patricia Cahill had been in Lard Yao for two years. She was still fairly new to prison protocol. I asked about Patricia and Karyn told me they were not on great terms. Karyn nicknamed her ‘Plastic’. I reserved judgement until later.

Karyn ran ahead of me around the edge of the prison and I struggled to keep up, hardly able to muster a walk with the pain in my side.

‘Need the toilet?’ she asked. ‘Desperately.’

She passed me a plastic bottle that had been cut down and directed me to the toilets.There was no door, no privacy and no choice either.

‘Watch the sewer.’

We jumped over a deep drain. The water running through it was as black and awful-smelling as the canals running through Bangkok. It was a haven for disease; the smell of prison never leaves until you do.

Up ahead a group of miserable-looking girls were dragging wooden poles with batons attached to the ends along the sewers. Every morning they did this in order that the sewer would not overflow; they dragged the putrid contents to one corner of the prison.

A large tank sunk deep into the ground was the area where the sewage gathered.There was a general air of suffering and resigna- tion in the area. A woman stood in all this shit up to her waist, swishing the black water out through a large pipe in the wall.

‘God!’ I said to Karyn, ‘I hope she gets paid well for standing waist-deep in that crap.’

She didn’t, of course. Like most women in the prison – because they never produced anything considered a commodity, anything that the prison could sell – her wage was less than £
6
a year.

‘That’s nothing,’ said Karyn. ‘Wait until you see what they do under the toilets twice a year.’ She laughed like a drain. A few months later I saw what she was talking about. A group of young girls, usually the girls from the
soi
– the punishment block – had been selected to dig out the tank of solid material that fills up

under the toilets.The tank was over
10
feet deep and to dig it all

out they had to get inside it.They worked there for several days, digging out six months of shit and carrying it away in small, rusting buckets.

If the punishment of having to do that wasn’t bad enough, the shame of being seen doing it certainly was. It was an ugly, awful process.The smell was unbelievable. On a positive side, those girls usually found themselves with larger sleeping spaces in the room.

*

Karyn showed me the prison.We walked around the inside edge of the walls and I was amazed how small the place was.Through a tall chain-link fence, we could look at what was on offer for breakfast that morning. This was the
gonglean
– a large, enclosed area housing three rows of wooden tables and benches. Women lined up and down either side of the room, holding metal plates, and they each collected a mound of brown rice from a server at the doorway.Waiting their turn they filled the benches. It was like something from
Oliver Twist
. A Buddha statue and religious trin- kets were kept here on a stage. The
gonglean
was also where announcements were made. A monk would come in there every week too, to pray. Mainly it was the place for eating.