Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (7 page)

I arrived in Chiang Mai only to find hordes of drunken tourists hanging off young, pretty Thai girls, celebrating the New Year. It was ugly, urban and fake. The following evening I returned to Bangkok, with its seedy bars, souvenir shops and brothels, and felt the gnawing desire to leave immediately.

Perhaps I would find some more luck in the south. I headed to the islands.

four

In Sickness and Health

Please excuse my terrible handwriting again. My nervous system has taken a bit of a battering over the last six months and I am feeling a little shaky. I shall explain this to you at more length in another letter.Things are now looking up and I have no doubt

that I have come out the other end of it all a better, stronger and more experienced person. I’m sorry I cried so much on the phone at Christmas, but it was very emotional for me to hear your voices…

I hope to be home this year, but I don’t want to come back an insipid, sick, underweight, broke failure.That’s the way I feel at the moment and it may take me some time to sort things out. I love you all and think of you all daily. Everybody kiss each other for me. Big one for the baby.

Letter home, early January
1993

One evening, shortly after the sun had gone down, I was lying on the bed in my bungalow, on the island of Koh Samui, listening to the most wonderful, exotic music drifting from next door. I don’t know what it was but after hearing it I realised it was impossible for me to go home.

It was now almost three months since I had left England and the idea of returning filled me with dread. I felt like a child in an Enid Blyton adventure where everything was unknown and irresistible. From coral gardens to freshwater falls and secret lagoons, the allure

of the island was more than I could have ever imagined. Slowly, the cracks of my recent paranoia were papered over.

For five weeks I was part of the transient island community life. There was volleyball on the beach at dusk, paragliding, snorkelling, swimming and motorbike day trips or just lounging around the beach. Chaweng and Lamai beaches were the two most popular areas of the island. There was a hint of mischief at night and the clubs, discos and bars heaved with revellers, but they had little appeal for me. I was constantly searching for deep and meaningful conversation, which usually consisted of solving all the world’s problems at a stroke. In paradise, it was requisite. If the state of the world didn’t improve overnight I would take midnight swims and long walks along the soft, sandy coastline.

My money was running out and I decided to head back to Bangkok to pick up some work that would hopefully provide enough money to fund the rest of my stay, however longer that might be. I packed my bag and set my watch for six the following morning, in order to catch the only boat off the island. Some time later, I told my parents of my plan. As long as I was careful they would be happy.After all, what could go wrong?

The desire in Thailand, like many other developing countries, to acquire foreign language skills, particularly English, had led to a major teaching industry in Bangkok with schools appearing overnight. However, when I arrived back in the city I had very little money and my clothes were unsuitable for teaching. Most days were spent walking the streets, looking for work. I would go into office buildings pretending to look for someone that I knew did not exist, knowing the local custom is always to offer a guest a glass of water.As someone went to enquire about the person I was looking for, I would drink the water and then disappear.

Yet despite the initial difficulties, and having no formal teaching qualifications, I soon got work without any real problem.

From February
1991
until October
1992
I worked in a number of places including a university, various language schools, the United Nations-related international school, and many business establishments. I also taught students privately in their homes several times a week, and I got to see a side of the people and their country that was truly Thai. I loved teaching and I learned far more than I taught my pupils.

Before long I found a nice place to live close to the Chao Prya River, and quickly developed an intriguing circle of friends.The days passed and, almost surreptitiously, Bangkok was better than I had anticipated.The chaos, pollution, traffic jams, noise, heat and constant hustle and bustle were now adorable instead of reprehen- sible.

Wearing a silk-lined miniskirt, I often found myself riding around the city sitting side-saddle on the back of a motorbike taxi, listening to Sting,Tracy Chapman, Lou Reed and INXS through a Walkman personal stereo strapped to my head. It was way too much fun to be real.

Incredibly, I got parts as a movie extra in Thai films, music videos and later I would take part in the making of several televi- sion commercials.This was my life, and it was perfect. I was young and frivolous and curious about things.The streets were alive, the people were alive; the city, with its magical allure, was too.

I felt a new excitement in my life. I sensed a watershed in my relationship with Thailand and, in the weeks that followed, I grad- ually developed a sense of antipathy for my old life at home.

Around the middle of
1991
I began a relationship with an

American guy by the name of Hurley Scroggins, the third. It took him ages to convince me that he was worthy of any attention, but after a few months his Jack Nicholson looks took my fancy. Hurley was fun, well-travelled, rather eccentric and very sociable. For a while he had lived in Spain, and spoke the language fluently; he could also speak Dutch.What impressed me most was that he was extremely knowledgeable and spoke, in such an eloquent

fashion, of things I had never heard of. More importantly, he was much wilder at heart than myself. Much to my surprise we fell in love.

Hurley worked as a journalist for an English language maga- zine, and our life together was exciting and full of surprises. No longer did I consider myself a tourist in Thailand. I was now a bona-fide ex-pat.

The ex-pat community in Bangkok is a small group, an island amid an ocean, where everyone knows each other, but is not always necessarily dependent on, or close to, each other. British, American, Australian and European – the ex-pat community in Bangkok is spread over different geographical areas, simply because it is a huge city. Like anywhere, different people migrate to different sorts of areas.

Sukkumvit tends to be the place loosely regarded as the middle-class area, where the rich foreigners go. Older travellers, many of who have been on the road for years, and old hippies go down to Soi Nam du Plee, where they hang out with the Thai ladies in bars. It can be a rough area, occasionally spilling over into violence.Young travellers on a shoestring budget, backpackers and teenagers migrate to the secure and sheltered area of Banglamphu. Here they will find banana milkshakes and American movies

playing
24
hours a day.All tastes are catered for (you can always tell

a young traveller from the bright, outrageous clothes they wear that would never see the light of day at home). Banglamphu is the ‘old’ area of the city where the King’s Grand Palace is found, and historic buildings scatter the region. No building can be higher than the height of the palace and so Banglamphu is saved from a surfeit of skyscrapers.

Street markets cover most of this district, selling everything from rice soup at
3
o’clock in the morning to reggae music during the afternoon. Clothes, food, electrical goods, birds and small animals are sold in abundance and masses of people come down

from the provinces into Bangkok every year to sell their goods.

Living in Banglamphu I enjoyed the best of two worlds. I was close enough to things familiar, like European sandwich shops, and at the same time was able to indulge in the exotic.

The community I lived around was a small, tightly knit group involved in various activities. One friend ran a second-hand bookshop, some taught English, while others worked for non- governmental organisations.There were poets and writers.There were many who had married Thai women years previously and settled in Bangkok, working in bars and restaurants.

Bangkok is a place where everything goes on, and others got by selling cheap drugs. It was part of the culture, and I found myself smoking cheap marijuana along with many others.

Every three months I would leave Thailand and travel to Penang, in Malaysia – a journey taking around
22
hours – to renew my Thai visa.The Thai Embassy rarely granted visas for for- eigners for stays over three months, and for the next few years I

made these regular trips. Just seeing a new place added to the excitement of the times and my sojourns were a welcome break from the hectic lifestyle in Bangkok.Yet I was always relieved to get back. Bangkok had quickly, and ever so deftly, become my home. I could feel the past breaking off in chunks.

There are many names and faces from my time in Bangkok that remain a blur but one of those individuals who stay with me is Karolina Johnnson. A Swedish girl who spoke several languages, including Thai, Karolina, like many others around me, had trav- elled widely. She was very well educated but her greatest difficulty was applying her intelligence to normal life.

Karolina was an awkward girl, with frizzy, fair hair. She drank too much and did not make friends easily.At the many parties she threw at her flat she was the only girl I knew who appeared excluded in her own home.Yet, despite this, Karolina was involved in a side of Bangkok that I had heard of but never experienced.

Karolina lived a life I had only ever seen in films. Many of her

acquaintances were involved in the business of buying and selling passports; the exportation of young Thai girls to different parts of the world; gold, silver and gem smuggling and, of course, drugs.

Before long I was introduced to various men from the large West African ex-pat community. For reasons I could never quite fathom, Karolina believed she fitted into this rather dubious com- munity and was wholeheartedly drawn into their world. By pretending to Karolina, or any other vulnerable female, that they were in love with her, these men operated by constantly shower- ing her with attention and, invariably, fought amongst each other over her.

She was flattered and in no time had started working for them. At least once a week she would disappear somewhere, usually a foreign country, doing something illegal for these guys. My friends knew about it as I knew about it, but we rarely spoke about it amongst ourselves or to Karolina.

Dressed as a businesswoman, she was constantly off to exotic locations, usually flying first class. Sometimes she carried bags filled with either drugs or gems and at other times escorted young women to places like Japan, where they would work as prostitutes. They had been sold for the price of a television.

The men she worked for were always on the lookout for new recruits and, on a couple of occasions, Karolina came to me asking if I might be interested in listening to some proposals from her new acquaintances.Whether through curiosity, stupidity or both I decided to meet them. More than anything I was interested in seeing the sort of people she was dealing with, what the offers were and how they carried out their plans.Why was Karolina so interested? What could possibly be the attraction?

I met a German with a large, round face and popping out eyes. As befitting a man in his position he was wearing way too much gold and he was also far too smooth. Smuggling gold to Sri Lanka was his speciality. It turned out that the German was no longer able to use his regular people because they had been through

customs too many times and he was now looking for new people. Would I join him? Would I take several kilos of gold to Colombo, in Sri Lanka?

After buying me a beer he outlined his plans further. It would go something like this – he would take me shopping for new clothes; they needed to be baggy, loose-fitting ones. His associates would make a fitted body belt that would hold the gold, which would be worn under the clothes. He went on to explain that I would be introduced to another of his associates and that person would also be on the plane, with the gold, flying to Sri Lanka. At no point should I acknowledge him.

On the plane the second smuggler would take the gold bars to the toilet and leave them in there. In the meantime I would have followed him and been the next person in the queue for the toilet. From there I would fill the body belt with up to seven blocks of gold, go back to my seat and enjoy the flight.

In an attempt at reassurance, the German told me there were no metal detectors at Colombo Airport and, more importantly no female customs officers, so I could not be rubbed down or body- searched. He was willing to pay me or anyone else stupid enough

to do it £
500
.

I sipped my beer.Throughout our conversation I marvelled at how ludicrous his proposal seemed to me. What on earth made him think I would be stupid enough to do something like that? It was preposterous, like something from the film
Midnight Express
, the true story of Billy Hayes, a young American sentenced in Turkey to
30
years for a drug offence. Hayes had strapped drugs to his body and tried to smuggle it through customs.Who would be stupid enough to do such a thing?

‘I’ll think about,’ I said, knowing I had no intention of taking him up on his offer.‘I’ll do it if you organise a dry run for me.’

If he would pay for a ticket for me to go to Colombo then I could see, for sure, if he was tricking girls into smuggling for him.

‘No,’ he said,‘no dry runs.’

‘Well, how do I know what to expect? How do I know you’re telling the truth and not setting me up?’ Did he really think I could be so stupid?

‘What happens if something goes wrong over there?’ I asked. ‘We’ll get you out,’ he said, looking deeply into my eyes, almost

as though he was trying to seduce me.

‘Well, then,’ I replied, ‘I don’t think I’ll bother. Cheers for the beer.’