Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (26 page)

Five weeks? A long time? No way! It’s going to fly by.
I think I was the happiest person in LardYao.

I had been sentenced for over a year and it was time to submit an application to the king for a royal pardon. My parents paid for the lawyer to make the submission, and a month after my sentenc- ing they had arranged for one of the best lawyers in Thailand to organise it for me.When I was called out to the lawyers’ room, my legal representative sat waiting for me. He was the lawyer who had defended Robert; he had now come to gather the details to go on my pardon application. He sat there, smiling, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be working with the person he worked against for three years.To be fair, he was very professional and moved as quickly as he could to get the application in before I left Bangkok. There were many ironies in Bangkok and this was one of them.

Every week for three years I had scrubbed the bakery with a couple of the other girls but on my last cleaning day, Old Mother Penis was there to oversee the cleaning process. Because of this, many of the other girls who worked in the bakery decided it would be a good idea to help out to keep her happy. I decided I didn’t need to bother with the scrubbing. I left the others to show off their skills.

There were so many kittens in Lard Yao that I spent the afternoon catching cats and taking them to the hospital, where I injected them with some feline contraceptive I had had sent in. Old Mother Penis went crazy and started throwing everything she could lay her hands on at me, and calling me a ‘full of shit,

lazy wanker of a European’.The barrage of abuse continued.‘You let Thai people clean your mess up.You work here, you eat Thai rice, you should help them work!’ I thought she was going to burst.

After years of working in that stifling heat and filth, I could no longer keep quiet and told her that I thought she was a foul- mouthed, ignorant, corrupt swamp-reptile and no wonder her husband spent all his money and spare time in the brothels. Naturally, I lost my job in the bakery, but she lost a great deal of credibility in front of all the bakery girls and I walked away delighted to be leaving that horror story of a woman behind. It was a great relief being able to tell that slave-driver what I thought of her, but she sent me off to the office for my punishment. Over the following weeks she did her best to do what she could to make my life a misery. It didn’t work; nothing could dampen my spirits now.

The guard asked me what sort of punishment I wanted for being rude to Old Mother Penis. Stopping my mail was no use because I would be out of LardYao soon.Two Thais were standing outside in the sun so I suggested I join them for the afternoon, as my punishment. It was boiling hot but knowing that I was leaving I was suddenly determined to go back to the UK with a suntan. I stood there with two girls who’d been caught in a short-time hotel.That afternoon I got other prisoners to chuck us blocks of ice and we stood there, sucking massive ice cubes, having a laugh and pretending we were on holiday. LardYao no longer mattered. Being kicked out of the bakery meant that I had nowhere to go during the day times so I spent the following weeks sitting under the washing lines. I gave away most of my possessions; my bucket and my scrubbing brush, all my stamps and clothes apart from one change of clothes. I gave away noodles, bags of chillies and dried fish. I got rid of my shower bowl and most of my toiletries. I kept one small pillow for sleeping. My life was devoid of ‘things’ but it

made my leaving feel more real.

Dear Mum and Dad

I’ve done my time. I’m coming home. I am so relieved! This will be my last letter to you from Bangkok. I can’t believe my turn has finally come and I am coming home at last.What an amazing birthday present to be finally leaving Lard Yao. Everything will seem so easy after being here for so long. I am so excited and I don’t know whether I am laughing or crying.This past four years has been a long time and I thought it would never pass.Without your help I don’t think it would have passed.Thank you.Without you both I really don’t know if I could have made it through…

See you soon Sandra

Letter home, May
1997

I turned
32
at the end of May and organised a ‘feast’ to celebrate my last birthday in Thailand. But my teeth had been so bad for the previous couple of years that I could no longer eat anything harder than boiled rice.The girls made wonderful spicy dishes but I couldn’t eat any of them.

Those last few weeks were, in their own way, sad times.As soon as I heard I was leaving I wanted everyone to leave with me, I wanted them all to come along.The women I had known and the women I had not known, the ones I had liked and the ones I had loathed; I wanted them all to leave too. Over the years I had watched so many people exit the prison and wondered whether my turn would ever come; now that it was imminent I didn’t want to go alone. I also knew how it felt to watch someone leave and I really didn’t want anyone to watch me go.

I could hardly bear the thought of leaving my cat, little Upstairs. He had been born in LardYao and this was his home.Who would prepare his sardines and rice twice a day and stand guard over him as he ate? Who would scratch the scabs off his tummy, as I had done for so long? He had been my only loyal friend since Karyn had left. He was the only thing I missed from The Lard Yao

Correctional Institute. I said goodbye to him and it broke my heart to leave him behind. He died about a year later, still only a young cat.

The morning I was due to leave arrived without ceremony. A group of reporters gathered outside the gate and I was held inside until mid-afternoon because the prison hated media cover- age. I had longed to walk through the gates that led outside, but a van was brought into the prison instead and guards surrounded me.

‘Sandra,’ said the prison commander, as I left, ‘if you lie about my prison or any of my officers you will get bad karma. Do you understand what I am talking about?’

I told her that ‘yes’, I did understand, and that I didn’t need to lie about her prison because it was already bad enough. The prison officials were desperate to have the last word.

A Thai television company arrived and I was told to sit down in front of a camera. I gave an interview in Thai, which went out on the evening news that night all over Thailand.Ahead of my depar- ture, reporters shouted questions at me as I left Thailand.

‘I feel good,’ I replied,‘but they won’t let me speak to you.’That was it; there was nothing else to say. It was good to leave.

OnWednesday
4
June, I flew out ofThailand en route to Britain

to serve the remainder of my
25
-year sentence. Guarded by four British prison officers, I left on a British Airways flight, to arrive at Heathrow Airport the following morning.

I flew back with three other Britons who were also serving long sentences for trafficking heroin. Kevin had been sentenced to
25
years,Andy and Peter had both been sentenced to life, but their sentences had been commuted to
40
years by the
1996
amnesty.All

three were aged under
40
. Kevin had been friends with Robert inside and completely ignored me. Peter and I were handcuffed together from immigration on to the plane.We said little to each other.We were both in shock and both a bit scared of the grunting officers escorting us. Our passports were stamped: ‘Deported

Thailand
4
June
1997
. Convicted of trafficking in narcotics’ fol- lowed by the relevant terms and dates.

We swooped down over London.The buildings were a familiar battleship-grey, mirroring the sky. My heart pounded. The captain’s voice rasped over the tannoy, ‘Prepare for landing.’

I had prepared for four years, four months and four days.

eleven

Kangaroos

Drug smuggler Sandra Gregory was last night spending her first night in a British jail after being transferred from Thailand to complete her
25
-year sentence. The
32
-year-old teacher was taken straight to London’s Holloway Prison, where she will be assessed before transferring to another UK jail… Last night she was getting used to being behind bars in Britain.

6
June
1997
,
The Herald

The three men travelling alongside me were taken off the plane first.Then it was my turn.Two huge policemen, wearing bullet- proof jackets and leather gun holsters, entered the cabin. ‘Don’t give us any hassle and we won’t bother you,’ barked one,‘and don’t speak to the press outside either.’

I couldn’t get over the size of these men; they were massive, hairy and gruff. During the previous few years the only men I had seen were either visitors or Thais and the Thai men were usually quiet and much smaller than me.

I was due to go to Holloway Prison, but it was so early in the morning that their reception staff had yet to come on duty so I was taken instead to Wandsworth Prison, along with the other three. Because Wandsworth is a prison for men, I could not be locked in a cell, so I was placed in a small, windowless room with cracked, flaking emulsion.

‘Fucking hell, we had a fucking ball…’ said a voice.

‘Those fucking Thais…’ said another.‘The fucking women will fuck you sideways…’

The voices were aggressive, loud and rude. It was the conversa- tions of the guards who had travelled to Bangkok to collect us. The shouting continued and I felt like an unsavoury piece of meat. I sat listening to the crude voices around me, hoping that I had made the right decision in transferring back.

I was removed from Wandsworth at around
8
o’clock in the

morning and as I left I caught a glimpse of the men I had trans- ferred home with.They were locked together in a cell, looking as shocked by their surroundings as I was. Peter waved to me and wished me luck. I waved back. I would need it.

The prison van rumbled on. It was impossible for me to stop smiling as we drove through London; it was clean and orderly, his- toric and wonderfully familiar. I felt like a day-tripper.

They were still in the process of releasing some women when we arrived at Holloway, so we waited outside until they had finished. I marvelled at the array of bizarre-looking women and even the clothes they were wearing. Nose studs and rings and tattoos; every- one had them. Most of the women wore their hair cropped short. Jeans hung loosely from their waists. Everyone had tiny shirts.

I felt stupid.There I was in my tropical, cream-coloured linen suit and suntan.Two guards stood outside the van smoking.

‘You know, love, you’ll need to be strong in there,’ the female guard said to me.‘When I signed up for this job I got them to put a clause in my contract saying I’d never be posted to Holloway. I told them I’d resign if they tried to make me work with this lot. I’ve worked some of the toughest nicks in the country but I’d never work in Holloway.’

My chest heaved. It felt like I was breathing underwater.

The male guard stood there smirking.‘Little girl,’ he said, staring right at me,‘they’re gonna eat you alive in there.’

*

Once inside the prison I was transfixed. It seemed so calm. All I remember saying is, ‘Oh, wow!’ There was hot water coming straight out of the wall! I had forgotten about proper plumbing; everything seemed so modern. People were talking in fast, snappy rhythms, joking sarcastically with each other. I felt like a foreigner. I
was
a foreigner.

‘You can’t have mirrors in here,’ said the guard who searched me, ‘you can’t have spray perfume.You can’t have
that
either.You could hurt someone with
that
. What is
that
anyway?’ Just about everything in the carrier bag I had brought with me except my book of photographs and some mascara was confiscated.

Are you suicidal? No. Have you got a drug addiction? No. Do you need a doctor? No. Are you suffering from emotional prob- lems? No. Do you self-harm? No.

‘Look,’ said the officer,‘you can’t say “no” to everything.’

I was so unconcerned by anything they said and quite overjoyed at how pleasant everything seemed compared with LardYao that I stood there grinning like a village idiot. Immediately they sent me to the medical unit, which is more or less for psychiatric cases and people with serious illnesses.

I was given a prison number – BJ
4218
– and the reception officer

escorted me downstairs. We passed through the prison and she pointed to a shelf-full of material. It was exactly the same as the material we wore on remand in LardYao: coarse, brown cotton.

‘No way,’ I said. ‘There’s no way we have to wear that, surely?

Not here?’

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ she answered.‘That’s what you’re going to put on your bed.’

One woman sat in a corner of the medical unit, rocking, squirm- ing and twitching; another paced her cell, talking to the walls and shouting at the shadows. Most of them were covered in red welts and swollen scars. I wasn’t checked by a doctor so I can only assume they thought I was a bit potty.

My first night in Holloway I bought a £
2
telephone card and called my parents.‘How do you do this again?’ I made the mistake of asking one of the other inmates. She realised I had not spoken to them for four years, since September
1993
, so she shouted to all her friends to listen in to the conversation.

I dialled the number, shaking, the handset pressed against my face. My mum answered and my dad was on the other line.

‘It’s me.’

For a minute or two that’s all I managed. I couldn’t get anything past the lump in my throat.Their voices wavered and I could feel them both trembling with delight. I could almost touch them. There was also a strange sense of pain. I was ecstatic for sure. But it was so much more than that.

My mum told me she had booked a visit and would be down to see me the following day. But I wasn’t ready to see anyone and didn’t want her to see me in there.