Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (8 page)

Karolina was either a whole lot braver than I imagined, or a great deal more stupid. Either way I was amazed at the type of people she was working for and the things she was doing for them. More offers came my way and, with them, more refusals. Hurley was furious that I had even gone to the meeting.

I shrugged. This was Thailand, and this was how the country seemed to operate. From street to governmental levelThailand, for all its beauty and wonder, exists on various forms of corruption; it is not simply a problem, it is part of the way of life.

Smuggling gold to Sri Lanka was one thing; trafficking people was quite another but Karolina asked if I would go to meet someone she knew and just listen to what he had to say. I agreed to meet her African friend. On the surface the deal was straightfor-

ward and slightly more lucrative. I would receive £
1
,
000
for

escorting a Thai girl to Japan.

The African arranged for girls to go to Japan, allegedly to work in restaurants or bars, while all her travel arrangements were made in advance.All I would have to do was spend a bit of time getting to know her before rehearsing a concocted story that we were going on holiday, or a shopping trip, or something equally inno- cent.

‘All you’re doing is making sure she gets to Japan,’ he told me, ‘without any problems.’

I didn’t go with her to Japan.What he neglected to tell me was that all the girls would end up in prostitution, feeding the insa-

tiable appetite of the multi-billion dollar, commercial sex industry. Typically, the family of the girl involved would be paid the equiv- alent of two years’ wages for a manual Thai worker and told their daughter was going to work in a hotel or perhaps as a factory worker. The money was simply an advance on her wages. The daughter would pay off the loan quickly from her wages and her parents would not have to pay anything back.The girls are ordered like pizzas.

Most of the girls are young and attractive with immature bodies, and desperate to escape the crushing poverty in rural areas of the country.They will take extraordinary risks for promises of a better life as a waitress or a dancer.Yet, when they arrive in the so- called Promised Land, pimps confiscate their passports, usually forgeries. Often, they are raped before being sold and those lucky enough to stay alive often end up in jail. I found it ironic that a black man was involved in the slave trade.

In Tokyo, or whatever her destination, the girl would pay back her own travelling expenses, and pay for all her clothes, make-up, accommodation and food.There would be a levy to pay to the bar she would be working in and also interest on the ‘loan’ given to her parents, which took her abroad in the first place.

There were so many things in Thailand that were obviously criminal acts, but many Western people living there accepted them as part of the benevolence of a country that grew increas- ingly more liberal by the day.

The buying and selling of passports, in particular British pass- ports, is big business too and when I was in need of money for a ticket home I was encouraged to sell mine. I refused. I recalled years ago, sitting with my mother in Hollingbourne, when she said to me, ‘Be proud to be British, Sandra, it’s the best nation in the world. Never give up your British passport.’

I quickly realised that Karolina, absorbed in her secret little life, was bad news. I saw her less and less and became increasingly involved in my teaching work.

Karolina had successfully got away with so much over the months I knew her but her luck had to run out. On
20
August
1994
, she was arrested at the Don Muang Airport under her full name of Eva Karolina Johnnson, carrying
7
.
8
kilograms of pure heroin in her luggage. She had been about to board a flight to Zurich.

It is hard to say exactly when things started to go wrong but in May
1992
, I was quite unprepared for what was about to happen. One day Hurley and I were walking through Bangkok and there were soldiers everywhere; tanks rolled through parts of the city and razor wire had been erected around parliament buildings.

‘Is this normal?’ I asked Hurley with supreme naivety. ‘Was it like this last week or have I missed something?’

‘No,’ he said.‘Haven’t you heard? There’s been a
coup
.’

A koo
, I thought,
what the hell is a koo?
I didn’t ask Hurley what this coup thing was because he had said it in such a way that he presumed only an idiot wouldn’t know what it was. I couldn’t find the word ‘koo’ in the dictionary. When I eventually found out I was intrigued, fascinated by the notion that the military could just boot out the prime minister. Or so I thought.

In February
1992
the Royal Thai Army, led by General

Sunthorn Kongsompong, the supreme military commander, and army chief General Suchinda Kraprayoon overthrew the govern- ment of Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan, leader of the Thai Nation Party, who had been democratically elected in
1988
, in a bloodless military
coup d’état
. General Suchinda was appointed Prime Minister in April
1992
by the ruling coalition of pro- military political parties, who held a slim parliamentary majority. Shortly afterwards public protests at his appointment began and increased over the following weeks.At the time, of course, I knew none of this.

Huge demonstrations were mounted and the military intro- duced martial law across the whole city, declaring that any

gathering of more than nine people at any one time was illegal. They also introduced a
10
.
00
pm curfew. My reaction was simply ‘So what?’ What would they do if more than nine people were together after
10
o’clock at night? It seemed ludicrous, but before long gatherings of tens of people multiplied to thousands.

Thai people tend not to be short-tempered, nor quick to react yet, while Thais had been prone to political apathy, it gradually unfolded that there were limits. Essentially, what happened was that among the Bangkok middle class – those with a strong stake in Thailand’s economic future – feelings of increasing discontent arose and they voiced these feelings alongside students on the streets. Everyone had grown tired of military rule; they wanted a democratically elected government.

On
17
May the security forces opened fire at head height on

thousands of unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Bangkok, reminiscent in all but the scale of the atrocity of events at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square three years earlier. Hurley and I stood amongst crowds of around
150
,
000
people, calling for the resignation of Suchinda.

At three minutes after
10
in the evening, just behind what had developed into the front line between students and military, as we turned to leave the demonstration, the army opened fire. The place exploded. With water cannons and truncheons, machine guns and automatic rifles, the government dealt with the protes- tors in characteristic style.

Every third bullet had a red tracer on it so we could see where they were firing. I saw young men and women being hit, and they dropped like flies as the streets filled with their moans and ran with their blood. I saw a boy, of perhaps
16
, lying on the street with his leg blown off. Everyone seemed to have been shot from behind.We ran, carried along by the crowd, away from advancing, shooting soldiers. Sometime earlier I had read in the
Bangkok Post
about rioting in Brixton, England, but that was nothing like this. This was brutal.

Thousands of demonstrators were wounded, many of whom were left permanently disabled. Many more died. Of those who went missing none of the bodies has ever been found, and rumours swept Bangkok that many of the bodies had been taken to a nearby crocodile farm and fed to the hungry beasts.This, of course, was never confirmed, but most of the workers at the farm were apparently sent away at
1
o’clock in the morning and given no reason as to why they were being asked to leave.

General Suchinda resigned days after the crisis and military commanders implicated in the killings and violence were later moved to inactive posts. After the resignation of Suchinda, the ruling coalition agreed to a package of constitutional reforms. Amongst these was the provision that the prime minister should not come from the ranks of military.

Following the massacres, I regularly burst into tears when I saw a Thai face. The dramatic events came as something of a shock. Having grown accustomed to the beauty of life in Thailand, the deaths at the hands of the military were hard to cope with. The beauty was now complex.This was not what I had expected of the country that I had grown to love so much. I wanted to go home.

There was only one problem. Money. I had discarded my return ticket over a year previously. I resolved to begin saving for the return trip.

It proved virtually impossible.The Thai military bank in Bangkok where I worked terminated my contract, possibly for talking poli- tics. I also lost my job at the university I taught in and all of a sudden I found myself with very little income to pay my rent, food and travel fares.

I still worked at a school on the other side of the city, but it took almost two hours to get there by bus. The canals were often a better option and I rode the long, narrow boats that crossed the city quickly.The canal water, however, is a problem, and the black mass is more like a sewage system, as it pumps raw waste from the

9 million city dwellers.While canal commuters usually cover their mouths with a piece of paper or a handkerchief, one day I forgot to cover my mouth and the black water splashed me.

The following morning I was so ill I believed I was dying. My stomach seized terribly, and I began hallucinating. Nine days later, after my weight dropped rapidly, a visit to a local doctor con-

firmed I had amoebic dysentery. The amoeba was reproducing inside me. Until then my weight was always
55
or
56
kilos and even with dieting I couldn’t get it to drop to
50
but when the amoebic dysentery hit me I soon weighed in at
50
kilos.After that I couldn’t seem to keep weight on and I began worrying when it

dropped to
47
kilos.

Weeks passed in a flash and everything seemed to be going wrong. On
4
July Hurley and I split up.Things had not been going well with us and we had fallen out of love. I was far from home and alone. Months passed.

What should I have done? Well, like most young people in dire circumstances I should have sought refuge in the financial arms of my family or friends. But how could I? I didn’t want them to know that things had gone so badly wrong and that I felt like a failure. I was useless and not good enough. I would get out of this mess myself.

September
1992

Dear Mum and Dad,

What exactly is the situation with the baby? I’m sorry for sounding so demanding but her arrival to the world means a lot to me, for various reasons. I feel so far away, so in the dark over here as to what’s going on with her. Please send me a couple of photographs so that I can see her…

Sandra

At home my family were having problems of their own and I resolved not to burden them with my own troubles. My brother

and his wife had decided to start a family and everyone was delighted. Both my grandparents and parents longed for a baby in the Gregory family but, knowing that they wouldn’t get a child from the wild one, they had always hoped that my brother would do better.

I was thrilled at the idea of a baby and I wanted home even more knowing that we had a little one coming. My mum tele- phoned to say she was knitting a baby suit; both my parents were so excited at the prospect of becoming grandparents. When the

baby arrived in August
1992
she was born with slight physical

imperfections that no one had known about before she was born. The family was devastated.Why our baby? It hardly seemed fair.

I felt even further from home. I really wanted to be with them, but my financial crisis prevented this. I certainly wasn’t going to ask them for money now. I phoned home.

‘Everything’s fine, Mum,’ I lied, ‘nothing to worry about. I’m having a great time.’

Why should they worry about me as well as the baby? The real baby of the family needed attention, not me. My heart was break- ing because the last thing I was having was a great time.Almost
20
months had passed since I had arrived in Thailand.

‘Bye, Mum. I love you, take care.’

A community ceases to be so once the members become less than resolute in their support of each other. Many of the people I had considered to be friends in Bangkok began avoiding me and I was being dropped like a sack of dirty laundry.To be fair I was no fun to be around any more. I never wanted to go out, and I certainly didn’t want to go to the park and play Frisbee, or shop for materi- als to take to the tailor for the latest fashion. I was miserable to be around. Like most fair-weather friends, they didn’t want to know. Two people I had known for over a year were planning a trip to one of the islands in the gulf and asked me if I wanted to go. I

didn’t but they said it would be inexpensive.

‘You’re going nowhere fast in Bangkok,’ said one,‘and it would be good for you to relax, get well and be with friends for a while.’ Shortly after arriving on the island my sickness and fever returned. Almost delirious, I couldn’t get to a doctor but I managed to visit a chemist who told me I had been stung by a large, black-and-white striped mosquito; quickly I developed dengue fever. I’d never heard of it, but the chemist assured me that

it would pass.
‘Jai yen yen.’
Take it easy.

Finally it did pass, but I was not having fun nor was I fun to be around. My friends and I fell out and we parted company. I moved into a little bungalow on my own. Not long after I had recovered I picked up a serious reinfection of dengue and my body cramps were so bad I could hardly move. I barely slept.