Hotel Kerobokan (20 page)

After his stint in Cipinang, Thomas was again expelled from Indonesia to Bangkok, where he spent a few months before returning to Jakarta on a new false passport. The heroin market was now dominated by a Nepalese friend of Thomas’s, Man Singh, who would later be shot dead and named by Jakarta police as the boss of the Bali Nine. Thomas and Man Singh were working together, splitting deliveries of heroin to sell to their customers. The underworld grapevine hummed with the news that Thomas was back and it didn’t take long for it to filter back to the police. Thomas was again spending his days looking over his shoulder, constantly moving around to stay under the police radar. Out of the blue one day, he received a telephone call from a drug squad police officer – one who had helped to put him away the last time. He was touting for business, offering immunity in exchange for cash.

He didn’t want to catch me this time, he wanted to get my money. But this only works for some time. If you are friends with a policeman, he can’t catch you directly. But other police will catch you. You pay and afterwards you still get caught. I didn’t want to meet him
.

The first time he rang I didn’t know who it was, so I picked it up. ‘Oh, this motherfucker.’ Afterwards he called again, but I had his name in my telephone, so I gave the phone to my girlfriend. I tell her to say that I’ve gone back to my country. Then we moved quickly to Sukabungan, a village maybe three, four hours from Jakarta. So I stayed there, hiding. But it was very far away and also boring in this fucking village, so after, I changed to Bali again
.

First I stayed in Seminyak. I feel no good, so I stay in Ubud. After I feel no good, I change far, far, far. Keep changing. Police were looking for me a long time, but always they see me and I get lost again. When police catch me, the police say, ‘I follow you, I lost you again, I saw you, I lost you again’. I was a headache for them. I kept changing the place I lived. Also, when I go out on my motorbike I always use full helmet. I don’t go to Kuta, Legian; I never go to busy places like that. Also, I go on the small streets. I knew police were looking for me
.

– Thomas

It was yet another dealer’s betrayal that eventually led police to his door again and to his second stint in Hotel K. One of Thomas’s former Nepalese couriers, Kiran – brother of Bali Nine boss, Man Singh – exposed his location. The catalyst was an emergency phone call to Kiran from his wife, telling him that police were raiding their Jakarta house and warning him not to come home. So, Kiran flew from Jakarta to Bali and dropped in on his old boss, Thomas, who was instantly a little nervous.

I said to him, ‘It’s better if you don’t stay in Bali, you bring problem. If you want, I have a friend in immigration who can check if you’re in the computer yet, if not, you better leave now.’ But he didn’t want to listen. He came to my house, using my swimming pool
.

– Thomas

Just as Thomas feared, Kiran brought the Jakarta Police to Bali – they tracked Kiran by tapping his phone and arrested him when he went to pick up three hundred grams of heroin from a hotel room. Typically, he spilled information in a desperate attempt to save himself, giving up Thomas’s home address. But Kiran’s betrayal didn’t save him. He got twenty years and took his friend Thomas down too.

I was stupid, actually. For ten days I didn’t know they’d caught him, and then my friend in Bangkok called me and say, ‘Does Kiran know where you stay?’. ‘Yeah, he came to my house.’ ‘He is no good, you better move,’ he told me. I asked, ‘How long have they held him already?’. ‘Ten days.’ I thought they must have finished the investigation and he didn’t talk about me. If it was two or three days, okay. But ten days? I thought, no problem. So I didn’t leave. On the eleventh day, they caught me – because he did talk
.

– Thomas

It was dusk as Thomas turned his motorbike into his driveway on his way back from grocery shopping at Hero Supermarket in Denpasar. He switched off the bike, pulled off his helmet and in the next second, he was gone. Two officers sprang from the shadows and handcuffed him. More police quickly converged from every direction. They’d all been sitting in cars and nearby cafés, waiting for the notoriously slippery drug boss to show up. Inside Thomas’s bungalow, police uncovered thirteen grams of pure heroin in a black-striped brown bag. One of the officers smugly asked Thomas if he recognised him.

He was the same fucking policeman who catch me in ’92. It was the same fucking guy. I didn’t realise until he says, ‘You still remember me, Thomas?’ … Fuck.

I only got caught with a small amount, but they say I’m part of an international syndicate, I’m the second in charge in Asia, and number one boss in Indonesia. But we are not mafia, we are not criminals, we are not anything, we are only friends. Okay, maybe we work together. We do business. He send, I sell. He make money, I make money. But no organisation or anything.

At this time I still had money, not too much anymore, but some. But the problem was, a woman who I was [with] for three years ran away as soon as I got arrested and took everything; she took the money, she took all my clothes. Everything. My prosecutor was Urip Tri Gunawan,* he said he’s a Christian so he won’t make it too difficult. ‘You pay eighty million rupiah and you get less than one year.’ But the court gives me three years because I didn’t have any more money.

What was it like going back to Kerobokan again?

For me, easy to go inside, because I already know the guards. And I already know that after a little bit of time you can sell, you can have a lady. I knew a little bit already. When you first come, you don’t know anything. The second time it’s easier.

– Thomas

*
Thomas’s prosecutor in the Bali courtroom, Urip Tri Gunawan, was later sentenced to twenty years jail for taking a US$660,000 bribe. He was also the prosecutor in the drug cases of Mexicans Vincente and Clara and former Bali governor ‘Mr OK’. The prosecutor’s new nickname was ‘The six billion rupiah man’.

The Corruption Court sentenced disgraced prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan to 20 years in jail Thursday for taking a US$660,000 bribe to drop a major embezzlement case against fugitive tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim.

–
Jakarta Post
, 5 September 2008

Jail is a place that drives you nuts. You go crazy. Can you imagine being locked in a room every day at 5 pm, when people are watching the sunset, locked in a fucking shit cell. You have to be locked up for thirteen hours day after day. It’s not easy … it’s very easy for sane people to lose their minds. Some people kill themselves, some people who don’t use drugs, start using drugs in jail, many people. Many people get fucked up in jail.

– Ruggiero

You can’t think too much or you go insane. If I think too much, I’m not happy.

– Thomas

Surviving Hotel K was not just about surviving the violence, the drugs, or the guards and inmates – it was also about trying to create a life in a small world that was constantly on edge. Every day, inmates were surrounded by some of Indonesia’s worst psychopaths, who roamed the grounds of the jail looking for any opportunity to stave off the madness and boredom that life in Hotel K brought on them. Westerners were not only thrown into a violent environment, but into a culture that they often didn’t understand. But they had to adjust – and many did this by trying to make their world a little more civilised, more comfortable and more like home. Bali Nine member Scott’s parents gave him a vacuum cleaner. Schapelle’s sister Mercedes brought her a small, fluffy dog named Stanley that she dressed in pink ribbons and walked around the jail. Argentinean Frederico installed a jacuzzi out the back of his cell. Brazilian Ruggiero built a pond with a Buddha statue sitting at its edge to meditate beside. Italian Juri had a wedding.

I rot my brain with computer games and TV and play tennis. I just feel stupid with what I’m doing. It’s no way to live a life, really, but it’s what I have to do. Same as any 10-year-old kid … eat, sleep, play sport and play games; that’s all I do – it’s ridiculous.

– Scott, Australian inmate

Many prisoners didn’t judge others by their crimes. They were all in the same place and had to live together. A daily routine could include dashing from one cell to another for a smoke of
shabu
or a card game, organising drug deals or plotting to sabotage someone else’s. Other ways to pass the time were blue room visits, sex, reading, a weekly yoga class, or, exclusively for the men, playing tennis, cricket or volleyball. Despite these activities life was a constant grind, but Hotel K – like any other pocket of society – had its characters with strange habits and hobbies that could make life more dangerous but also more tolerable and interesting, for themselves and other inmates.

Killer Saidin, the snake man, was one such character. Saidin had returned to Hotel K after originally serving a short time, and then being released on a legal technicality, for the late 1990s decapitation killing. Two years later he violated his parole by getting involved in a fight at a gambling night. Subsequently, his murder case was brought back to court and he was sentenced to seventeen years. Saidin was quickly promoted to
Pemuka
, the powerful position above
tamping
. He was in charge of prisoners, had keys to all the cellblocks and the run of the jail. He liked westerners and often hung out with Ruggiero and Juri, shared a cellblock with the Bali Nine and walked Schapelle to blue room visits.

It wasn’t officially sanctioned, but Saidin slipped in and out of Hotel K’s doors whenever he liked, often hiring a car and driving two hours to his home to stay with his wife and three young daughters for the night. Despite his crime, he was well-liked. Inmates didn’t judge him for it and, if they did, it worked in his favour, giving him an aura of power. They all knew he kept his machete under a mattress in his cell as a souvenir of his gruesome crime – and that this sent out a warning not to mess with him.

He was lovely. He was adorable. You know, I have always been naturally attracted to the bad guys. Before I knew who he was, I always hung around with him. We smoke some
shabu
together and we tell stories. And then someone said to me, ‘You’re not afraid to be with him?’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘He’s the biggest criminal here,’ he told me. Later I said to him, ‘Saidin, did you cut someone’s head off?’ ‘Yeah, I did it. I would have done it again, the motherfucker, I would have lost my job if I didn’t’. I said, ‘I’m so happy to be your friend’. He said, ‘Ruggiero, just by them [the Laskar gang] seeing you next to me, they won’t touch you again’. Laskar wouldn’t touch him, but he didn’t have the power to stop them beating someone else.

Why would the gang never touch him?

Because he would get his knife and cut another head off. He doesn’t give a fuck. He was a maniac. Everyone knows his knife is still there. He’s the type of guy who doesn’t talk much, but you don’t fuck with him. Leave the guy alone … he’s psychopathic. Completely cold blooded. I nickname him Gi Gi as in ‘guillotine’ because he cut the head off. It was a private thing. Not many people dared to call him ‘guillotine’.

– Ruggiero

Saidin was security for VIPs and dangerous inmates. He was called if someone overdosed and he broke up fights – but his specialty was catching snakes. One morning when a two-metre cobra slithered into one of the women’s cells through a bathroom drain in Block W, Saidin got a phone call asking him to come quickly. He knew the drill; it happened often enough. He ran down the path and into Block W. Instantly he knew which cell it was, as a group of women stood outside, yelling and pointing. Saidin walked down to the cell and went inside. The snake’s head was up; it was angry and ready to bite. Saidin walked back out. He’d have to wait until it settled or he’d be bitten. He had an affinity with snakes, and knew when to leave them alone. He sat chatting to the women, keeping an eye on the cobra through the door. As soon as he saw its head drop, he went in, slid his hands under its middle and slowly up to its head, then scooped it up, curled it around his neck and came out. The women leaped back to let him pass.

As he casually walked to his cell, he decided to keep this one as another pet. He already had five cobras that he kept in his cell inside large plastic water bottles under his bed or in the bathroom. They were his pets. Every couple of weeks, Saidin left Hotel K to drive to Denpasar and buy four white rats from a pet shop to feed his snakes. He would take the cap off a bottle, and put the live rats in each container for the snakes to swallow live and whole. Most days he took one of his snakes for a walk, wearing it around his shoulders, even wandering into the blue room. Often he let the snakes out in his cell for a play, or put them out in the sun. They’d vanish into the long grass at the back of the cells, usually returning through the bathroom drain a week or so later. The westerners were fascinated by Saidin’s ability to tame snakes and regularly took photos. His four cellmates had gotten used to living with snakes. But one afternoon, one of them became a little too blasé.

Inmate Nanang was drunk on
arak
when he took one snake out of its water bottle, and let it run around his body, teasing it by sticking out his tongue, breathing ‘Haaaaa’ into its face. The snake didn’t like it. It sprayed venom into Nanang’s eyes, and then bit him on the neck. Nanang screamed in pain, dropping the snake and clutching his swelling neck, struggling to breathe. Saidin got an emergency phone call and sprinted to his cell. Nanang was lying on the floor, barely conscious, with the cobra on the loose in the block. Saidin carried Nanang out, with the help of his cellmates, and drove him to Sanglah Hospital, where he stayed with him for two weeks until he recovered.

A convict at Kerobokan Prison, Nanang, 30, on drugs charges was rushed to Sanglah Hospital because he was bitten by his pet cobra. The snake bite wound on the neck of the dark skinned man had been treated by paramedics. According to his family who visited him in hospital, Nanang has always been a snake lover. He enjoyed keeping poisonous snakes of all types in his house before he went into Kerobokan Prison four years ago. His favourite reptiles were cobras and green snakes. It looked like he never stopped his hobby even though now he lives in Kerobokan Prison. Apparently, Nanang keeps quite a large cobra in his prison cell.