Rotting in the Bangkok Hilton: The Gruesome True Story of a Man Who Survived Thailand's Deadliest Prison (17 page)

Strictly speaking, it was illegal, but it was a sensible method of dealing with desires immune to prohibition. Prisoners doing life sentences rarely repress their sexual urges, and they ignore penalties irrespective of how draconian those may be. ‘Recognizing’ the couple made the situation less volatile, and neutralized the jealousy and other potential sources of violence lust may incite between inmates.

Two dozen people just happened to be around the Building Chief ‘s office the morning the ‘big meeting’ took place. The three of them were all smiles once the envelope with the money had deftly been handed over. Kai and Sharon emerged, clutching their impressively stamped and signed piece of ‘officially unofficial’ paper; their marriage now a fact. They acknowledged the applause and whistling that greeted them; they were well-liked, and generous.

Preparations for the reception had been made weeks in advance. A Buddhist monk was brought in at a substantial cost to bless the alliance (technically, it was a general purpose blessing, but the Thais are fairly relaxed about sexuality). The monk stuck around for the party, as merry as the rest.

An area of the roomy fishing-net factory was emptied of furniture and cleaned up; picnic tables were brought in, and several cooks were busy at work for days readying the feast.

Clean plastic garbage cans were filled with ice and Pepsi, and placed around the room for the guests. Tables were heaped with roast pork, whole chickens, specially prepared fish dishes, curried beef, and a small mountain of sweets. Cakes, pastries, candy, sweet rice confections, and—naturally, a wedding cake with both the couples names on top. Rumor had it that Kai had spent better than 10,000 baht ($400) on the party, equal to the monthly fulltime salaries of four prison guards.

Farangs with money or status were invited. Dozens of guards showed up unannounced from various buildings, and the small matter that no one was guarding the prison was blithely ignored. The ‘elite’ of the Thais— mainly the factory owners from other buildings, the doctor and nurses from the prison hospital, and other prison notables made an appearance. Workers in the prison factories had been given the day off in honor of the occasion and the place had a festive air about it. The rock ‘n’ roll blared from a boom-box and other lady-boys made extra cash charging for lascivious dances with admirers.

Over two hundred people wandered in and out of the reception room, the windows crowded with hordes of peasants, joking and avidly staring in at the feast. They were not left out entirely; Kai saw to it that sweet pastries had been liberally distributed to the poor and the sickly sweet soft drinks Thais love were also given out so that everyone shared in the celebration.

Plenty of marijuana and heroin was also floating about free of charge. Glassy-eyed, giggling guests were a prominent minority, and luckily for
users, the usual prison rules were put on hold for the day. The party lasted until lockdown at 4:00 PM and continued inside the prison dorm after count time. It was considered a great success by all.

The marriage lasted for years, and Kai and Sharon were together when I left Bang Kwang in 2000. They may still be married today.

Sharon did the honorable thing and told his wife on the outside that their relationship was over, though his children still occasionally came to visit.

They were as happy as it is possible to be inside a Thai prison. You get your comfort where you can.

On-the-Job Training

A
s was our custom on weekdays, Jonathan and I were drinking tea in the cool of the morning. We sat on a thick sky-blue cotton towel, manufactured on the nearby prison looms, large enough to use as a blanket. Between us was a new British steel and rubber thermos that held tea leaves steeping in boiling water. Beside it, a glass jelly jar held a pound of sugar. Our ceramic mugs steamed with Burmese ‘Dragon Leaf,’ with a scent like fine perfume. We were companionably silent, lost in our thoughts.

We leaned against the dormitory wall, enjoying the morning’s serenity. We sat under the eaves of the two-story concrete prison dorm, comfortable in the shade they cast. In front of us was a concrete bathing trough, waist-high, thirty feet long by four feet wide, some twenty feet away. A Thai leisurely washed dishes with the trough water, the only one so occupied. Behind him rose the building wall, gleaming from a coat of fresh whitewash. Just visible on it were old, faded Thai slogans encouraging cleanliness, a relic of the more fastidious Japanese Occupation of WWII. The authorities were oblivious to the irony of the slimy filth miring the trough over which the propaganda presided.

Half a dozen Thais sat under the dorm eaves as we did. They were doing their prison jobs, weaving fishing nets out of nylon fiber. They cleverly tied their string to the bars in the cell windows above us. Bamboo sticks were tied to the string suspended at shoulder-height, the net fanning out below, supporting their weaving with plenty of room to spare. Each of the weavers sat on bamboo mats ragged and worn from years of service. All day, every day, they could be seen steadily working, a row of industrious spiders.

At the end of the trough to our right was a guard shack. It was a plywood cube ten feet to a side, open to the air. It contained a plain desk and an armchair, with a slowly revolving propeller fan hung from the ceiling. A pudgy guard lay fast asleep in the armchair, his legs and arms massaged by a lady-boy on a foot stool at his feet.

We were jarred from our reveries when a skinny Thai scurried towards us around the back corner of the dorm. He moved awkwardly, bent over in an odd crouch to sneak by under the sight of the guard, to the rear of the guard shack. He held a crowbar in front of him, in trembling hands.

Naked but for a thin sarong (A rectangular length of cotton cloth, wrapped around the waist as a skirt, commonly worn by Thai men in the hot season), he looked every inch the savage. His skin was slashed with fresh gaping cuts, blood seeping through the ashes packed in the wounds to scarify him. Each slice was an inch or two wide by several inches long, covering his body. This mutilation marked him as an apprentice ‘Samurai.’

Jonathan and I exchanged glances, knowing this creeping drama boded ill. The trainee Samurai hid behind the shack, concealing himself as well as the shack would allow.

No one spoke or stirred, but our nerves were now alert, as a sudden watchfulness was felt by all of us along the row. The lady-boy, too, sat up, though the guard slumbered on undisturbed.

If there had been the slightest doubt that nasty business was soon to happen, it evaporated when the dishwasher abandoned his task and fled. An
innocent pile of dishes, covered in soap suds, was transformed into an evil omen.

Several minutes passed, enough for me to question my judgment that violence was imminent, until three Thais rounded the same corner the skinny Samurai had used.

A roly-poly Thai was frog-marched toward the bathing trough by two Samurai. One held a knife to their victim’s throat, and they rushed the terrified man, nearly dragging him along.

I recognized the victim as the building’s casino owner, a man named Kwai. It struck me as very strange, as he was a decent sort, well-liked by most people. He was easy-going, often lent money to farangs who needed it, and was far less rapacious than his casino-owning predecessors. He was wealthy and owed money to no one. Why the Samurai—the lowest of the low, would dare to touch this high-caste, well-connected man was unfathomable.

The Samurai, insanely violent as they were, were not heedless of the retribution such a man could inflict. A Thai that violated the rules of the caste system in the prison might be tortured to death, if the insult was severe enough.

The group reached the trough; the sun’s glare cruelly revealing that Kwai had wet himself. The Samurai with the knife whispered to Kwai, jabbing him in his fleshy double-chin. Kwai’s eyes were huge, and though he strained backward to try and distance himself, the knife-wielder allowed him no slack. Droplets of blood quivered under Kwai’s chin where the knife poked him, his face millimeters away from his enemy. Kwai stood rigid, immobilized by fear.

While the one Samurai occupied Kwai’s attention, the other moved out of his peripheral vision, and beckoned sharply to the trainee behind the guard shack.

The apprentice emerged from his hiding place, his walk jerky and high strung. He held the bar upright over his shoulder, nerving himself to kill a man.

The youngster raised the bar over his head, angling it behind him and down his back. The two veterans locked eyes with him, and nodded once; twice; thrice. They leaped away from Kwai as the trainee swung the crowbar with all of his strength.

Kwai was startled and confused. In the fraction of a second he had been left to live, looking from one Samurai to the other, unsure of the meaning of his sudden release.

The bar struck with tremendous force, crushing Kwai’s skull. Blood spurted up, fountain-like, as he dropped to the ground. Brains and pieces of bone spattered the concrete as the momentum of the blow carried the bar free of the mortal wound it had inflicted. The ground was crimson, pink, and yellowish-grey, awash with Kwai’s brain, a colorful Rorschach of violence.

He dropped lifelessly to the ground and lay in a rapidly expanding puddle of his own bodily fluids. His feet and arms started to spasm briefly, beating a feeble tattoo on the cement, his central nervous system not fully cognizant of its death.

The apprentice Samurai stood rooted to his spot, staring fixedly at his handiwork. One of the veterans plucked the crowbar from his hand, and loped off around the side of the dorm. The other veteran splashed himself with water from the trough, hurriedly washing off the evidence, and barked a warning to the novice.

The blood of his victim dripped from his face and torso, glittering briefly as the liquid caught the morning sunlight. It mixed garishly with the blood of his own wounds; he presented a picture from a darker, more barbaric age. Insensible, the veteran shouted twice more before the youngster snapped back to reality.

The youth sprang to life, and unthinkingly flew towards the building’s front gate, ignoring the irritated shouts of his comrade. The older man shook his head in disgust, and walked away, following the route taken by his other partner in crime.

The murder happened in near silence. We sat staring at the surreal vignette. Stillness took on its own life. None of the weavers faltered in their rhythm, nor did we pause sipping our tea.

The guard was still slumped in his chair asleep. The fan gently stirred his thin hair. The lady-boy continued his massage, unconcerned.

Flies began to gather, feasting on the dead man. Their buzzing was loud in the silence. No witness had moved, nor made the slightest protest.

Time was strangely stretched, each minute lingering grimly. The sun beat down; its harsh light reflecting off the prison wall, the water, and the blood. The body lay less than twenty feet from where we sat. The spurts of blood nearly struck us, staining the concrete a few feet away. The low drone of the insects and the soft rhythmic clacking of the net makers were the only sounds.

What were our obligations, our duties to the authorities? What did Kwai’s death demand we do? In this place where logic was alien, it’s values ambiguous and clannish, what was our proper course of action? There were no answers, save common sense to follow the lead of the Thai weavers. An unknown time later—it could have been ten or thirty minutes, sounds in the distance broke the awful silence, gladly changing the focus of our attention.

Motion near the gate caught my eye a hundred yards to our left. A cluster of five or six workers had gathered on the sidewalk, at the end of the factory building nearest the gate. Some stood pointing at the gate, others gestured vaguely, while more of their fellows joined them by the second. Within moments the sidewalk was blocked by the peasants in their rough brown work clothes.

The excited sounds of their voices swelled as the size of the crowd continued to grow. Their attention was tightly focused on the gate, where a separate crowd of blue boys, sprinkled with the khaki uniforms of guards had also formed.

By the time a commotion stirred the blue boys at the gate, the crowd of peasants had merged with them, grown to a mass of at least three hundred
men. They seemed to lack the mannerisms of anger or upset. Their attitude was more one of curiosity, their voices tinged with the lighter notes of amusement; of those promised some eagerly awaited entertainment.

The mob overran the vegetable garden on the one side of the walkway, and spilled over onto the tree-lined lawn on the other side. Like a bubble bursting, a narrow wedge of space appeared in the center of the crowd at the gate, abruptly splitting the group in half. Blue boys managed to widen the space, pushing peasants back on either side. Strangely, there was no animosity at this rude treatment, but instead heightened their sense of anticipation.

Two high-ranking guards stepped through the gate, their epaulettes and collars sparkling with polished brass insignia and gold braid. Gently, but firmly, they held a ragamuffin figure between them. Jon and I craned our necks to see, but they were almost instantly lost to sight, swallowed by serried ranks of blue boys and peasants—a small sea of blue and brown clothed figures.