Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton by Sandra Gregory Page A
Book: Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton by Sandra Gregory
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Authors: Sandra Gregory
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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
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
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