Rotting in the Bangkok Hilton: The Gruesome True Story of a Man Who Survived Thailand's Deadliest Prison (10 page)

The
BKT
’s articles covered a plethora of issues. One described the slave trade of refugees in Thai camps on the borders of Burma and Cambodia. Another lambasted the foulsmelling, vile sauces the Thais loved to eat. Still another investigated the prison custom of penis-piercing. The Thais would insert ground–down beads made from glass Coca-Cola bottles into the foreskin just below the penile glands. This supposedly increased the pleasure of anal sex between prisoners. We reported the seemingly endless parade of gross acts of stupidity, ignorance, cruelty to animals, and horrific living conditions in the prison. These filled the magazine and were treated with appropriately black humor.

In the summer of 1997, what would later be called the “Asian Crisis” started in Thailand. Financial markets reacted badly as “Crony Capitalism” entered the lexicon of finance, and Asian economies tottered, then crashed. Asset prices, such as real estate, plunged as foreign investors fled the region.

To the overwhelming majority of the Thai people, the crisis was as mysterious as the bubonic plague was to medieval Europe. Imports once taken for granted became unobtainable. Store shelves emptied and were not refilled. More and more companies shut down with mass lay-offs, all due to the lack of capital or the absence of credit. The Thai Baht went into freefall, losing more than half its value in a week.

Predictably, the Thais began to panic.

As a prisoner in Thailand, distant from the troubles and distractions of modern life, the disaster was easier to discern. Being well-informed through the many financial publications I read, and having lived and traveled extensively in Asia for many years, the warning signals were clear from early on. Jon trusted my judgment implicitly. I had been on the mark with other predictions, and as events progressed in accordance with my analysis, he developed a sense of urgency as intense as my own.

Seeing no way out for the Thais except devastation, civil disorder, even anarchy, seemed preordained. The atmosphere in the country crackled with tension; hoarding, crime, and angry outbursts became normal behavior in place of the famous Thai smile.

Slowly at first, we prepared ourselves for the breakdown of Thailand. With gallows humor, we chronicled our labors in the
BKT
. We included step-by-step instructions on how we constructed the weapons, the bribery needed to obtain parts of our “escape package,” and other pertinent details.

It started with an old pair of scissors bought from a Thai metal worker for twenty-five cents. We paid another ten cents to have both blades neatly severed just above the handles.

Using brass, wood, rubber, and two different glues, I fashioned each of us a unique kind of knife. It was a deadly little thing, the blade sticking up between the fore and middle fingers, held tight in a fist. A contoured wooden handle fit into our palms, acting as the hilt. The blade was fixed into the wood and extended through two brass and rubber finger guards—one above and one below our fingers. These guards acted to stabilize the blade and to prevent the knife from being lost, as it fit close thanks to custom measurement. They were kept steady with pieces of iron to hold them in place, bound to the blades with epoxy and fishing glue, and applied over fishing-line wrapped in thick layers over the blades.

The blades were sharpened to a razor’s edge, ensuring that in a fight, any punch we threw would be a crippling blow. I completed both knives in three days, hiding the work in plain sight on the main lawn. The guards thought we were making some sort of jewelry.

Next, extending our weaponry to beyond arm’s length, Jon chose to construct a slingshot, and I made a mace.

Jon carved a handle to fit snugly in his hand and attached two iron rods forming the arms of the Y. He fastened them using tightly wound wire, reinforced with a second layer of fishing line; the whole solidified with several coats of wood epoxy, and then lacquer.

For ammo, we procured some cement, and Jon fashioned small balls studded with narrow finishing nails that stuck out in all directions. He inserted a small metal loop into the balls to be used as a handle. Strung on a length of flexible wire, forty-odd of these vicious projectiles would likely dissuade a victim from continuing an attack. It took him a week to make it, and about the same for my mace.

I purchased a two–foot piece of iron chain, ostensibly to secure my chair to a post at night to prevent its theft. I then began rooting around in a pile of castoff metal bits left over from a decade of machine repairs in the factory. Before long I had more jagged pieces of steel and iron than I could use. I also
found a fairly flat square of heavy tin, which I bought for less than a dollar. Making small incisions in the tin plate, I pushed the roughly triangular iron/steel pieces through it in close rows. I then rolled up the tin sheet in a pattern that formed a sphere about as large as a baseball. After including a lump of iron in the center to give it weight, I securely attached the nasty thing to the chain, and had a serviceable replica of a medieval mace or ball-and-chain.

Pooling our resources and ingenuity, we managed to build a primitive bomb and a home-brewed version of napalm. It took about three weeks to get all the materials, and cost less than twenty dollars.

The napalm was simplicity itself to make, but the ingredients proved difficult to get. The factories of Building 2, producing towels, picture frames, and fishing nets, included a small cabinet–making shop. The Thai owner of the towel factory was an acquaintance of mine. We had once split the price and bribes to get an electric typewriter in, and our relations were cordial. After many conversations, I eventually persuaded him to sell me a half-gallon can of paint thinner used in the cabinet shop.

Highly suspicious, he insisted I swear that no evil actions would be pursued with it. He could smell the lie, but my oft-repeated claim that I was merely refinishing a lap desk holding my papers finally won the day. Once the thinner was in my hands, we filled two heavy Coke bottles half-full of thinner and mixed in laundry detergent. Last, rags were soaked in the acetone and stuffed into the bottles as fuses. We plugged the bottles with corks to prevent evaporation until it was time to use them.

While I hounded Thep (the factory owner) about inflammables, Jon and I went about the process of making gunpowder. I had bought a book entitled
The Poor Man’s James Bond
from an underground press in the United States called Loompanics. Among many other items for the would-be anarchist was a recipe for gunpowder.

The main ingredient, charcoal, was produced right there in Building 2, and cost twenty-five cents a bag. Sulfur was slightly more difficult to get, but
we managed by convincing a guard that farangs preferred homemade matches to lighters. Skeptical, but unable to refute the twisted logic of our strange request, the sulfur was bought at a local chemist’s shop and duly handed over. The final item, saltpeter, was purchased by an expat friend of Jon’s who lived in Bangkok. In that great British tradition of tact, he was neither told, nor did he ask the purpose of it. It was passed in to us by a visiting room guard who could not have cared less.

Following the book’s instructions, Jon made a detonator using speaker wire, a clothespin, and some batteries. We made several nerve-wracking tests in a secluded corner, waiting until midmorning when the factory looms were at their loudest. Using less than a matchstick head’s worth of powder, the mixture made a surprising amount of noise. Our hearts pumped adrenaline for a moment with fear of discovery, but no one paid any attention to the loud crack.

We packed a thermos-full of the powder into three heavy plastic bags, each ingredient kept separated for safety. The coil of wire to be used as part of the detonator was also bagged up and ready. Lastly, we used a solid steel and rubber thermos flask that Jon got for Christmas from the British Embassy. It had a retractable spout for pouring that made it perfect for running the detonator wires into the mix while still allowing the flask to be firmly sealed shut.

As the news grew ever grimmer and a collapse became increasingly more likely, we threw ourselves into a frenzy of weapon-making and procurement.

Botulin toxin was next—a monstrous poison that attacks the central nervous system; a dose to the bloodstream of less than a thousandth of a gram is lethal. By mixing water, dirt, vegetable greens, and scraps of pork in an airtight jar and leaving it in the back of our locker for three days, the organism—the same one that causes botulism—was cultured.

The black and fungus-like spots which grew rapidly were the toxin.

On opening the jar, the stench was hideous and stunk up a hundred– foot area around the drain where we decanted it. With the ugly task of scraping out the toxin, done ever so carefully, for a microscopic dab of it would make one deathly ill, it was transferred to the little round tins which normally contained Tiger Balm ointment.

Our only failure was our inability to make ricin—a chemical poison so powerful it is a controlled substance included in biological and chemical weapons treaties banning it internationally. The castor bean is the natural source, and no matter how hard we tried, we could never obtain the beans. Local nurseries had never heard of it, and it is pretty red flowers were unknown to the Thais.

Our completed arsenal contained two thrust-knives, a slingshot, a mace, napalm, a black powder bomb, and a biological weapon (the botulin toxin). It took us six weeks and was created in the bowels of a maximum security prison in South East Asia.

The rest of our escape package was equally substantial. The impressive list included ropes made from fishing nets attached to large iron hooks that could easily snag on the metal posts holding barbed wire on top of the prison walls and were perfect for climbing. A versatile first-aid kit of anti-biotic ointment and pills, Tylenol 3s (containing codeine), scalpels, hemostats, gauze, bandages, suture packs, water-purification tablets, and many other necessities were included, including a spare set of dark clothes for each of us. We filled a large bag with dried apricots and apple slices, trail mix, and beef jerky. The bag also included a flashlight with spare batteries, a compass, detailed maps of Bangkok, and countryside covering a 300–mile radius. Every part of the package was a challenge to obtain, and a victory. All required great expense and prodigious amounts of planning and plotting. Most of it was highly illegal in the prison.

Our crowning glory, the item we literally starved for, demanded we overcome a logistical nightmare: three-hundred U.S. dollars in twenties. Buying
them, and then getting them into the prison at the same time the Thai currency was collapsing took a lot of cunning on our part. It was all that we could purchase. We squirreled it safely away in secret pockets sewn inside full length pants. The pants themselves were forbidden items, a crucial part of our “kit” so we had be dressed normally once we were on the streets.

Our ability to get so much as a single item of this potpourri of contraband spoke volumes about Thai attitudes towards prison. The Thais viewed imprisonment much as the Japanese did during WWII. Work ‘em ‘til they drop, then dump the bodies. If they survive, it is as Buddha wills it. If not, not. The life or death of prisoners is a matter of casual indifference.

This contrasts sharply with Western beliefs, all of which center around the prisoner as a danger to society, needing to be quarantined so as not to infect the general public. The idea of steel and iron blades and pieces lying in neglected piles in the prison courtyard seems ludicrous to Europeans or Americans. It does, however, point out the philosophical differences between East and West.

The plan we intended to follow once riots or fighting broke out, keeping the army and police busy elsewhere, was a simple one. Whenever large disorders erupted, we would try to escape. Several times big crowds had gathered in downtown Bangkok to demonstrate and protest, and it was touch-and-go whether it would become an enraged mob. Thai radio stations were great about keeping people informed about these disturbances. Our joint opinion was that it was only a matter of time before we would get our chance.

The prison guards had threatened to strike, a thing we fervently prayed for. Adding insult to injury, their salaries, worth half their old values after devaluation, were being forced to accept a pay cut by a government deep in arrears. How the guards were supposed to survive was their problem. This crisis, coupled with the fact that the Thai Armed Forces were notoriously slow and inept, formed the parameters of our plan.

The day after some major event triggered a descent into chaos, we would make our move. First, we would slip the tins of botulin toxin into the water tanks. This would incapacitate the population of the entire building for a few days. When the guards and blue boys succumbed, the real fun would start. Anyone blocking our escape would have to be dealt with, and quickly. We would carry our weapons at the ready for any contingencies.

There were two walls to scale to exit the prison. A guard tower blocked the way, offering the best chance at escape. We just tossed the Molotov cocktails into the tower and let her rip. The bomb had no specific use, but it seemed like a handy thing to have just in case.

Once past the guard tower and safely over the walls, we would hire a tuk-tuk (three-wheeled motorcycle taxis used throughout Asia) outside the prison, or leg it, and reach the nearest dock. The Chao Phaya River lay less than a mile away. We had hire one of the numerous boat taxis and take the river all the way down to Pattaya, then take a ship for Malaysia or Indonesia. If we had to steal a boat, so be it.

Was our readiness for escape fact or fantasy? Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and it is easy to judge past actions as pure folly when the decisions made at the time felt apt and rational. Lacking a complete knowledge of all the variables is part of the gamble of life.

It turned out the preparations were for naught. The economic crisis deepened; the autumn was thick with tension, but troubled as it was, Thailand held together. By Christmas, the Thais had settled into a sort of sullen acceptance, a new less-welcome routine. People were poorer, many imported items were impossible to get, but the “mai pen rai”—the Thai “never mind,” “it doesn’t matter,” a core belief in nonchalance, defused more drastic actions.