Rotting in the Bangkok Hilton: The Gruesome True Story of a Man Who Survived Thailand's Deadliest Prison (11 page)

Most of our arsenal ended up in a sewer drain when it became obvious no revolution was imminent. Jon’s timing was superb. He had a vivid dream one night about a search of prisoners’ lockers, leaving a feeling strong enough for him to insist we throw the stuff away first thing in the morning.

That afternoon, the guards and blue boys searched farangs’ lockers, fulfilling Jon’s clairvoyant dream. We narrowly avoided the very unpleasant consequences we would suffer had our arsenal been found.

The sole remnants of the episode were our articles in the
BKT
.

The series was featured as “The Editor’s Arsenal.”

The Warlord

E
arly in the morning, thick mist blankets the ground by the Chao Phraya River. The prison lies near the river, and for a brief but welcome respite each dawn, its scabrous walls are softened by nature’s veil. Looming out of the fog, Ah Fang’s skeletal figure could be seen dancing on the lawn, his movements fluid and effortless.

He practiced the ancient Chinese art of T’ai Chi religiously, in every sense of that word, his morning ritual unbroken in its repetition for decades.

Before the heavy tropical sunlight burned away the cool of the morning, his students would join him in exercise. They were a diverse group, reflecting the international character of the heroin trade.

Ah Fang’s protégé was Jon, an Englishman who had won the second-place championship in karate in the United Kingdom for his weight division, and who had come to Thailand to learn kick boxing. There was Ahmed, at twenty-six, an Afghani warrior who had already fought three wars in succession: first against the Russians, then in a series of inter-tribal rivalries, and lastly against the Taliban. Mike was another dedicated student, the son of a Taiwanese general high in the hierarchy of the Kuomintang; he was the
resilient offspring of a strong father. Each had become ensnared in the treacherous lures of dope smuggling and were spending years serving sentences in Bang Kwang.

The sight of Ah Fang’s diminutive frame throwing men twice his size and as many times his weight had become ordinary. Even so, a few Thais were always present to watch the spectacle, perhaps longing for his prowess.

Off the field, the dichotomy between Ah Fang’s master of martial arts status and his actual physiognomy was shocking—a gladiator trapped in a body resembling a ruined marionette puppet.

He was horse-faced, vaguely reminiscent of his Manchurian ancestors. Crooked yellow teeth gave his smile a piratical air. A strange, merry light glowed in the depths of his black eyes and suggested madness. Five-foot-five, weighing barely 120 pounds, he projected all the menace of a rag doll.

He only spoke a few words of Thai and not much more of English. His intelligence overcame this handicap, and through a broken amalgam of languages and hand signs, he managed to communicate surprisingly intricate and complex subjects.

He dressed in rags and gave every appearance of living in dire poverty, yet he controlled a gang of five or six Asians of Chinese descent. Ah Fang contemptuously referred to them as “my dogs,” and they were an unprepossessing lot, but they obeyed him unquestioningly.

He kept his belongings in a rough wooden box, two feet long by one foot wide and one foot deep. It held a collection of things at odds with the image of the beggar he presented. He owned a Chinese “chop” (a seal with Mandarin characters) of fine jade that he used in lieu of a signature. He had a kit of dozens of delicate, finely made acupuncture needles. A separate leather case held an ink stone—a stone with a shallow depression in which water was poured, that when rubbed with a pestle produced ink—and fine camel-hair brushes for calligraphy.

During the day, Ah Fang sat in a spot near one of the Chinese “houses” in the factory building. He used the box of his possessions as a chair, and by attaching a heavy leather strap, he would carry it into the dorm with him at night for safety’s sake.

He was treated with deference by Asians—both Thais and others, something very abnormal.

None of these curious features were sufficient enough to penetrate the fog of indifference which dulled my perceptions—indifference I shared with my fellow Westerners. Although Jon was my close friend, his association with Ah Fang held little interest to me. The fact that a Chinese man was proficient in martial arts hardly seemed unusual.

However, this changed one afternoon, at the height of the rainy season. Jon and I, forced by thigh-deep flooding in most areas of the prison, sought shelter from the flotilla of bloated animal carcasses and debris by moving to higher ground.

Ah Fang’s niche was in a corner near the dining hall, which mercifully remained above the water. It was next door to the coffee shop and squeezed in by a small restaurant run by the coffee shop owner’s crew.

Beating a heavy rhythm on the roof above us, the rain fell ceaselessly; the downpour was so severe that someone without a hat or umbrella was in real danger of drowning. The monsoon rains lasted weeks at a time, so everyone and everything was wet, cold, and damp.

Next to Ah Fang’s seat burned the agreeable fire of the restaurant’s coal-fired stove. Jon and I sat on footstools facing him, our backs to the stove absorbing the delicious heat, made almost cozy with the storm outside. We drank coffee, syrupy with sugar, paying our rent for the seats by the purchase.

Ah Fang held an old cloth-bound book reverently, engrossed in a train of thought far distant in place and time. The three of us sat silent for some minutes, until Jon asked: “What ya got there, mate?”

Ah Fang was slow to leave his memories. When he met Jon’s gaze, he handed him his book gently, as one would a precious relic. It was opened to a photograph.

In the dim light it was difficult to make out the image, and in any case, neither Jon nor I could have read more than a few characters of the tightly packed columns of Chinese ideograms that surrounded it.

Jon handed me the book, as it had apparently evoked no response in him. Scrutinizing it, I recognized Mao Tse Tung at the center of a group. All were dressed in peasant garb, and their faces were young and unlined; the days of the Long March were still to come, or had just passed.

I mentioned Mao’s name, and Ah Fang excitedly came to life, nodding and pointing to a figure in the row directly behind Mao.

The man was his grandfather.

Fang rummaged for a moment in his box and took out a pile of photos carefully wrapped in a tattered yellow silk scarf. He passed them to us reluctantly, making certain we understood the meaning of each icon. Posing confidently in a park with a manmade lake in the background, stood a much older version, nonetheless recognizable, of the man next to Mao.

Another man, not as old as his grandfather, dressed in an officer’s great-coat, was in several photos—his father. Lastly, with great hesitance, he gave us appalling photos. A healthy, youthful Fang stared at the camera from a half-dozen locations. He wore an officer’s uniform in some military settings, and a couple in civilian clothes at tourist spots. They were a stark contrast with the Fang before us—a shrunken revenant of his former self.

In fits and starts building to an unstoppable torrent, Fang poured out his story, relief plain on his face. He may have been an alien to confession, but it was clear he felt a deep catharsis by sharing the burden of his memories.

With a strange mixture of pride and disgust, he described his grandfather as “Mao’s dog,” a man who had devoted his life to being a part of the security apparatus protecting Mao and harassing “enemies of the state.”

The old man had inculcated discipline in him, and he had given Fang a priceless education in martial arts and traditional Chinese medicine, including its immense store of herbal pharmacology and acupuncture. A living testimonial to the efficacy of Chinese cures, his grandfather still lived a healthy and active life, though he had long passed the age of ninety.

Fang’s father was a senior official in the Chinese Secret Police, his position unassailable thanks to the old man’s party ties. Fang, too, had been a beneficiary of that influence, given an officer’s commission in the army, and made a captain at an early age.

His future in those long-ago days was assured, with no obstacles or hardships hindering his rise to the top. As commanding officer of five platoons, he was expected to do a stint on China’s borders to further his career, and earn the promotion that beckoned to him.

As is so often the case, fate had different plans.

He was assigned duty on the lawless, troublesome Burmese border with Southern China, the heart of the “Golden Triangle.” Chinese authorities were all too familiar with the dangers of heroin, and dealt harshly with traffickers. Ten thousand executions a year are performed on average on drug offenders in China, yet the flow of drugs continues unabated.

Geography and nature combined to foil efforts at drug interdiction. Uninhabited, save for the primitive and elusive Hill Tribes, the borders of China meet Burma to the Southwest, and Laos to the South. The entire region is thick, mountainous jungle stretching for thousands of square miles. Humans scarcely affect this wilderness, and manmade boundaries are illusory in the trackless rainforest.

Though part of a much larger effort involving thousands of troops, junior officers had greater autonomy than was the case elsewhere. Communications were often interrupted, and it was not uncommon for patrols to be out of touch for days or weeks at a time.

Far from the watchful eyes of his elders, Fang’s first taste of freedom was intoxicating. Army headquarters for Yunnan Province are based in K’un-Ming, a few hours North by plane from Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. His birthplace and home, Beijing, lay a continent away to the East.

Born and raised in his nation’s capital, Fang grew up with Stalinist architecture and the grey dreariness of life that were so often the product of Chinese Communism. As is the Chinese custom, he was raised to obey the family patriarch, and to view a tightly regimented existence as the norm.

Overnight, he found himself the leader of a hundred men in an anarchic city awash in gaudiness and vice.

K’un-Ming is an overgrown village in desperate need of a zoning committee. Concrete boxes sprout like ugly mushrooms amidst old traditional bamboo and teak dwellings. Food vendors pushing carts compete with pedicabs, taxis, motorcycles, trucks, and bicycles for space on the roads. Retail shops add to the chaos by spilling their wares onto tables blocking the ruinous sidewalks. In this maelstrom of traffic lurk thieves, touts, prostitutes, beggars, and street orphans awaiting an opportunity to seize whatever scraps might fall into their grasp.

Fang quickly discovered that the pay of a captain in the Army of the People’s Republic was grossly deficient in purchasing the pleasures K’un-Ming offered.

Within a month of his posting, his view of the world was twisted beyond recognition. Filial piety and the rewards of the state were abandoned in favor of a lifestyle focused on sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

The question of financing this new hedonism did not pose a problem for long. The orders he received from his superiors could still be followed without alterations, save for the bit at the end.

The army’s strategy along the border was as effective as it was simple. Fang and his men were sent out into the jungle from a clearing or landmark accessible by truck. After completing their tour, they would rendezvous back
at the drop-off point with other units for the trip back to their bases, within an approximate time frame.

When they trekked into the hills, they sought out the poppy fields scattered about the countryside that were marked on a map based on aerial surveys.

Once a field was located, he and his men would move onto the neighboring village in a crescent-shaped formation. On reaching the village, the best-dressed men (those earning the money from the crop) would be shot. Whatever opium was found would be burned, and, if possible, the field, too, would be set aflame.

Fang followed every order except the burning of the opium.

He’d stash it in a heavy canvas bag that could be padlocked. Later, in K’un-Ming, he would sell it. He earned so much money he could afford to be generous, and to avoid any unpleasantness or hard feelings, he doubled the salary of everyone under his command. This still left an enormous profit, as a Chinese soldier’s pay was a risible sum. This minor act of noblesse oblige earned him an intense loyalty that leaders seldom know. Unfortunately, the same act that created an unbreakable bond between him and his men proved to be his undoing.

Enlisted men competed to be transferred to one of Fang’s units for the extra pay and the esprit de corps. Word of this leaked out, and the jealousy of other officers ensured it reached the right ears on the general staff. Inquiries were made, and finding no obvious reason for Fang’s payments to the men, the higher-ups suspected the worst.

Owing to the inefficiencies and glacial pace of the Red Army bureaucracy, Fang had plenty of notice prior to the falling of the axe. The outcome was preordained. Not only would he be ruined, stripped of rank, and sentenced to a long term in prison, but also he would cause shame and a massive loss of face for his clan. The consequences were unthinkable.