Bangkok

I was twenty-one years old in 1977, struggling to stay on my feet, in a packed Bangkok jail cell, blood streaming into my eyes and dripping from my chin onto a once white, new, I Love Thailand t-shirt, with the red heart dripping blood, my blood. Clinging to the cell bars, disoriented, but aware enough to prevent myself from falling to the cell floor, its concrete surface covered with a stomach-churning slime, smelling of urine and dead fish. I had been arrested a few hours earlier for breaking the midnight curfew, set due to a recent coup. Around me, almost standing shoulder to shoulder were foul smelling, sweating bodies, prisoners, like me, but they were all local men. Unlike me. I stood out in this cage, too small, like sardines in an expired can, all of us equally excreting a putrid odour, from the extremely hot, thick humid air.

I needed to protect my space and not drop to the tepid soup of sludge, nearly ankle deep. I instinctively knew that if I let go of the cell bars, the space that I occupied would immediately be taken by the mass of human stench that would expand over top of me.

My travel companions, Drew and Trevor, both Australian, whom I recently met, were waiting for me at our hotel. We had naively, and in the end, stupidly, made up a game. After curfew, whomever returned to the hotel last, from our evening in local bars, in rented tuk tuk taxi, evading the military police, bought the last round of beer for the evening. I did not make it this evening, and therefore, Drew and Trevor were waiting, for me to buy the beer.

On seeing the military police at a road block ahead, my tuk tuk driver swerved his diesel smoke belching vehicle abruptly onto a railway line, almost leaving me on the roadside. Bouncing violently over the rail base, I could see that behind us, a military jeep, with a large, manned, weapon, mounted on the back, was rapidly approaching. Then another similar vehicle suddenly appeared in front of us with its big gun pointed directly at the tuk tuk, which stopped our escape immediately, causing me to smash into the shoulder blades of the tiny and very skinny driver. Most likely we stopped just in time, before I, if not both of us, would be bleeding to death on the roadside. I don’t know what happened to that driver, but he did not, at best, get his fare for my ride that night. In the worst case, I can’t imagine what may have happened to him. I was hopeful that, having delivered a stupid Canadian into the military’s hands, they would let him go.

I was thrown, violently, into a third vehicle, locked inside, alone, and after a very rough ride, forcefully yanked out, dropping onto stone pavement, in an open courtyard. There were four police standing around me, and laughing. The largest of these men pulled me to my feet and pushed me into an enclosed space, hitting me hard on the back of my head. From his second blow I reacted by reaching for his revolver, in a holster, attached to his hip. This really dumb, naïve, useless action resulted in a stronger blow to the side of my head, from which I dropped to the floor. I was dragged to the cell, bleeding heavily, and thrown in, sliding through the sludge and up against the standing bodies already there. I managed to pull myself from that sloppy odourous floor to get a grip on the cell bars. I have no idea what I would have done with that revolver, had I managed to get it into my trembling Canadian hands, having never held one in my life. Devine intervention, I’m sure, spared my life at that moment, once again. It was not my time to expire, violently, on this stone floor, in a Thai jail.

I had arrived in Bangkok a week before being arrested, from Singapore, leaving behind my two previous Australian travel companions, Chris and Terry. I met them in Bali a month before. They had recently married and were on their honeymoon, travelling Indonesia. We enjoyed each-others company and travelled well together. We were the same age. I appreciated their company when we left Bali to explore Java. Chris had left the Australian military just before he and Terry married. Both of their families lived on ranches in the Outback, and they would be returning there to work. We had a wonderful connection, and stayed travelling together within Java, and Sumatra, through good, and sometimes not so good experiences.

After a series of bus and train connections, stopping in Surabaya and Jogjakarta, we arrived in Jakarta. While in Jogjakarta, I was inside a tiny corrugated metal outhouse, behind a street restaurant, and I saw, on the side of the wall, an upside down, colour image, projected through a pinhole in the metal, that two persons were standing outside the door. I was sure these two individuals were waiting for me to exit the outhouse with an intention to do me harm. With as much force as I could muster within this tiny space, I flung the door open, knocking over one assailant, confusing the other, and ran for my life to the public street, to where Chris and Terry were waiting. The two assailants did not follow. My interest in photography introduced me to camera obscura, and this tiny image saved me from an imminent robbery attempt. Soon after, walking the sad and filthy streets of Jakarta, looking for accommodations and seeing so many sickly individuals in each space, an intense feeling of dread completely overwhelmed me. I quickly found that all three of us were simultaneously wanting to leave the city immediately, for Sumatra. Leaving by sea was not fast enough. Flying out of Jakarta, on the afternoon of the day we arrived, was the quickest way to escape this terrible, dirty, drab, sad and unhealthy city.

Our wobbly flight into Padang, Sumatra, clipped the palm leaves as it landed safely in a jungle clearing. A tiny bamboo hut with a palm roof pretended to be the terminal. An elderly man standing beside this jungle shack offered to lead us to accommodations. He seemed a pleasant person, so we followed him to his family’s residence, where the rooms were comfortable.

Padang was a heavenly escape from Jakarta. Our elderly host proved to be very helpful, introducing us to the many unique qualities of his community, including its matriarchal governing council. Soon after arriving he took us to an outdoor restaurant, where the lady chefs prepared the local specialty for us, Murtabak, a savory, very spicey, stuffed potato pancake, most likely of Portuguese Goan origin. This wonderful, burning hot meal, including local chilies, awakened for me my love for spicey hot food. I was the only one of a dozen or so travelers that was able to finish my scorching hot Murtabak. I finished everyone else’s portions with tears in my eyes, my face radiant with the heat, and happy. Our host stayed with us during our meal, telling us stories about the local area, and , also that his wife was the Mayor of Padang, which, he said, provided for him the time to wander the town, at his own pleasure.

We stayed in Padang for a wonderful tranquil week, walking the surrounding jungle paths, socializing, and enjoying the exotic culinary dishes, with the local villagers, and travelers from distant countries. After saying a tearful goodbye to most of the community, Chris, Terry and I reluctantly boarded a local bus, taking us into the wild, humid, jungle landscape, on the route north to Medan. Everywhere, unique vibrantly colourful birds were engaged in their social activities within the surrounding trees, that seemingly extended beyond heaven. Flowers, rich in equally brilliant colours, exploded from around deep green leaves dripping with moisture, with darkness as the back drop. Monkeys dropped onto the roof of the bus, from somewhere above, to snatch whatever was loose, through the glassless bus window openings. I had a serious tug of war with a sly monkey that managed to get ahold of the strap of my camera, only letting go when offered a banana.

Our journey through this exotic landscape was, in the beginning, thrilling, and full of bizarre experiences. The most memorable, at one of the bus rest stops, was a community of tree dwelling men. Their bamboo constructed homes were high up in massive trees, accessed by vine woven ladders, where the vertigo inducing climb was fifty feet and more. I wanted to stay off the bus and visit with these friendly tree dwellers, but Terry would have been the only female within this community of thousands of men, living invisibly, somewhere, throughout the dense tree canopy. She was understandably uncomfortable, so I continued on with my friends. The initial excitement of the jungle road began to shift after many hours of winding, up and down, often treacherous dirt roads, through dense jungle, with sudden torrential rains adding to the longing to have this frightening bus journey end.

Lake Toba appeared from the dense jungle as if an apparition. A deep feeling of relief overwhelmed all three of us as we finally exited the bus to witness this place of extreme beauty. The largest known explosive eruption on earth, 70,000 years ago, created the Toba caldera, also resulting in the largest volcanic natural lake in the world, within it. In the middle of the 100 by 30 kilometer lake is Samosir Island, the largest island within an island, with two lakes of its own. On Samosir, a young enterprising girl and her little brother met me at the bus stop, and persuaded me to follow them for accommodation. Chris and Terry followed another juvenile recruiter. These sweet enterprising siblings lead me to their family home, a beautifully detailed structure raised above the ground with a distinctive curving thatched roof of the Batak people, who live around the lake. My accommodation was a small structure beside the main house. I was acclimatizing to my new environment, when the young girl brought me a large, very cold, bottle of beer. While sitting on the small verandah, in front of my little hut, overlooking the lake, enjoying the refreshing beer, I was surprised again when this little angel brought me a plate of grilled fish. I soon found out that she had prepared this meal for me, as her parents were still out in the lake fishing. I guessed that she was not more than ten years old, and her brother, maybe six, both running the family accommodation business while their parents were fishing from early morning into most of the day. In the days to come, I could see the parents, from my verandah, in their dug-out canoe, catching the fish that sustained this wonderful family. When they were not out in the lake, their six year old would take over, alone in the same canoe , adding to the family food collection. One of my most favorite photos, is of this very young man, in that canoe, working the lake. This family would not accept any more money than the equivalent of two dollars per day for my stay with them, so they had to accept my clumsy help in gathering firewood, before the evening meal. Their house, with its long ladder to a small entry opening, was used for sleeping. We sat together each evening in a circle on the ground, outside the home, for a meal of fish and strange vegetables, attempting to communicate, creating lots of laughter, while the creatures within the dense foliage surrounding us carried on with their own loud conversations. After a few difficult mornings I learned to moderate my consumption of this family’s father’s home brew, made from some strange root from within the surrounding thick and dark jungle.

Crowing roosters woke me very early, and soon after, a tasty breakfast of eggs and smoked fish was delivered by one of the wonderful siblings. My days were spent wandering the jungle paths, photographing the unbelievably beautiful sanctuary like environment of Samosir Island, in the middle of lake Toba, in the middle of the island of Sumatra. While walking the various exotic pathways above lake Toba, I came across a group of young boys. They noticed a festering sore on my leg, from a mosquito bite, that I unfortunately scratched too often. They encouraged me to follow them, which I did, and they led me to a beautiful deep blue, almost black, pool of water, telling me this place had therapeutic qualities. Based on my wonderful host family’s warm embrace, I didn’t hesitate to jump in, to my extreme surprise, into a pool of very many, black water snakes, that were just below the surface of the water. The children ran away laughing. Why I did not die in that place, at that very instant, drowning from shear shock, is another mystery of divine intervention. The equally startled snakes departed quickly, as I struggled to pull out of this snake pit. I don’t know if these snakes were poisonous, but they thankfully spared me the opportunity to know. I learned the difficult way, of the rule of never entering black water. I decided to leave that afternoon, still shaken from the mornings experience. My host family was sad to see me go, as was I, in leaving this beautiful family. I was very surprised to see Chris and Terry at the bus stop, also waiting to leave. I hadn’t seen them during my week stay at Lake Toba. Their experience with their host family was as warm as mine, but without the snake pit experience. We boarded the bus to Medan together. The road to Medan was significantly different from the roads we traveled in central Sumatra. These roads were also narrow, rough and surrounded by dense jungle, but now full of movement with all sizes of vehicles, and wooden carts, pulled by all sorts of creatures. Diesel smoke spewed from frighteningly ratty transport trucks, overloaded with produce, or people, and buses, equally decrepit, jammed with bodies, like the one we were in, all fighting for space on a narrow path through the dense foliage that hid mysterious things in the darkness within.

The shock of arrival into central Medan was overwhelming. The packed earth streets were full of men carrying all types of firearms, revolvers in shoulder holsters or automatic weapons slung over shoulders, sinister guns tucked into trousers, and those without mechanical weapons carried long knives or machetes, even more frightening, from their appearance of being ready to be used at the slightest provocation. The homes and shops that we walked past, all of them, were covered in barbed wire, the roof, the walls and windows, and any open space attached to a building was incased in razor sharp prison like wire mesh. Jakarta was tranquil compared to this introduction to the entry to the gates of hell. We boarded the first bus that would take us to the airport. The bus we entered was sparsely occupied, and shortly after we boarded the driver pulled over to the side of the road. Two individuals on the bus began barking at the passengers to leave, which they did, very quickly. Not knowing what was happening, we also began to put our back packs on to leave, but the bus started moving. The two men started toward the rear of the bus to where we were now standing, and we could see they had large knives. To my surprise Chris pulled out an equally large knife that I had not seen before this moment, and also told me to pull out my knife, that included a can opener and corkscrew. Until that moment I had forgotten that Chris was previously in the military. He moved quickly toward the two men, so forcefully, that they quickly retreated, and jumped off the bus. That’s when I noticed that Terry, who was behind me, had the same knife ready, as her husband. Chris moved to the front of the bus, and with his knife in hand, told the bus driver to take us directly to the airport. That he did.

Soon after this brief experience with the lawless town of Medan, we were on a flight to Singapore. Upon arriving in Singapore, for reasons I don’t remember, unfortunately, Chris and Terry and I went our separate ways, and did not see each other again. Coming back to Singapore was like returning home. This very clean, safe, orderly city was a major comfort, after the experience of Medan. I stayed a week before leaving for Bangkok.

Barely standing, in the putrid cell. I was now realizing that I was in deep trouble. My clothes were soaked with my blood. My t-shirt now showed that my love for Bangkok was over. The individual that was responsible for my dire condition, the large military policeman, was noticeably aware of my location in the cell, and was forcefully working his way through the mass of sweating bodies toward me, when he was distracted, by the addition of two new detainees, who were not local, and they were clearly very angry. They began a very heated discussion with this menacing police officer, in Thai, and that’s when they noticed me against the cell bars. They immediately pushed their way through the mass of stinking bodies toward me. I didn’t know how badly I appeared until I saw how upset they were at seeing my condition. They became significantly angrier when I told them who was responsible for my condition. These two men were British embassy staff, and also a life couple, had been on their way home, after curfew, from a reception with the Prince of Thailand, when they were picked up by military police. A very short time after they arrived, a third person from the embassy came to extract them from the cell. There was a very angry confrontation, in Thai, between the embassy people and my tormentor, the military  policeman, after they said they were not leaving without me. He was refusing to let me go. I have no idea what transpired between these people, but suddenly, the terrible Thai officer backed off, and I walked out of the cell with my British angels. A Rolls Royce was waiting outside the prison. After checking my injuries, I was driven back to my hotel as dawn was approaching. My two Australian friends were still awake, having spent the night trying to find out what had happened to me. When they saw me exit the Rolls, they were clearly angry thinking that I had been out partying through the night without them. When they heard what had actually happened……they bought the beer.

A few hours after returning to the hotel, the three of us boarded a bus for Chang Mai, not wanting to have a chance encounter with the menacing police officer. It was at that time that I realized how additionally lucky I had been, because I did not have my passport with me when I was arrested. If I did have it with me, it would probably still be in the hands of the military.

Chang Mai was not to be so lucky for my travel friend Trevor.

Not long after returning to Canada, I watched the movie Midnight Express, and shook uncontrollably all the way through this movies documentation of another travelers experiences, who was not so fortunate as I had been, becoming more aware, that I very likely, might also not have come home.