factory is usually empty. Boredom is the farang’s true enemy, as one whiles away the hours.
Unlike farangs, the Thai are forced to work seven hours a day, six days a week in the factories for a few baht a month—or pay a bribe not to work at all.The ‘Samurai’—no-hope lifers who murder for profit or on a whim—are the only Thai that don’t pay and have a certain freedom. Social stratification is clear. Peasant slave laborers are at the bottom; small merchants in the middle; factory owners and wealthy Thai—a mere handful—on top.
Outside this hierarchy are foreigners. Asians from other countries are accorded the rank of their economic status; “no money, no honey.” Regardless of whether or not they have family to assist them, virtually all foreign Asians come up with ingenious ways to scrape up enough income to survive.
Westerners (the whites) have embassies constantly checking on their nationals’ health and safety and regularly bring cash. Whites are treated better than the wealthy Thai and make up a strange class of aliens outside the Thai caste system.
Africans are treated as an ‘untouchable’ caste, human garbage whose only value is what can be extorted from them. The Thai’s deep dislike for blacks isn’t mitigated by the money they hoard from drug dealing. This is an odd departure for the venal Thai.
The Thai peasants spend their days working with machines or on tasks of manual labor. This often involves toxic chemicals and hazardous outdated industrial equipment. A large minority are handicapped from accidents. At shower time, dozens of wooden and plastic legs, crutches, and canes can be seen leaning against the wall in a long row, bearing mute testimony to the dangers of prison factory work. Fed and allowed to bathe twice a day, they live a life not much different from slaves in any place or time.
The small merchants work almost as hard as the peasants but are wealthy by comparison. They own radios, TVs, nice clothes, and eat very well. They’re also quick to imitate Western fashions. Anything two or more farangs wear or use becomes ‘de rigueur’ for the business-owners and is sure to be acquired within a matter of days. This slavery to stylishness would be funny were it not so pathetic.
The Asian foreigners who are well off, mostly the Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwanese, and the Thai factory owners either pursue increasing their large fortunes or emulate farang amusements such as reading, playing board games, or lying around indulging vices.
The majority of Westerners are either junkies who spend their days trying to find a fix or are madmen. The circumstances are such that they drive farangs insane, or to seek oblivion with heroin. Those that don’t use drugs go insane from the privations and trauma. Only a miniscule group manage to successfully pass these ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ of Thai prison life.
Africans deal heroin or act as pawnbrokers. They cluster together, loudly engaged in cheerful social amenities in their communal ‘houses.’ None use drugs, and the vast majority send money back to their families in Africa. They are uniformly gregarious, and their attitudes are sunny. To the outside world, they appear to regard their imprisonment as a vocational choice. None ever complain, and their bravery is as immense as it is inconspicuous. In the twenty-plus years West Africans have been incarcerated in Thai prisons, one—a single Nigerian—has been released. The rest are doomed to die there.
The one that left paid a million dollar bribe.
Forming their own little subgroup, the blue boys—trustees dressed in dark blue shorts and shirts—wear weird homemade badges they fashion out of tin: insignias of imaginary rank. They are the ones who actually run the prison, with minimal oversight by the guards. They do all the paperwork, the policing, the punishment, and the security tasks the guards are too lazy to do.
The guards themselves are rarely to be seen outside of the
Unlike farangs, the Thai are forced to work seven hours a day, six days a week in the factories for a few baht a month—or pay a bribe not to work at all.The ‘Samurai’—no-hope lifers who murder for profit or on a whim—are the only Thai that don’t pay and have a certain freedom. Social stratification is clear. Peasant slave laborers are at the bottom; small merchants in the middle; factory owners and wealthy Thai—a mere handful—on top.
Outside this hierarchy are foreigners. Asians from other countries are accorded the rank of their economic status; “no money, no honey.” Regardless of whether or not they have family to assist them, virtually all foreign Asians come up with ingenious ways to scrape up enough income to survive.
Westerners (the whites) have embassies constantly checking on their nationals’ health and safety and regularly bring cash. Whites are treated better than the wealthy Thai and make up a strange class of aliens outside the Thai caste system.
Africans are treated as an ‘untouchable’ caste, human garbage whose only value is what can be extorted from them. The Thai’s deep dislike for blacks isn’t mitigated by the money they hoard from drug dealing. This is an odd departure for the venal Thai.
The Thai peasants spend their days working with machines or on tasks of manual labor. This often involves toxic chemicals and hazardous outdated industrial equipment. A large minority are handicapped from accidents. At shower time, dozens of wooden and plastic legs, crutches, and canes can be seen leaning against the wall in a long row, bearing mute testimony to the dangers of prison factory work. Fed and allowed to bathe twice a day, they live a life not much different from slaves in any place or time.
The small merchants work almost as hard as the peasants but are wealthy by comparison. They own radios, TVs, nice clothes, and eat very well. They’re also quick to imitate Western fashions. Anything two or more farangs wear or use becomes ‘de rigueur’ for the business-owners and is sure to be acquired within a matter of days. This slavery to stylishness would be funny were it not so pathetic.
The Asian foreigners who are well off, mostly the Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwanese, and the Thai factory owners either pursue increasing their large fortunes or emulate farang amusements such as reading, playing board games, or lying around indulging vices.
The majority of Westerners are either junkies who spend their days trying to find a fix or are madmen. The circumstances are such that they drive farangs insane, or to seek oblivion with heroin. Those that don’t use drugs go insane from the privations and trauma. Only a miniscule group manage to successfully pass these ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ of Thai prison life.
Africans deal heroin or act as pawnbrokers. They cluster together, loudly engaged in cheerful social amenities in their communal ‘houses.’ None use drugs, and the vast majority send money back to their families in Africa. They are uniformly gregarious, and their attitudes are sunny. To the outside world, they appear to regard their imprisonment as a vocational choice. None ever complain, and their bravery is as immense as it is inconspicuous. In the twenty-plus years West Africans have been incarcerated in Thai prisons, one—a single Nigerian—has been released. The rest are doomed to die there.
The one that left paid a million dollar bribe.
Forming their own little subgroup, the blue boys—trustees dressed in dark blue shorts and shirts—wear weird homemade badges they fashion out of tin: insignias of imaginary rank. They are the ones who actually run the prison, with minimal oversight by the guards. They do all the paperwork, the policing, the punishment, and the security tasks the guards are too lazy to do.
The guards themselves are rarely to be seen outside of the
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