Comments on The Damage Done by Warren Fellows, (12 yrs of hell in a Bangkok prison)

I broke down and bought a book last night at a used bookstore. My plan was to go and read as many books that were written about Thailand as they had - and get an idea what kind of writers are out there. I found a couple fiction writers that I liked, but overall I wasn’t excited about anything.

Then I went to the non-fiction side and saw this book that I’d read exerpts of over the years - a couple pages everytime I picked it up in a bookstore. I decided last night that the price was right and it’d be good reading for a night. 180b for used copy. (You can buy it from me now for 200 and I’ll pay the shipping, send me a paypal to thaipulse@gmail.com and send me the address in ‘thai’ preferably and I’ll mail it out asap.

The book “The Damage Done” was really well written. It was a very easy read and descriptive enough that I have a good picture what the guy went through. Well, a good snapshot of it anyway. There were huge parts missing that bothered me by the end - but, no matter. They must not have been important to the guy.

I thought about the heat of the prison. Wouldn’t it be sizzling all year round there? He barely mentioned the heat. I guess one gets used to that pretty quickly. He didn’t mention much about how he went about learning Thai except that he picked up a phrase or two here and there and he’d listen intently when Thais’ spoke.

I’ve been here 3 years and only now can I talk so that everyone understands 90% of what I’m saying… and that’s only in BKK and the South, not in Isaan where the tones still screw me up. Admittedly I’m slow in language aquisition but still I had to try from books for a couple years to really ‘get it’.

He didn’t say much about suicide except that a lot of guys OD’ed on drugs in the prison. Were those suicides for the most part? Surely there must be a couple hundred people per year killing themselves in those huge prisons.

The conditions in the prison were appalling, but they didn’t seem that bad really. He didn’t write much about the good things that happened - the positive things that must have happened, as he wanted to focus on the negative… but there had to be a little more than what he mentioned that kept him and others ‘going’ there for so long. He was there 12 years. Man. That’s a lifetime. No, 5 lifetimes when you spend it without freedom.

He tells a lot about the heroin that’s available within the prison. The same thing that he was trying to bring from Thailand to Australia and that he was sentenced to life for - was available at the prisons to buy. Is that nuts?

What was the Thai guard so angry about - the one that moonlighted as a taxi cab driver in BKK when he wasn’t at the prison? I’d like to know more about what he thought about that. I’ve never seen a cruel Thai person. They must exist… but where are they in general society? I’ve not met any. I’ve met guys that have been in Thai jails and they seem respectful on the outside. Not angry. Not out to get me or anyone. They seem pretty calm. I’ve not been drinking with them… true enough.

How many foreign prisoners were in the prison? I’d like to know how many from France, Germany, England, the USA, Canada, Mexico, all over… even Laos, Cambodia, China, etc… There was no mention of any guess at the total numbers but some guys where introduced from various countries as the book went on…

Anyway, overall the book was great reading. I think it took me over 2 hours to read the 200 pages. The book was so well worded that pages flew by. It wasn’t crammed full of extra information that makes reading a Tom Clancy book such an intensive effort.

It was just really nice reading about a most tragic experience.

Ok, if you want it - let me know I’ll send it out to you.

Anybody read “Escape” yet? Richard Barrows told me about that one - and even interviewed the guy that wrote it. I’ve not read it yet. Anyone want to trade this book for that one?

Here’s that article: Escape >

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Pedophile GUILTY of Sex with 2 Children < 13 yrs SENTENCED to less than 5 Years!

German paedophile jailed 4 years eight months in Thailand. For a GUILTY sentence. Come to Thailand for sex with Children. Great Place, cheap girls, widely available and even if you’re caught with 2 different girls - spend less than 5 years in jail! WHAT A COUNTRY! What a farking country.

Does Thailand have any idea what kind of sentence this would get elsewhere in the world? Do they care? Is it OK for foreigners to come here and abuse the Thai kids? That’s what this ruling says to me. I hate the idea of jail, but 5 years? Hell, anyone could do 5 years. The risk of getting caught for anything here in Thailand is almost negligible… no wonder Thailand is filled with pedophiles…. land of smiles and pedophiles…

Anyway, that’s what book number 2 is about. Yes, book number 1 - the fake cover was just that, a fake. I’ve written another book that IS book 1, but that book isn’t getting released while I’m still here in Thailand. Not a good idea.

This next book takes a look at pedophilia in Thailand and offers a solution.

read more | digg story

German paedophile jailed 4 years eight month
(from The NATION)

The Criminal Court Friday sentenced a Geman paedophile to four years and eight months in jail for having sex with two Thai girls under 13 years old.

Jorg Rudol Fiedle, 43, was found guilty of having bought sex from the two girls at the Natural Beach Pattaya Hotel in November 2002.

The court initially sentenced him to seven years in jail by commuted the jail term by one third after he confessed having bought sex from the two girls.

The man appealed against the ruling and was detained at the Bangkok Remand Prison pending the Appeals Court’s decision whether to grant him release on bail or not.

The Nation

Want to Help a Poor Thai Family?

Story from Pattaya City News (.net)

Here’s something we should see more of… not being Thai I don’t hear about this stuff often. It’s not that Thai people don’t care, but each Thai person probably knows 20 families like this one. Send them a few baht by transferring from your Thai bank (any) through the ATM machine. Follow the instructions for transferring - it’s easy and you’ll have no excuse for not doing it. Really, you’ll feel like you did something…

The article said she was always excluded from social gatherings - do the Thai kids exclude poor kids from their groups? There must be a hell of a lot of poor kids, how do they choose who gets excluded? I haven’t seen that in Thai schools, but of course I was teaching in the ENglish program and all the parents of those kids have enough money.

Man, a very heartbreaking story… even if I don’t know the whole story and background…

Deputy Mayor helps 11 year old Student living rough behind a Chinese Cemetary.

Deckjing Saroshar aged 11 is a bright student who attends Pattaya School Number 2. Everyday she arrives at school in her white and blue uniform and appears to be a happy child. However, Teachers have been concerned why she is constantly excluded from social gatherings at lunch and afternoon breaks. They were also concerned about her weight and decided to do some investigation into her living conditions and were shocked to find that she was living with her jobless Father in a tin hut behind a Chinese Cemetery in Naklua. Information was passed on to Khun Ronagit, Deputy Mayor of Pattaya who was told that the girl’s father, Khun Tongpraer aged 35 would sometimes not have enough money to feed himself or his daughter. He had come to Pattaya 10 years ago to search for his Wife, without success. He was unable to find work and now collects recyclable items from the street. He uses most of the money to educate and feed his daughter. The Deputy Mayor decided to help out the pair and opened an account for the girl at the Government Savings Bank and placed an undisclosed personal donation inside the account. If you would like more information on the Girl and her Father please call the Pattaya City Call Center on 1337 or you can send a donation direct to account number 03-2105-20-112608-2 at the Government Savings Bank.

Hissing Beetle on the Back Patio (Video)

I love Thailand’s variety of wildlife if you haven’t noticed.

Yesterday I found a golden tree snake going across the street and a really cool caterpillar (pic below).

This morning I found another large beetle on the back patio area and when I tried to roll her over on her stomach again she hissed at me! I told my girlfriend and she said that it’s a sugarcane beetle, a female.

I ran and got the Sony Cybershot camera that wasn’t stolen during the robbery and did a short video-clip. You can hear it hiss. Is that cool or what? I know that not everyone is into this as much as me. But I do see the download numbers and I think it’s mostly 6th grade classes in the midwest that are downloading the wildlife videos.

No matter. At least we’re all on the same wave-length.

This hissing beetle .wmv clip is about 7Mb and should download quickly.

For Real?

Tagged to Provide Weird Things about Me…

ThaiPulse… NEW BOOK DEAL!

Burglary in Thailand

Apartment burglarized yesterday…

We had a great afternoon exploring new places for my girlfriend’s day off and returned about 2:30pm. I walked into the apt first and I saw that the back door was open.

Weird. My girlfriend said she was sure it was closed.

I grabbed my beatin’ stick and my knife and walked slowly down the hall.

Oops, the room that we had always kept shut - because we weren’t given a lock for it and because the door locks by itself when opened too much - it pushed in the plunger on the doorknob and locks it…

That room was open. I told my girlfriend to go back out on the porch and let me know if someone comes running out.

Our stuff was laying out on the floor and we realized that someone definitely had broken in while we were gone.

I circled around the back and looked at the window leading into our place. Hmm, screen torn, hammer laying in our place on the floor - whose hammer?

I looked up to my right to see what the young guys are doing in the shop that is adjacent to the backyard area. There’s a guy staring at me maybe 25 meters away but I can see the outline of his body and head in the store. The store is really dark inside, but I see his outline. I walk straight for him, going in the back of his store - through his apartment area and I tell him to come with me (in Thai).

I’m still carrying the stick and the knife and his friends are laughing nervously as they watch him come outside… not sure if I’m about to blame him for breaking into my place.

I point to the back of my house and show him someone broke in.

I tell him I want to look inside and I want him to come in with me. He says, nobody is inside. I said how you know? He said he saw a guy jump over the back wall (over the barbed wire). I said, who?

A guy about 15 years old.

I said, WHO?

The guy comes by a lot on the motorbike and goes around the corner by your apartment. You want me to take his picture?

“No, just point him to me when you see him.”

“ok.”

We go inside anyway and I know now that it is either one of the young guys that work in this place where this guy works or it is the 15 year old like he said. That eliminates a lot of possibilities.

We find stuff thrown all over the place. A few things missing. The few major things we had - electronics.

My Penn fishing reels that I was hoping to bring back to the states to fish with my son with… hmm, that sucked most of all.

I drill the guy with questions and I go back to talk to all the guys that work in the shop.

They thought the guy that jumped over the fence was workign on something at the house - he had a large paint bucket with tools in it.

Yeah, nice.

So -what happened as far as I can piece together.

The guy saw us leave - we had a backpack and when we leave together we’re always gone for 3 hours or so minimum. He went over the back wall - over the barbed wire of the unit 2 doors down from us. He couldn’t get in there easily - they had windows shut tight and couldn’t wedge hammer in door.

He jumped over the dividing wall into unit next to ours.

Again - window shut tight and I guess he didn’t want to break glass.

He jumped over dividing wall into the back of our unit - and saw a glass pane missing (always was since we moved in). Our windows were open too - we always leave them open.

He put his hand between the slats and ripped the screen with the hammer claw. Stood on the 5 gallon paint can that he took from the neighbors back area and brought over to ours.

He reached through and unlatched the top sliding ‘lock’.

He ripped a hole lower in the screen (picture top - but not clear) and, using the hammer wedged the claw in the lock we had and bent the lock enough that it popped.

Then he wedged the claw into the space between the door and jamb until he could get his hands in there and pull hard to break the sliding ‘lock’ at the bottom of the door. He was in then.

He went into the bedrooms, spilling stuff everywhere. He took the Samsung digital camcorder and Penn reels there.

He went into the other locked bedroom - the one we couldn’t get into - and used a KEY TO GET IN>

How the hell did he have a key? Who knows - we didnt have one! How do I know he used a key? There was a key still in the lock - and it FIT.

PLUS, there were two more keys on the keyring with that key! One was for a padlock SOLO brand - like we use and most of Thailand uses to lock the outside of their homes. The other - not sure - a door knob type lock I think.

So, that was strange to say the least. Yes, we suspect past tenants… but, the whole thing is - it’s impossible to ignore the guy who SAW the 15 year old that he KNOWS jumping over the fence… Common sense tells you he is either correct, or lying to save himself or friend’s ass. End of discussion.

It was stupid for me to save 230 baht by buying a 120 baht lock instead of another 350 baht one like I had on the front door. I just figured there’s not much point really - the doors we have someone could stick their foot through if they really wanted to - there are cracks in our front door where we can see daylight through it. The wood is cheap. Why buy a $11.50 usd lock when someone isn’t even likely to try to break a lock - just kick a hole in the door?

Well that logic was a bit flawed I guess as this guy DID choose to break the lock because it was a small one.

Anyway… long story short we call the police and they come and ignore the eye-witness and say they think it’s one of the construction workers in the back area.

The police ignored the guy that said he saw who did it… Knew the kid, AND saw him go by where we live more than 10 times.

If I gave half a shite I’d have ranted and raved, all I could do was laugh though. How nutty is that?

So the police are questioning the construction guys in the back… most of which are old and might not even be able to jump over the walls with help.

I wish them luck… really I do.

:O

Serial Killing… Thai Style.

This is the first I heard of a Thai serial killer. I knew it would be different than I’m used to from the moment I read the headline. It had to be right?

The article is below…

Security guard arrested for allegedly serial-killing 7 colleagues

A security officer has been arrested for allegedly beating 18 colleagues who dozed off while on duty, killing seven of them, severely injuring the rest.

Metropolitan police chief Pol Lt Gen Assawin Kwanmuang told a press conference that Witthaya Jaikhan, 30, was arrested at his home province of Nong Khai.

Assawin said Witthaya was arrested because of evidence related to one of his victims, Jakkrapol Maomeechan.

Jakkrapol was attacked and killed while guarding Mitsubishi car showroom in Bangkok’s Khan Nayao district in July.

He said Witthaya also used Jakkrapol’s mobile phone to call Witthaya’s wife after the attack.

Assawin said a record from a security camera also showed that Witthaya was the suspect in Jakkrapol’s murder.

He said Witthaya had admitted beating other security guards, who dozed off in duty, with iron pipes since January and he made the latest attack on November 4.

Witthaya claimed he disliked colleagues who dozed on while on duty so he always attacked them when no one else was around.

Assawin said Witthaya made a total of 18 attacks, killing seven of his victims.

The Nation

So the guy killed his co-workers because they slept on the job as security guards? I think that’s EXPECTED behavior here, not something to die over. And, since when did Thai people start caring what others did? This guy had to have some American in him. Had to… come on, I’ve never met a Thai that gave a care at all about what someone else was doing - maipenrai mai pen rai… Do they hold everything inside, or does it just go away most times?

I’ve been under the impression that little things just go away… but maybe they store those up inside too?

Poisonous Centipedes in Thailand

There are many poisonous things that bite here in Thailand. I was reading an article in the online Pattaya City News about a local Thai man that was bitten by a centipede and he nearly died from it. It sounds bizarre, but, after I ate the fried scorpion that still had some potent venom in it and I went to the hospital with very shallow breathing I understand that it can happen anytime.

I’ve been bitten by a small centipede in Maui, Hawaii once. I had them all over my floor as they lived under the carpet in my bedroom closet. They were a couple inches long and not the monster ones you see here in Thailand. They were really cool colors, like pastels.

Anyway. I was sitting for breakfast with my sandals on in the living room and I felt a burn. Then it was as if my foot was on fire… when I looked I saw a small 3 inch centipede clamping down on the outside of my foot. Apparently I had stepped on him by accident. BUT, don’t think you need to cause them harm first - they bite without reason as soon as they know they’re near skin for some reason. They bite immediately.

I killed it, because I kill anything that bites me.

My foot swelled up a lot, but nothing major. It hurt for a few days. This guy that was bitten in Thailand had an allergic reaction to the poison and his breathing became shallow. I know just what that’s like because I must have been allergic to the scorpion poison. It felt as if I would soon die because there was just not enough breath coming in. Strange feeling. I had it once before as I ate some Aunt Jemimah’s Pancake syrup in Florida- I damn near died on the floor of my apartment from it -but was able to grab a phone and hit 911 in time.

Thing is, and why poisonous things are so dangerous is that you don’t really know you’re allergic to some poison until the thing bites you.

There are some HUGE centipedes here in Thailand, on scale with some of those in Hawaii. I’ve seen a couple in Hawaii that were almost as long as my forearm and as thick as my ring finger.

Recently in Phuket there was a story going around that a MONSTER centipede lived in a palm tree down there and some locals saw it and called the newspaper. I’ll have to find that story. I also remember a Jack London story about a huge centipede falling into a girl’s hair… I’ll find a link to that one too.

Headless centipede video -

Large Centipede with Head cut off > (.wmv)

some kids caught a big one where they were eating at a park cabana and almost cut off it’s head. It lived and walked around before they dismembered the lower part. It still lived and ran around. They laughed like it was a riot. Yes it’s cruel, but I was just videotaping - I had nothing to do with the harming of the centipede - nor do I condone it. This is a different culture though - and Thais do as they wish…

Here is another centipede that I saw at Wat Tum Sua while walking around the foothills near where the monks live in the caves. I petted him because he seemed friendly enough. Not sure if this is a centipede or millipede as he appears to have 2 pair of legs for each segments, but not sure… On YouTube they can’t figure it out either.

Centipede Video from Wat Tum Sua, Krabi, Thailand >

Here’s a giant millipede I caught in Sisaket - definitely a millipede >

Jack London Story mentioning a huge centipede in Hawaii >
(man I like Jack London’s Stories of Hawaii“

Here is the monster centipede story from the Phuket Gazette a while back:

Centipede on steroids

RAWAI: Villagers in Rawai were dumbfounded when a huge centipede, reportedly half a meter in length, was spotted near a public waterhole in Village 2.

At 1 pm on February 6, villagers in the area of Baan Thai Mai (New Thais Village, or “Sea Gypsy” village) on Wiset Rd were seen crowding around a 20-meter-tall sugar palm tree. All were excitedly trying to catch a glimpse of an enormous centipede reportedly hiding out high up in the tree’s canopy.

Some villagers were throwing rocks at the tree, hoping to force the arthropod to come down and make an appearance. Others stood ready with cameras, hoping to capture an image of the creature as a souvenir.

One villager, identified only as Rawee, 45, said he was the first one to spot the centipede the day before.

He and four other friends were bathing in the public waterhole when he saw the enormous centipede crawl down the tree and dip itself in the water before crawling back up to the safety of the tree’s upper reaches.

He described the centipede as reddish-brown in color, about 50 centimeters in length and with a girth similar to that of a human arm.

Rawee and his bathing buddies were astonished by the size of the centipede because they had never seen anything like it, he said.

After the initial shock wore off, he screamed out to other villagers in the area about the centipede. All who saw it agreed that it was, in truth, a very large specimen. Word of the discovery soon became the talk of the tambon, with people from near and far hoping to catch a glimpse of the hundred-legged invertebrate.

The sheer size of the creature, if correctly reported, is significant because the largest known species of centipede, the Amazonian giant centipede, reportedly maxes out at about 30 centimeters in length. The Vietnamese centipede, which matches the color description given by K. Rawee, only reaches about 20 centimeters in length.

At last report, residents of the area were planning a mission to scale the sugar palm in an effort to catch a better view of the centipede – or even capture it and put it on display for all to see.

Surprisingly in a case such as this, there were no reports of people trying to divine winning lottery numbers from aspects of the creatures physiology.

Source: Siang Tai

Centipede biting man article from Pattaya City News:

On Wednesday Night, Rescue Workers received an urgent call to attend to a Thai Man, Khun Mongkong aged 31, who had become seriously ill after sustaining a bite from a large Centipede. The man was walking around the back of his house and was wearing only sandals. It was dark and he suddenly felt a sharp pain on his right ankle and realized he had been bitten. He soon lost consciousness and his breathing became shallow. He was rushed to the Queen Sirigit Hospital and we can report he was given drugs to counteract the affects of the bite and he is now expected to fully recover from the ordeal.

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