Bangkok Hard Time

The surreal true story of how a Western teenager came of age in 1960s Bangkok, turned international drug smuggler and walked the prison yards of Thailand's notorious Bangkok Hilton.It is 1967 Bangkok, the Summer of Love, and for Jon Cole, son of a US Army Green Beret colonel serving in the Vietnam War, life as a teenage Westerner in the City of Angels is sweeter than mangoes on sticky rice with coconut milk. Drawn to the underbelly of Bangkok, the International School Bangkok student soon discovers ganja, opium dens and two-dollar bordellos. What follows is a surreal but true story of one Westerner's relationship with Thailand spanning four decades. Introduction to the now infamous House of Lek with schoolmates and GIs on R&R; from Vietnam eventually leads to a lucrative career as a drug smuggler, a heavy heroin habit and, ultimately, a long stretch inside Bangkok's notorious prison, the Bangkok Hilton.At the heart of Jon's account of his misspent youth in Thailand and his subsequent life inside prison there, is the hard Thai-style acceptance of the consequences of his own karma and a desire to expose the fallacy that Westerners are mistreated in Thai prisons.