I am a Prisoner in the Bangkok Hilton

I thought, four years ago when I decided to write to a prisoner in Bang Kwang prison that it would be a once a month or so exchange of letters, keeping his spirits up and some general chit chat. I chose Gary so that just was never going to happen :-) My husband and I have got to know Gary so well over the past four years all via the written word. We sent parcels over to help him and his fellow prisoners, passed on messages and generally did what we could to help “the old man”. Gary in now in his 60’s and has been in prison for over 9 years. Nine very hard years in “the Bangkok Hilton”. Not many farangs (foreign prisoners) manage to survive for so long especially at his age. Gary really is an exceptional man. So he is home and in Wandsworth Prison in London. He is hoping to be moved to a more suitable prison in the next few months. He is a category B prisoner “Those who do not require maximum security, but for whom escape needs to be made very difficult”. Hopefully in time this will

So We went to see Gary We have written to Gary for many years and in the last 6 months we have been fortunate enough to talk to him on the phone since he was repatriated. But last week, after a couple of false starts we managed to actually go and visit him. We were always a little jealous of random emails we would receive from some great people about how they had been to see him in Thailand. This is somewhere where we could never go and so our letters had to suffice. Once Gary was back in the UK we were determined to go see him and set the wheels in motion. Its a bit of a process but I think we have it sussed. Firstly Gary had to get what is known as a Visitors Order. This is a request to the Prison to allow a visit and is at the discretion of the prisoner, its not the Prison who has the final say on whether or not you can go visit. What we didn’t realise, all three of us, is that once Gary has the Visitor Order number he has to send it to the visitor so that they can organise the visi