Out there in the black of night, thousands of nautical miles across the sea, is our destination. The one we’ll touch down on just as the sun is rising over the city of Bangkok.
Bangkok. I’m flying through the dark in a metal bullet, crossing the Timor Sea to meet a Death Row prisoner. I stifle the urge to scream.
‘You okay?’ Eli asks.
‘All good.’
I paste on a smile and gulp from my cup. I’ve never had rum before. It burns when it hits my stomach.
‘It’s okay to be scared.’
‘I’m not scared.’ I’m petrified.
‘Cool, but just so you know, I barely ate anything the first few days of my exchange. Then when I went to stay in the village, I was the same. Wondering what the hell I was doing hanging out with a bunch of Muay Thai fighters.’
I smile at the visual. Skinny white Eli surrounded by a bunch of Muay Thai killing machines. No wonder he buffed up.
‘Hey,’ he says quietly. ‘Travelling in Thailand can be tough. Beautiful and eye-opening, but it can be confronting. Your Dad booked us some nice places to stay, though, which will help. I checked them out online.’
‘You think I’m a princess, don’t you?’
He narrows his eyes. ‘If I thought you were a princess, I wouldn’t be travelling with you. You’re an adventurer. I’ve always loved that.’
‘Thanks.’ I wish my words could be as unguarded as Eli’s.
‘This’ll be real, Bel. You’ll learn shit they can’t teach at school.’
I study his face while I have another sip of rum. Eli has this dimension of other-worldliness about him. He seems older than the boy I hang out with in his room.
‘What?’ He laughs. ‘What’s that look for?’
I shake my head and think of the mania of the last three days. Marcella helping me book flights. Dad calling Jacqui Simmons like ten times to check there were no coups, no typhoons, no imminent terrorist threats. Dad organising roaming, me getting all the right apps on my phone so I could check in with him. Somehow I doubt Eli’s parents were so thorough. The flurry of organisation feels a world away now that we’re high in the sky, with nothing to do but reach our destination.
‘So your old man was cooler than I thought he’d be,’ Eli says. I laugh. I haven’t told him the specifics of how I got Dad to agree.
Instead, I say, ‘When Dad sees me giving a shit about something, he gets ridiculously excited. I mean so excited I usually backpedal, but for once it actually came in handy. Also it helped that he has a big party meeting this week. His moment to “push the agenda”, yada yada.’
‘Tough sentences for crims,’ Eli says in a deep voice. ‘For the record, I think he’s onto something.’
‘Yeah, he’s onto feeling guilty about neglecting his only daughter in the holidays. Hence …’ I fan my hands across my lap in Eli’s direction.
‘Ahh, so I’m like your babysitter.’
I laugh. ‘Ah, no. Think more … my brother. Your job is to protect me from the big, bad world. And you’ve just given me my first alcoholic beverage, so thanks, bro.’
‘He said he wanted me to protect you?’
I swear his chest swells a tiny bit.
‘I believe his exact words were ‘look out’ for me. He needs to leave me in the care of someone, you know. Like at his place, it’s Marcella. The guy lives by himself and mostly in Canberra. Who needs someone to clean a house nobody’s ever in?’
A baby cries and her mother paces the narrow aisle, rocking her. I refuse to listen to the gentle shushing noises, or watch the way the baby fits perfectly in the crook of her arm. I jam a set of earphones into my ears and check the in-flight entertainment.
For the final couple of hours, I try to sleep, but I’m upright in my chair and my mind is churning. I have to tell Eli about Micah, but I don’t want to break the news on the plane. Too many people crammed into one small space. I’ll wait till we get to our hotel. Besides, the smell of bacon from the breakfast trolley is wafting down the aisle, and I’m not sure telling Eli about a Death Row prisoner is best done over bacon and eggs.
I flick up my window shade, only to be blinded by a pink arc of colour splaying across the sky. I nudge Eli. He squints out the window.
‘Pretty,’ he murmurs.
After the breakfast trays are cleared, the captain announces we’re preparing for descent. I gaze out at the brilliant aqua water surrounding green, undulating hills. A thrill bubbles up inside me. A mix of fear and adrenalin. I am beyond the reach of my father. On the threshold of foreign soil.
Tyres kiss the tarmac, rubber squeals and the plane jolts us forwards. Palm trees and fluorescent fields whir by our window as the reverse thrust kicks in with a whoosh.
‘A-roon-sa-was, Thailand,’ Eli says, stretching his arms as passengers begin fidgeting with their hand luggage.
‘Pardon?’
‘Otherwise known as good morning.’
We grab our bags and shuffle to the front door of the plane. A wave of hot, tobacco-tinged air prickles my skin as we walk down the air-stairs and onto the tarmac. We tail the crowd into the terminal building, which is just as stifling. Inside, people jostle and bustle, heading every which way. Eli seems to know where he’s going, so I follow gratefully.
We collect our bags before joining the queue to have our passports stamped. The queue is long. I’m shifting my weight from one leg to the other when I spy them.
Two sweet Beagles wagging their tails. Thin red leashes wound around the hands of officials in dark navy uniforms. Customs dogs. With grim faces, the officials watch the hounds’ noses sweep the ground as they approach.
Why is my heart suddenly smashing against my chest? I clutch my hand luggage tighter, and one of the dogs makes eye contact, yaps and tugs at the leash enthusiastically. Towards me. And even though I have nothing on me, my legs are weak, my mouth dry, hands sweaty. I glance around furtively, to see if anyone else looks anxious, but they’re all shuffling forward with straight faces.
By now, the dogs are at my feet and I’m frozen like a sculpture. Eli says something to one of the customs men in Thai. The officer says something back and Eli holds his hands out in surrender, takes a backwards step. Everyone in the line comes alive, turning towards me.
The officer whose dog yelped beckons me forward with one hand. Points to a spot on the carpeted floor and says something I don’t understand. It sounds like a command, not one I want to mess with, so I step towards him.
‘You pack bags?’ He asks me. Same as I was asked in Sydney when I checked my bags.
‘Uh, yes. Yes.’ My mouth is dry. I’m no longer sure of anything. Did I pack my bags? Did anyone else have access to them? I remember Schapelle Corby. Drugs found in a boogie board bag that she claimed weren’t hers. How long did she get for that? I remember how excited I was to be beyond the reach of my father – but that also means beyond his political connections, beyond a judicial system I understand. At the mercy of one built on retribution. Do they even have the innocent-until-proven-guilty thing here? My stomach churns.
The officer motions for me to turn around. Put my arms out. I do it.
Eli steps forward, but the officer holds him at bay with an outstretched arm. Pats me down each side and between my legs. I flinch. All eyes in the place are on me now, and the room swims like a mirage of heat. My knees shake and sweat prickles at the nape of my neck.
I realise I’m holding my breath, so I exhale and force myself to meet the officer’s eyes when he turns me around. The dog hasn’t barked again, so he waves me back to the line with a dismissive hand.
I stumble over to Eli. I think I clutch at his shirt. The queue of people parts for me. Eli holds me for a second.
‘All good?’ he says.
I nod. Steady my breathing.
‘Don’t take it personally,’ he says. ‘They have to be careful. Drug mules have ruined Asia. They use Thailand like a luxury crack resort. Then they leave behind an addiction epidemic that fuels
prostitution, slavery and human trafficking. It’s disgusting.’
‘Mmmm,’ I say quietly.
Tash is right. I need to find out what awful thing Micah did. My head has been buried in the sand long enough.
The lady behind the immigration counter motions us forward.
With shaky hands, I press my passport onto the counter beside Eli’s. A machine checks our photos against our faces, then she stamps our passports and extends one arm towards the customs gate.
‘Let’s go,’ Eli says.
He takes a selfie of us beneath a big painted sign of purple orchids that reads Welcome to Thailand. Then, together, we walk freely into the nation that has sentenced Micah to die.
The sky is amber as we reach the cab rank and I’m oily with sweat. The sun shimmers through the pollution that hovers as a cloud over Bangkok.
A lean man heads towards us with a luggage trolley and begins loading our bags onto it.
‘Transport?’ he says, driving an imaginary steering wheel with his hands.
Eli shakes his head, unloads our backpacks and straddles them with his legs as if to guard them. The man walks away, the smile sliding from his face.
‘That was a bit heartless,’ I say.
‘It’s how it works here. I’m not being an arsehole.’
Eli hails a cab, and it pulls alongside us. He talks to the guy half in Thai, half in English before the cab driver nods in acknowledgement and loads our bags into the boot.
‘You’ll thank me when the air-con’s cranked.’
Eli lowers himself into the back seat.
I slide in beside him. ‘How do you know the other guy didn’t have air-con?’
‘He might have had air-con. Or he might have charged us triple the standard fare for a ride in a tuk-tuk.’
‘A …?’
Eli points at a man in a wide-brimmed straw hat, motoring past in a small three-wheeled open-air carriage. Sitting in the back are a couple of white-faced, wide-eyed tourists.
‘Tuk-tuk,’ he says. ‘Great for sightseeing, but you don’t want to be in one on the expressway. Cabs come with seatbelts. Speaking of which, you might want to strap in.’
Our driver pulls away, blaring his horn as he passes the tuk-tuk driver.
Before long, we’re embedded in thick, crazy traffic. The kind that makes Sydney peak hour across the Harbour Bridge with a break-down look civilised. There’s incessant beeping from cars and bikes as people push through the traffic. Drivers don’t seem to pay too much attention to road lanes here. Or traffic lights for that matter. I grip my seatbelt as our car moves with a crush of other vehicles through an intersection. From all four directions, vehicles nudge their way into the mix like someone threw away the road rules book and said, ‘Go!’
To my left is a motorbike piled with a family of five. Ahead on another bike, a child clutches a chicken in one arm and holds onto her father’s waist with the other. A woman in a flowing floral dress beeps us as she glides past, a baby sitting nonchalantly on her lap. There are live ducks in the baskets of bicycles, men holding metal poles on the backs of trucks, and the odd tourist, white knuckles clutching the rail of a tuk-tuk.
‘Bonus points for the cab,’ I say under my breath.
‘I’m sorry. Was that an apology for calling me an arsehole?’
‘I didn’t call you that.’
I tighten my grip on the seatbelt and glance subtly at Eli, reclining against his seat watching the mayhem with a small smile.
‘Wait till you see how people cross the road,’ he says.
Bangkok smells like herbal cigarettes and curry, with a hint of sewage. Sweat trickles down between my shoulder blades and the cab only dropped us off five minutes ago. The gutters are hilly and uneven. We trudge down the undulating street, the weight of my backpack cruel under the south-east Asian sun.
Eli checks the map on his phone before turning down a busy laneway.
‘You all good?’ He turns back to me.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You up for a pit stop, then? On our way to the hotel?’
‘Okay … so long as it’s cool.’
‘Oh, it’s cool,’ he says, but I don’t think he’s talking about the same kind of cool as me.
After about ten minutes, we hit a crowd lined up alongside a long concrete wall. Above the wall, golden spires twist high into the sky, embroidered with detail. In the morning sun, the spires wink and a faint smell of incense lingers over the crowd.
‘Remember that reclining Buddha I gave you?’ Eli says. ‘Well, you’re about to see the real deal. I can’t believe your Dad booked a hotel so close to Wat Po Temple.’
‘So this is a temple?’ I say. ‘Don’t we need to be dressed up or something?’
‘No, just covered. Don’t worry, Bel.’
His smile is reassuring, so I decide to stop resisting and drink it in. Thailand. Temples.
The crowd slowly moves forward, and we move with it. We pay some baht to the man at the entrance, then step into an ancient, paved courtyard.
Bell-shaped spires covered in mosaic designs point long, thin fingers into the sky. Incense wafts in clouds throughout the courtyard from small bowls on stands. On the other side of the courtyard, I see a bald man in a bright orange robe emerge from what looks like a small house connected to the temple.
‘Is that a monk?’ I whisper to Eli.
He nods.
Then he leads me towards the doorway the monk just came out of. He doesn’t need to tell me to be quiet. The awe of this place is enough to silence me. As we wait in a small line to enter the temple, I notice the visitors ahead of us taking off their shoes. When Eli takes his off, I do the same. Two men at the entrance give us sock things to put over our feet, and gesture for us to leave our bags in a guarded hut.
Then Eli takes my hand and together we enter the sacred space that is the temple. Our feet pad noiselessly across the polished stone floor. The ceiling is unfathomably high, and every surface of the walls is covered in paintings. But none of that compares to the enormous golden Buddha lying the full length of the temple.
I gasp when I see him.
Eli’s grip on my hand tightens. He grins at me. The Buddha must be four times my height and the length of half a football field. All covered in pure gold.
It’s the most majestic thing I’ve ever seen. I wish we could take a photo of us here, but we’re not allowed, and a photo wouldn’t even do it justice. Some things need to be lived.
When we leave, I feel lighter in my soul. Re-energised, like I just came out of the surf.
‘Bangkok is amazing,’ I breathe.
‘Wait till we get to the mountains,’ Eli says.
We grab our shoes and bags and leave the temple and I no longer feel threatened by this new land. This is why people come here. Not to visit prisoners, but to lose themselves in the temples, the culture, the food. It is a world away from home.
‘Our hotel’s not far,’ Eli says over his shoulder, turning us off the busy street into a side lane. ‘Just a couple more streets.’
Crammed along either side of the lane are stalls selling Thai silks, sarongs, wooden carvings, thongs, watches, jewellery, DVDs, t-shirts and massages. As we pass each stall, young men call out, ‘Hey, where you from? Australia? Kangaroo!’ or ‘You want suit? I make you suit – very cheap!’ Eli shakes his head and forges on.
We pass a massage parlour decked out with a pink sign. Two slender young women with long, dark hair stand either side of the beaded entrance. As Eli passes, they smile seductively and sing out, ‘You want massage?’ Eli doesn’t acknowledge them. I step up my pace so I’m almost treading on his heels.
Before long, we pass a stall with wooden carvings and intricate timber frames around watercolour paintings. I stop a moment to study an image of an orchid. Tash would like it. The stall woman draws nearer.
‘You look?’ She pulls down the picture of the orchid just as I notice a carving in the sea of timber creations on her table.
/> A man wearing a straw hat is doubled over, clutching a sheaf of grass in one hand. A wooden field worker tanned with light varnish. Strapped to his back is a small child. Something about the strain in the man’s eyes and the scowl of his child speaks to me. Where is the mother?
‘You look, yes?’ The woman at the stall coaxes, prodding the Thai orchid at me. ‘I give good price,’ she says. ‘For you, five hundred baht.’
‘Paeng pai!’ Eli says. ‘It’s too much. Come on.’ He tugs me by the sleeve, but I’m still clutching the carving of the man.
‘You can’t even get those things through customs unless they’re stamped,’ Eli says. ‘Check underneath it.’
I turn the man in my hands and squint to read the small stamp on the base of it. Bang Kwang. I catch my breath. Prison art.
‘How much for this one?’ I ask suddenly.
The woman eyes me sceptically, and lifts the pink painting of the orchid. ‘This one better. So pretty,’ she says. ‘Silk.’
‘How much for the man?’ Eli asks.
She sighs lightly, returning the orchid to its place of pride on her wall of paintings. ‘That one, three hundred baht.’
‘Do you even want it?’ Eli says. ‘You’ll find millions of these carvings.’
‘I want it,’ I say.
I glance at the stall woman whose eyes shine with hope. She needs a sale almost as much as I need this carving.
‘Bargain her down,’ Eli says.
But I notice the woman’s gnarled fingers and her calloused, flattened feet jammed into a pair of sandals. I can’t help feeling her entire life has been spent selling to tourists bent on grinding her down.
‘I’ll take it,’ I say, unzipping my bag and sifting through my notes.
Inside the Tiger Page 11
