Do You like book Forget You Had A Daughter: Doing Time In The 'Bangkok Hilton' (2009)?
I first heard about this book on my new favorite National Geographic show, "Locked up Abroad." Tivo it, it's always gripping. One episode featured this British woman, Sandra Gregory, who made one stupid decision in her life (very, very, naive stupid decision) and was sentenced to death. I won't give anything away, but her tale of her ordeal is such a page turner I canceled all of my plans and spent two days pouring through the book till it was finished. If you're planning a trip to Thailand and think you might run out of cash while you're there, it's a particularly pertinent read for the plane ride!
—Shari
I think every teenager and young adult should have to read this book so if at any time someone asks them to carry drugs for them, especially in a foregin country, they know to say no and get the hell out of there!!! It just goes to show you how making one bad decision could affect the rest of your life. Sandra was lucky she survived all of her prison stints, especially the one in Thailand. I knew foreign prisons were bad but what she had to endure was absolutely horrific. She was honest and forthcoming and admitted she did the crime and deserved to be punished, but the punishment was truly disproportionate to the crime and what others were receiving. What a brave woman and I loved her candor and strong spirit!
—Glenda
This is the story of Sandra Gregory and her time in prison for attempting to smuggle drugs out of Thailand. She does part of her time in Thailand and the rest in the United Kingdom, where she is from. Although she was guilty of attempting to smuggle the drugs, the sentence that she received was harsh. She received at first a life sentence, that was then reduced to 25 years. This was longer than some murders in Thailand. The story takes you from shortly before her trip to Thailand, through to her release. She does a really good job of describing the details of the environments she was subjected to. What I found sad, was the way she was treated in regards to her crime. Yes, she was guilty, but compared to those around her, to include the woman who killed and chopped up her husband, her crime was minor. The conditions of the Thai prisons were beyond belief. Tasks were disgusting, and included things like standing in fecal clogged sewer water in order to unclog the facilities used as toilets. Most of the women had constant sores on their skin due to the lack of water and poor living conditions. Unfortunately, things for Sandra did not improve when she was sent to the UK to finish her sentence. Since she was convicted in Thailand, the British government would do nothing to try and reduce her sentence, although even in the UK she was serving terms longer than some of the most vicious killers in the country.
—Kim