Hotel Kerobokan (29 page)

But, in the meantime, Hotel K was home and the inmates had to adapt. Using drugs and getting obliterated every day was, for many, a way to fill the endless hours. The westerners checking in and out of Hotel K were a disparate bunch, but often well-educated, wealthy and from loving families. If many were unlikely friends outside, inside they were bonded by geography, lack of choice and the shared pain of being locked in Hotel K.

Some days we had a good time, we were a good family – not homogenous, we had some very weird species, very rare species. This day was the best. I took acid. Gabriel had a speaker [that] he put outside, and [he] put on Red Hot Chili Peppers. Aris is a fucking punk dancer, you know, full of tattoos and no shirt. The locals look at us like we’re from another planet, and guards come and think ‘Who the fuck are these guys?’, and eventually some of the Balinese start to join us. It was a comedy. It was really a comedy
.

– Ruggiero

The afternoon parties’ food and drink were upgraded during the three months that millionaire Australian yachtsman Chris Packer spent in Hotel K, for having unregistered guns on his boat.

He paid a guard [to] go to his boat often and bring him the stuff; bring him wine and whisky and filet mignon steak, spare ribs, lamb chops, prawns, etc … and give it away. Chris had very good taste in booze, he had some excellent wine. We had all the good stuff. He spoiled us. He is a very nice guy. If there was ever a gentleman behind bars, it was him
.

– Ruggiero

The freedom they had within the walls of Hotel K fluctuated greatly depending on how strict or amenable the presiding jail boss was and which shift of guards was on duty. But when they had the chance, the Kerobokan crew went wild.

One night, Swedish inmate Lars threw a birthday party for himself, providing copious bags of
arak
for everyone in his block. The partying started in the early afternoon sun, and continued in their cells after 5.30 pm lockup. A couple of hours later, the fun finished abruptly. English inmate Steven had fallen asleep under the table, and when Filo couldn’t wake him up, he decided to splash
arak
across his bare back and arms. Filo was larking around. He was high and drunk, and didn’t think. He threw a match at the Englishman’s back. It exploded. Steven leaped up, screaming. Fire was scorching up his arms and across his back. He was in agony. He ran around the room screaming, flapping his arms, trying to put the flames out. Filo stood back, gaping in shock. Two cellmates were watching in horror from the floor. Lars threw a glass of water on Steven’s back. A blood-curdling scream ripped across the cell; the water felt like razor blades slicing his back. For several more seconds, the fire burned into the inmate’s skin. Once the alcohol was burned up, the flames died and Steven collapsed, unconscious, on the floor. His badly burned arms and back were blistering before his stunned cellmates’ eyes. Guards and a
tamping
turned up quickly. The whole block had heard the screaming. Steven’s cell was unlocked and he was driven to Sanglah Hospital, which had a special burns unit that had been installed after the Bali bombings. For two weeks he received treatment for third-degree burns and was then returned to Hotel K, wrapped in bandages. He was angry. Filo guiltily paid the hospital bill and apologised. But Steven was left with permanent gruesome scars and a recurring nightmare of almost being burned to death. His four cellmates were sent to cell
tikus
for several days until they paid to get out.

Filo is devilish. He was playing. It wasn’t intentional. They [take] smack together, get drunk together. They were friends. Shit happens. They’re off their faces on smack and alcohol, and in jail. Nobody’s too sane in jail. We’re all a bit crazy. This place is weird. Jail is jail, you know
.

– Ruggiero

Filo is a psychopathic French guy who just wanted to see if
arak
burns or not. He was drunk. He didn’t expect it to burn like that
.

– Mick

The French guy is a little bit strange. If he’s stoned, he’s out of his mind. He had loads of money; well, anyway, enough money. You could see his face was like a naughty boy’s
.

– Thomas

The endless dramas that played out in the men’s block helped the days, weeks, months and years pass for the inmates. There was always something brewing. One night, Arman, who could sleep in any cell he liked, was staying in Vincente’s room in order to use some cocaine. The prisoners were locked up for the night, but Arman called the guards to unlock French inmate Michael from his cell, and escort him across to join their party. One of the Laskars, Asman, known for carrying a gun in his pocket, and who had total freedom to walk in and out of Hotel K, also turned up.

Asman phoned Ruggiero, asking him to teach him to make freebase cocaine – a procedure that involved mixing the drug with water and baking soda, and cooking it on a spoon to turn it into crack. Ruggiero wasn’t too keen, as he was watching the US Open on TV. He was also tired of joining in the same inane drug-induced conversations. But he turned off the TV and went anyway. By the time he arrived, the others had smoked a lot of
shabu
, and Vincente was freebasing.

We’re drinking beer and Arman doesn’t drink anything. I say, ‘Arman, take care, man; you don’t do sports, you’re not fit and you are going to smoke this shit’. Then he smoked the thing. Boom! When I went to the toilet, he was standing against the wall; pale, grey, one step from overdosing. I got some salt to put on his tongue. I undress him, put him in the shower; he almost overdosed. He used
shabu,
but this day he smoked
shabu
and freebase cocaine. Makes you stoned. Like, boom! He doesn’t drink. When you do a line of coke, you drink beer or whisky, and he didn’t even drink a sip of a beer, so he was very dry … crazy
.

– Ruggiero

Tall, lean and muscular Dutchman Aris was one of the stranger inmates, usually walking around hallucinating on LSD, and notorious for changing his look. He’d turn up with different hairstyles, from punk to being bald, or shaving his facial hair in a lopsided style – taking off his right eyebrow and the left side of his moustache – just for the hell of it.

Aris was an LSD freak from Amsterdam
.

– Thomas

Scottish sailor Robert – father of Black Monster’s baby – was often seen having sex behind Iwan’s workshop or in the back of the church, with a girl straddling his lap.

He was horny like a goat. He sees any hole, he wants to go in
.

– Mick

Most days, Robert was drunk by lunchtime, stumbling around and abusing people, drinking
arak
from a plastic cup, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The front of his trousers was often dripping wet from where he had pissed himself. He was an aggressive drunk, indiscriminately screaming, ‘Fucking idiots!’ and provoking anyone walking past, including the Laskars, who would bash him senseless. By the time the afternoon lockup bells were ringing, he was usually sleeping on a concrete bench, or on the grass, with a cigarette between his fingers and had to be carried back to his cell.

Once he was drunk in the grass, and we put frangipani on his neck and took photo. He didn’t move much … he was like a statue
.

– Mick

Robert’s very nice, but when he gets drunk he’s a pain in the arse. He was always drunk, giving shit. Kind of Scottish … he doesn’t give a fuck. He’s a wild man. Extremely strong, he just grabs you. He drives everyone absolutely nuts. He’s crazy. He got beaten up many times. They punch him and he screams, ‘You fucking faggot – you don’t hurt me!’ Fuck. To make it worse, he says, ‘Listen, you punch me, but your cock is still small; I have a big cock,’ and pulls down his pants. Fuck. He’s one of a kind
.

– Ruggiero

American Gabriel was also a bad drunk, recklessly taunting a killer one afternoon just for the sake of it. He was drunk. It was a bit of fun. It was also a mistake. You could never forget where you were. The inmate pulled out a knife and slashed Gabriel across the chest and arm, cutting a tendon and temporarily paralysing his right arm. The killer complained to the jail’s security chief about Gabriel’s taunts, and it was Gabriel who was sent to cell
tikus
for punishment.

Frenchman Michael and English Steve were called ‘the veggies’, always sleeping in their cells after shooting up. Italian Juri was well-liked, and seemingly was always happy and smiling and high on heroin. Mexican Vincente was considered to be aloof, rarely mixing with the group, and known for psychotically going from casual laughter to a screaming tirade in a split second. Dropping cigarette ash in his cell or placing your sandals in the wrong spot could set him off.

He was an angry man. Like a psychopath, he would flip out over little things. People didn’t like to get close to him
.

– Mick, former cellmate

Australian Mick swung between bursts of hot anger and quietly reading his metaphysical books, painting pictures and practising yoga. He was seething at being locked up for fifteen years for hashish possession, swearing the basket of almost three kilograms of stuff that police found in his half-built Bali holiday house was a herbal medicine. But the courts had refused to permit it to be tested independently.

‘I’m so confused, it’s a shocking situation, it’s like a dream, it’s not reality,’ Fardin told AAP by telephone from prison in Bali. ‘The problem is they just don’t want to lose face. It doesn’t matter whether it’s hashish or not hashish, they just want money.’

–
AAP
, 25 July 2002

Mick had refused to plead guilty, dumping his lawyer when he asked for cash to pay police and the court. He had written fifteen to twenty letters to anyone he thought might be able to help, including the Indonesian President, human rights groups in Jakarta and Australia, and the Australian Government, explaining that he was not getting a fair trial. He received only two letters back, both from human rights organisations – the Australian group simply said that it could not interfere in another country’s justice system, and the Jakarta group told him to push harder for re-testing of the stuff. Mick argued furiously in court for the re-testing but the judge refused point-blank. In sentencing, the judge went in hard. For possession of under three kilograms of what the judge suddenly and inexplicably claimed was not pure hashish but a hashish-sand mix, Mick and his girlfriend, Trisna, went down for fifteen years each.

I couldn’t believe it at first. I felt like I’d been in a time machine. Was it karma? Action reaction? Did I do something and was not aware of it? I wanted to make sense of what had happened. What action had I done for this reaction to come to me?

– Mick

When the governor of Bali was in Hotel K one day, giving an Independence Day speech to inmates, Mick desperately wanted to talk to him about his case and give him a letter. He waited in the shade for the governor to finish his speech, and then approached him. The governor swept straight past, completely ignoring the inmate. Mick called out, ‘Governor, please can I talk to you?’ Two of his bodyguards turned and blocked Mick, saying, ‘Not today’. Mick’s hot temper flared. ‘You fucking corrupt bastard. I want to talk to you about your corrupt courts, your police!’ he yelled at the governor. The governor started to run. His bodyguards left Mick, to join their boss. Mick charged behind, yelling, ‘Stop, you corrupt bastard!’ The bodyguards turned and blocked him again. Mick went ballistic, screaming, ‘You fucking corrupt bastard. Stop! Stop!’

The governor was by then sprinting through the blue room, past a crowd of police, consular officials and politicians who were all walking towards the door. As the governor flashed by, the room suddenly stopped. Bewildered, everyone turned to watch the scene. Mick was still running and screaming, ‘Fucking corrupt bastard!’ as the governor flew breathlessly out the front door and leaped into his car. Mick stood in the doorway, screaming almost dementedly with rage and from a desperate sense of injustice. He had no-one to help him. No-one would listen. Three guards held him back as he watched the governor’s shiny car cruise out of the car park.

The guards were not angry. I think they felt sorry for me
.

– Mick

Mick didn’t only vent his rage at the authorities. Being locked up each day and feeling such a sense of injustice caused his grip on reality to warp, and subsequently he would lash out. One afternoon he offered to cut Ruggiero’s head off, for $5000. His fury had been unleashed when Ruggiero failed to pay $35 for a pearl necklace he had sold him. Blinded by anger, he imagined that he could cut off Ruggiero’s head to punish him, and also earn $5000 to pay his way out of Hotel K. His decapitation idea had come to him when wealthy Argentinean inmate Frederico was angrily muttering about Ruggiero being a ‘fucking arsehole’. Frederico wrongly believed Ruggiero had organised to buy drugs from him in a police sting – to help save his own arse – and was therefore responsible for his arrest. Such set-ups were common and Ruggiero had been arrested a few days before Frederico.

Mick went across to Frederico’s block, and caught him and another inmate walking out. He told them his plan. ‘This piece of shit put you in here; do you want me to kill him? I’ll cut his head off.’ Frederico liked the idea. They walked down to the canteen to buy cigarettes and discussed it. Frederico would talk to his Israeli girlfriend about getting the cash out of his bank account. But by the next morning, it was off. Frederico’s girlfriend instantly saw that it was a crazy idea and refused to get the cash. Ruggiero had already heard about the bounty on his head from the other inmate, who had been a good surfing buddy of his for years. The next morning, Ruggiero went to Mick’s cell, paid him the cash for the pearl necklace and apologised for the delay.

The tough guy became a pussy cat. I really would have cut his head off. At that time I was an animal man – my perception of life was different
.