A continuation...
At the police station father and son were of course seperated as are all suspects in any interrogation. I hesistate to use the phrase "to his credit" because it is merely what any human should do, dear old dad told his interrogators that the boy knew nothing about the hashish and that it was all his doing. After a harrowing night incommunicado the son was brusquely released, put on a plane and deported to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is under Chinese sovereignity but is under fully autonomous status. Suprisingly this autonomy extends even to immigration apparently since he was sent there BY China after his perphreal involvement in a hashish smuggling scheme,
When the Chinese police informed him of his release they nearly gave him a heart attack when they handed him the 2 smuggling bags INTACT with their secreted hashish! Now, you have just been arrested in a death penalty nation. You can imagine that your father is at that very moment being subjected to heinous forms of torture and unimaginable stress. You are handed a death penalty amount of hashish and informed you will be going through yet another border crossing, albeit as an air arrival. Moreover, your destination will have been informed that you are a deportee for a drugs offence. What would a sane person do? Me? I would go to the loo in the airport and flush every fucken crumb down the damn crapper!
What does our intrepid protagonist choose to do? "I decided that I would continue on with our plan. I would take the drugs onto Tokyo to prove to my dad that I had what it takes and to earn money to finance his defence." Riiiiight. Meanwhile, daddy-o is back in his rat infested cell in China, sleeping on a 1cm thich bamboo mat on a dank concrete floor, sleeping toe to toe with the dregs if Chinese society. Meal time is a bowl of bug infested white rice 3X a day with a bowl of hot water and some disgusting boiled greens floating on the surface. Hey, life's a bitch. The worst of it though is that his kind hearted warders never bother to inform him that junior has been released and deported. He is wracking his brain with guilt and regret. First he abandoned the boy when he was 6, now at 22 his son is facing a bullet to the back of the head- the preferred method of execution for drugs offences in China.
Meanwhile, laddie miraculously cleared Customs and Immigration in Hong Kong! Counter-intuitively, he didn't even face questioning, much less an inspection. Knowing that a person has just been deported for a drugs offence leads one to believe that the deportee has been properly vetted in all ways. Who would imagine that a drugs deportee is arriving with 14 kilos of secreted hashish? What are the chances of the Chinese police having handed him 2 carry on bags with a load of hashish in them?
Next is a flight bound for Tokyo. Amazingly, the Japanese must not have been aware of his recent travel history since they didn't bar his entry. Japan has a fairly strong hash market and like most nations in Eastern Asia the product costs an arm and a leg even on the wholesale end of the market. To give you an idea...A person can go to Katmandu in Nepal...or to Sagada in the Philippines, and pay $250.00 for a kilo of black creamy hash, better than anything I have ever seen in Lebanon or Pakistan. That same kilo is worth $50,000 as soon as you clear Japanese Customs. If you unload it yourself, you can make up to $100,000 within a month, with little worries of arrest or robbery.
Junior went directly to an expat bar his father had told him about and quickly got rid of his load. Back in China his father was shocked when staffer from the British Consulate informed him that his son- whom he had believed was sitting in an identical cell in another part of the facility- had wired him $10,000 to retain an attorney. Staring at the Consulate flunky in shock he asked WHERE had it been wired FROM. Having been told it came from Tokyo the father began laughing like a maniac, "That's my laddie!"
Personally? I think both are carbon copies of one another. Both are blubbering idiots. In any event, after a decade Daddy flew back to the UK and today father and son are happy as larks.
Not all the episodes are factual. There was another one, involving a Chassidic (Hassidic) Jew who served time in Brasil for coke. A native of London he- like me- entered into an arranged marriage at age 17. Like me, he was divorced in his early 20s. One day, a mate of his, another Chasid, asked him if he would like to take an all expences paid holiday in Brasil. Thinking that his friend was simply trying to cheer him up after his marriage imploded, the man said sure, he would love to see the country...off to Brasil.
To be continued...
At the police station father and son were of course seperated as are all suspects in any interrogation. I hesistate to use the phrase "to his credit" because it is merely what any human should do, dear old dad told his interrogators that the boy knew nothing about the hashish and that it was all his doing. After a harrowing night incommunicado the son was brusquely released, put on a plane and deported to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is under Chinese sovereignity but is under fully autonomous status. Suprisingly this autonomy extends even to immigration apparently since he was sent there BY China after his perphreal involvement in a hashish smuggling scheme,
When the Chinese police informed him of his release they nearly gave him a heart attack when they handed him the 2 smuggling bags INTACT with their secreted hashish! Now, you have just been arrested in a death penalty nation. You can imagine that your father is at that very moment being subjected to heinous forms of torture and unimaginable stress. You are handed a death penalty amount of hashish and informed you will be going through yet another border crossing, albeit as an air arrival. Moreover, your destination will have been informed that you are a deportee for a drugs offence. What would a sane person do? Me? I would go to the loo in the airport and flush every fucken crumb down the damn crapper!
What does our intrepid protagonist choose to do? "I decided that I would continue on with our plan. I would take the drugs onto Tokyo to prove to my dad that I had what it takes and to earn money to finance his defence." Riiiiight. Meanwhile, daddy-o is back in his rat infested cell in China, sleeping on a 1cm thich bamboo mat on a dank concrete floor, sleeping toe to toe with the dregs if Chinese society. Meal time is a bowl of bug infested white rice 3X a day with a bowl of hot water and some disgusting boiled greens floating on the surface. Hey, life's a bitch. The worst of it though is that his kind hearted warders never bother to inform him that junior has been released and deported. He is wracking his brain with guilt and regret. First he abandoned the boy when he was 6, now at 22 his son is facing a bullet to the back of the head- the preferred method of execution for drugs offences in China.
Meanwhile, laddie miraculously cleared Customs and Immigration in Hong Kong! Counter-intuitively, he didn't even face questioning, much less an inspection. Knowing that a person has just been deported for a drugs offence leads one to believe that the deportee has been properly vetted in all ways. Who would imagine that a drugs deportee is arriving with 14 kilos of secreted hashish? What are the chances of the Chinese police having handed him 2 carry on bags with a load of hashish in them?
Next is a flight bound for Tokyo. Amazingly, the Japanese must not have been aware of his recent travel history since they didn't bar his entry. Japan has a fairly strong hash market and like most nations in Eastern Asia the product costs an arm and a leg even on the wholesale end of the market. To give you an idea...A person can go to Katmandu in Nepal...or to Sagada in the Philippines, and pay $250.00 for a kilo of black creamy hash, better than anything I have ever seen in Lebanon or Pakistan. That same kilo is worth $50,000 as soon as you clear Japanese Customs. If you unload it yourself, you can make up to $100,000 within a month, with little worries of arrest or robbery.
Junior went directly to an expat bar his father had told him about and quickly got rid of his load. Back in China his father was shocked when staffer from the British Consulate informed him that his son- whom he had believed was sitting in an identical cell in another part of the facility- had wired him $10,000 to retain an attorney. Staring at the Consulate flunky in shock he asked WHERE had it been wired FROM. Having been told it came from Tokyo the father began laughing like a maniac, "That's my laddie!"
Personally? I think both are carbon copies of one another. Both are blubbering idiots. In any event, after a decade Daddy flew back to the UK and today father and son are happy as larks.
Not all the episodes are factual. There was another one, involving a Chassidic (Hassidic) Jew who served time in Brasil for coke. A native of London he- like me- entered into an arranged marriage at age 17. Like me, he was divorced in his early 20s. One day, a mate of his, another Chasid, asked him if he would like to take an all expences paid holiday in Brasil. Thinking that his friend was simply trying to cheer him up after his marriage imploded, the man said sure, he would love to see the country...off to Brasil.
To be continued...
