Hotel Kerobokan by Kathryn Bonella
‘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.
– Mick
The westerners regularly fought with each other, although the fights often finished as quickly as they started. Robert was constantly being belted by someone for yelling, ‘Fucking idiot, fucking idiot!’ like a drunk parrot. Thomas and Gabriel brawled over unpaid smack bills. Mick beat up English Steve and threatened French Michael for not paying money they both owed Thomas for smack, because Thomas owed Mick. Michael’s mum paid the bill and there were no hard feelings.
One afternoon, a blind-drunk Ruggiero sprinted up to Mick, who was sitting on the grass, quietly drawing, to try out a JiuJitsu kick. Mick saw the skinny Brazilian coming at him, and at the last second stuck out his leg, sending him flying.
He always wanted to practise his Jiu-Jitsu. Some people already had a headache with it; they didn’t want any more of his fucking practice.
– Thomas
I was always out of my head, I was always drunk. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t want to feel anything. I was numb. I didn’t give a fuck anymore.
– Ruggiero
It was an international mental institution.
– Mick
Their aggression was a result of frustration, the claustrophobic lifestyle, and the sense of injustice that many felt. But it was exacerbated by the poison they drank every day, like it was water. They had discovered that rapist Garen, who was the main arak dealer and who got supplies from the guards, mixed it with methanol and crushed mosquito coils to give it extra kick.
There was a rapist called Garen, a rapist who was like a celebrity. In my country, a rapist cannot leave his cell because people kill him. Not here. He was a disgusting fat guy. He was the one inside selling arak. He mixed it with burning mosquito coil and methanol. We drank two or three bottles every day. I didn’t know it was mosquito coil, I found out after. You can’t see green pieces inside. I just knew that I wanted to fight with everyone.
– Ruggiero
Some westerners tried doing something useful during their endless days. Mick painted pictures for French Michael’s mum to sell, and Ruggiero wrote and sent emails on his laptop at night, and was also studying Buddhism, which was slowly helping him to manage his fiery temper. Robert was an engineer by profession, and in the mornings, before he started drinking, did electrical wiring jobs around the jail. Many of the men played tennis. Several of the Bali Nine prisoners, including those on death row, played for hours every day in the hot sun. Bali Nine boss Myuran Sukumaran sometimes employed a tennis coach to come inside and give him lessons. Hotel K opened its doors to the media for a couple of days, for a tennis match between westerners – the aim being to present Hotel K as a humane rehabilitation facility. Afterwards, Australian Scott was told by the guards to talk to the journalists. So, with his cap on back to front, and looking more like Lleyton Hewitt than a death row inmate, he talked to an excited scrum of reporters and cameramen.
After I finished my tennis match, I felt really funny – like a celebrity, kind of – because after you finish a tennis match, you feel good with yourself. I was glad with the way I played, anyway. Then someone came up to me with a microphone, and then the guard made me speak to them even though I didn’t really want to.
– Scott, death row inmate
The struggle to have some semblance of a normal life was constant. Juri was looking down a long dark tunnel of life behind bars when he proposed to his Timorese girlfriend, Ade. They had been together for
Like most weddings, it took a lot of organising, although choosing the venue was easy. Their wedding planner was Alit Balong, one of the Laskar bosses, who walked around Hotel K in traditional Balinese dress and carrying a machete. If the westerners wanted something done, they could pay Alit a fee and he could usually do it. He had keys to the blocks, sold crates of beer and Coca-Cola from his cell, and could organise for male inmates to have visits with female inmates. Juri’s family bought all the wedding food and drink from him.
Just pay him and he can do whatever he wants.
– Juri
Juri and Ade had invited more than one hundred guests, including western inmates and family. Most of the Kerobokan crew came, including several of the Bali Nine, Schapelle, and French Michael and his mum, Helene. The Laskars took charge of security to keep uninvited guests out of the cordoned-off garden area.
Ade’s dress and Juri’s suit were both designed and cut in Italy, and made from Italian raw silk. Juri’s two older sisters and both his parents were excited that the only boy in the family was getting married. Juri’s parents spent a fortune trying to give their son and his bride the perfect wedding, despite its grim location. They would have done anything to give their son some happiness.
That marriage was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. The best man was Steve. I think he and Juri smoked about a gram of smack before they went to the altar … and they were falling over. And, besides this smack, Steve liked to squash Xanax pills and mix with the smack, and sniff together.
– Ruggiero
As the vows were read at the altar of the prison’s Christian church, with Ade in her white meringue-style silk dress and Juri in a silk suit and tie, best man Steve lolled around like a rag doll, only standing because Ruggiero was gripping the waist of his trousers.
I held him so he could stand up. But I let go and he fell. Juri was destroyed. They were full on smack. And best man Steve was sweating. But we were all having a great time. It was real comic theatre. Robert was drunk, pissed.
And then comes the priest, and everybody was sweating and the father of one of the Aussie kids taking photos. And then, okay, now the ring, but Steve couldn’t find it. I say, ‘Find the ring, man’. ‘I’m sure I had it here,’ he says. Eventually, he finds it.
Then there was a new guy who had just arrived there, Simon – a Dutch guy. He had a very nice girlfriend. He had just arrived in jail and was a very horny bastard. While the wedding was going on, they busted him shagging another inmate in the toilet.
I said, ‘Man, I have to give you a medal because it took me one year before I could lay my hands on a lady here. You’ve been here one week, already shagging at the wedding inside the fucking toilet’.
How did they catch him?
One of the guards wanted to take a leak. Knocking on the door, saying, ‘Come on,’ and then he heard some noise. He didn’t see the guards coming. But then everything was arranged; he gave the guard 150,000 rupiah.
– Ruggiero
CHAPTER 20
ROOM 13
It’s like a dog kennel. I have never experienced anything like it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
– Chris, inmate
It’s like we are always dancing on razor blades.
– Mick
The human spirit somehow adapts to the most extreme situations and people can endure hardships that once would have seemed inconceivable. Being locked up in a small cell for fourteen hours a day – day after day, week after week, month after month – with people you don’t much like or trust, is a nightmare that none of the westerners in Hotel K could ever have been prepared for.
After Gabriel’s botched escape attempt, the westerners were all put in cells together to increase the security. Scotsman Robert, Austrian Thomas and Australians Chris and Mick were moved into Room 13 in Block B – a drunk, a junkie, an ice freak and an angry madman.
In Room 13, the four westerners fought tirelessly – they stole from, drugged, bashed and abused each other. Every night, the cell erupted with battles, but the arguments died down just as quickly as they had started. The inmates could share a joint amicably, despite having been screaming abuse or throwing punches thirty minutes earlier. They didn’t hate each other. They were just four men who were squeezed together in a tiny concrete cell for fourteen hours a day.
The cell, including the toilet area, was about four metres by three metres, and the men had to be creative to fit into it. They slept on three levels – Chris on the top bunk; Mick in the prize position, on the bottom bunk next to a small barred window; and Robert on the floor. He’d drawn the short straw. Most of his mattress was directly underneath the bottom bunk, with the end poking out at the foot of Mick’s bed to give Robert a bit of headroom. Thomas also slept on the floor, at a right angle to the others, with the edges of his and Robert’s pillows touching. During the day, Thomas’s mattress was pushed up on its side against the wall, to clear the doorway.
When Mick, clutching an armful of his belongings, first arrived at his new cell on the afternoon of Gabriel’s escape, he looked around and felt sickened by the filthy concrete box.
It was a pig house. Very dirty; the bathroom was so black, you think you’re still in darkness, with thirty years of shit dried on the floor. Local guys had lived there before and they never clean. They live like that. It was maybe not cleaned for thirty years. It stank worse than shit.
– Mick
Mick still couldn’t comprehend how his life had spiralled into such a dark hole, so far from his former life in Sydney. He’d driven a Mercedes, lived on the beach in Maroubra and regularly dined at Sydney’s top restaurants. He had worked hard creating a lucrative smash repairs business, sold it because of his bad lungs, and invested his cash in uncut Australian opals. He was selling them in Japan and Singapore, staying in five-star hotels in Asia and building a holiday house in Bali when he was arrested for possession of drugs.
He spent hours down on his hands and knees in Room 13, scrubbing the slimy floor and scraping the black gunk and dried shit off the toilet, using the only cleaning product he had access to – laundry detergent. After a couple of days, he gave cash to Juri’s father to buy him bleach and disinfectant, and eventually the grime vanished and the foul stink faded. Mick also organised for the dirty-grey whitewashed walls to be freshly painted, white tiles to be laid on the bathroom floor and a new toilet to be installed. Killer Saidin did the ceramics jobs around Hotel K, but was so busy that he deputised his boys to do the job, charging Mick about $100. Mick also had a slim wooden cabinet custom-built in Iwan’s workshop that would hold food, books, a TV and DVD player. By cleaning up the filth in Room 13, he was trying to salvage a little dignity and avoid sickness.
Westerners usually put some effort into sprucing up their grim cells, which suited the guards – it gave them another business, of selling the best cells. Often, as soon as a renovation was finished, the guards threatened to move the westerner unless they paid to stay. Guards also charged new prisoners extra cash to be put into a renovated cell. It was fast, easy money, as westerners almost always found hundreds of dollars to avoid the grime-covered, shit-splattered cells.
They use us … they put us in shit room and every time they move us, we fix, we paint, we decorate, and then they move us again and they sell this room to someone else. Each time they move us, we lose everything. Each one of us has made about three rooms. Since I got arrested, I’ve decorated eight rooms, maybe. I make wooden shelves, paint it, clean the sink, put tiles on the floor, paint, decorate, put in a table for the computer, put in a nice bed, nice mattress.
Did they do that with all the foreigners?
Yeah, yeah. Frederico was even worse. Frederico is more crazy … behind the block, he started making a little swimming pool – a little jacuzzi. He put tiles down and when it was ready, the guards say, ‘Sorry, you’re not allowed to g
– Ruggiero
Even after Mick had renovated Room 13, life inside it was a living nightmare. The four men were locked in at 5.30 pm, and spent the next fourteen hours cooped up together in the oppressively hot and claustrophobic cell. But no matter how intolerable it got, how much they frayed each other’s nerves, there was no escape.
On a usual night, Thomas went straight to the bathroom, to shoot up privately. He’d once given a seedy little show – finding a vein, sticking in the needle, and pumping it in and out to boost the hit – but Mick had warned him against ever doing it in front of him again. ‘If I see a needle, I’ll put it right up your arse,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t do that shit in here again.’ So, Thomas used the bathroom, aware that Mick would carry out his threat. After shooting up, he’d drift out and collapse onto his mattress, fumbling around for a cigarette. He’d light it and leave it dangling precariously between his lips, sitting blissed-out with his eyes shut, ash falling onto his lap, until the cigarette burned down to a butt. Several times Mick or Chris leaped out of bed to grab a cigarette that was smouldering on the mattress after having dropped from Thomas’s lips. His mattress was covered in small black holes.
Chris usually came in drunk and stoned from an afternoon session of drinking arak and smoking shabu. He was a skinny ice addict, who’d been caught at a cargo office in Denpasar trying to send 42,000 ephedrine tablets packed in water bottles and stashed in a flower pot with concrete mix on top, and one kilogram of ephedrine powder to Australia. He’d admitted to police that they were the raw materials for making ice and ecstasy, and that their intended destination was Australia.