The Guardian Newspaper's Special Report

[sinbad]

Great escape

In the 1980s, the Costa del Sol was the destination of choice for many British criminals. Today they head to Thailand, where the beaches are stunning, the women cheap and the police bribable. Duncan Campbell travels to Pattaya, paradise for sunseekers - and Brits on the run

Monday April 11, 2005

The Guardian

Outside the Dog's <deleted> pub, a blackboard is pointing out that "Charlton v Yids" will be screened on the bar's television later this evening. Down the narrow street that leads to the Pattaya beachfront, past the cafes offering a full English breakfast and the masseuses offering full everything else, every middle-aged British male seems to be accompanied by a Thai woman half his age, half his size and seven times as attractive.

On the crowded beachfront, as jet skis skid across the bay, every counterfeit imaginable is available, from Ray Bans to Rod Stewart CDs. Newly arrived Brits, identifiable by their fake Premiership football shirts, shorts and hairless alabaster legs, are handed flyers offering trips across the border to Cambodia on "visa runs" and assistance in "getting positive results for any length 'overstay'". One stall is selling women's T-shirts reading "No Money, No Honey" and, for men, sleeveless black T-shirts pronouncing "Good guys go to Heaven, bad guys go to Pattaya."

Detective Superintendent John Sweeney from the Metropolitan police has made five visits over the past two years - all on extradition business. "It's the new Costa del Crime," he says, thanks to the numbers of Brits fleeing the law at home for lives of lucrative, beachfront liberty in Thailand. "You see them all there in their singlets and tattoos. It's a perfect place for them. What the Thais must think of British people I have no idea."

Pattaya gained its reputation as a place where sex was for sale during the Vietnam war when US servicemen would come to Thailand for "rest and rehabilitation". The trade continued after the war, with western tourists filling the vacuum. Now everything sexual is available. Young women dressed as schoolgirls beckon customers into Classroom-A-Go-Go (motto: "study hard") and young men in white T-shirts and shorts follow suit at Narcissus. There are women dressed as secretaries at a bar called the Office Girls and encased in silver dresses at another, Crystal Girls. "What makes it attractive for someone on the run is that it is very easy to pick up bogus ID, it's very cheap to live and you can get yourself fixed up with a Thai woman very easily," says Sweeney.

The lid was lifted on the British expat underworld in Pattaya during a murder trial at the Old Bailey in December. Matthew O'Connor, a London taxi driver and martial-arts expert who co-managed the Camden club Barzaar, was charged with the 1997 killing of Ronald Hinkson outside his club. O'Connor, who fled the country with a false passport immediately after the killing, was tracked down to Thailand four years later and spent two years in jail there fighting extradition. He was acquitted of the murder after he told the jury that he had not been involved and had only disappeared because he believed the dead man's friends were after him.

O'Connor, like many on the run, had managed to create a new world for himself in Pattaya, complete with a Thai partner with whom he had a son. He might have spent the rest of his life there, untroubled by the British police, had it not been for another Pattaya expat, Ian Muirhead. A small, nervy man, Muirhead had been in jail for various offences in Britain and the US before he ended up enjoying the benefits of Thailand. There he set himself up as a cigarette smuggler and importer of fake Gucci and Louis Vuitton accessories. He also made a speciality of supplying fake visas and travel documents, thus facilitating illegal immigration scams.

Muirhead's modus operandi, typical of the counterfeit trade from Thailand, was to purchase fake fancy goods at a fraction of the price of the genuine article, ship them back to London and have them sold off by associates working in the London markets. He was not making a fortune - he reckoned between £2,000 and £4,000 per monthly trip - but combined with the phoney visa business, it provided a comfortable life. He was arrested in England in 2002 after trying to pull off one trip too many. In exchange for a £21,000 reward, he divulged the new identity and whereabouts of O'Connor, then operating under the name of Roy Cann. He is now living at a secret location.

O'Connor, who had used Muirhead to collect money for him from London, had also found the counterfeit goods trade allowed him a comfortable life in Thailand. Like Muirhead, he traded in replica football shirts, buying them for £3 and selling them for £15. The fact that Thailand is one of the world centres of counterfeit production provides expat criminals with a wonderful way of making money relatively free from risks. If they have legal problems, the police are very bribable.

The old Costa del Crime in the south of Spain was where villains took advantage of the collapse in 1978 of the extradition agreement between Spain and the UK. For a while in the 1980s, up to 100 major British criminals enjoyed their San Miguels without fear of a hand on the collar of their Hawaiian shirts (the door to Spain was closed in 1985 with a new extradition accord, although it didn't apply to those who were there already). The old Costa del Crime provided a haven with full access to the staples of the expat Brit: televised football, beer and breakfast. Pattaya can offer all of these - along with a young female population who show an unfailing attraction to well-off, middle-aged Brits in shorts and sandals.

So is Pattaya really the new Costa del Crime? "Not at all; it's more like Blackpool," says one expat Londoner who now owns a bar just up the road from the Dog's <deleted>, where Muirhead and his pals hung out. The staff and customers there were more reticent: a journalist exploring this theme around the time of the last World Cup got, I was told, "a smack in the mouth".

"It's really very relaxed," says the Londoner. "There are a few ex-cons here but I don't know of anyone on the run - apart from one guy who's now gone to the Philippines [which has no extradition treaty with Britain]. You get all kinds here: your golfing fraternity and just normal people." Oddly, no one in this supposedly family-friendly golfing idyll wants to talk on the record. To an observer, indeed, Pattaya is much more identifiable as the home of "beer bars" where a "bar fine" is paid to take a woman off for sex, or go-go bars where "lady drinks" are bought for the dancers, who are also available for sex for as little as £10. A Brit on the run can, for very little investment, find himself a woman, a place to stay, a new identity and, with the right connections, a way of scamming enough money to stay for ever.

Of course, there are plenty of expats who have nothing to do with crime and who are attracted by the sun and cheap property. Around £30,000 will buy a very comfortable apartment near the beach, and rents are minimal - 650,000 British tourists visit Pattaya every year. One legitimate English businessman who has been in Pattaya for a decade says he has seen the town grow by 10% a year since then. There were some problems on the criminal front, he says, but mainly with people who overstayed their visas.

There have, however, certainly been no shortage of crime stories involving Britons in the town. Last month, Bernard Le Court, a 52-year-old chef from Liverpool who moved to Thailand six years ago to open a restaurant, had his throat cut in Pattaya. A local taxi driver was arrested after the body was found in bushes near Pluta Luang, 22 miles south of the town. He was said to have heavy gambling debts and to have robbed Le Court of his camera equipment and money. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

The lively local paper Pattaya Today, one of three local English-language publications, provides a round-up of the criminal happenings complete with graphic photos: Thai police make a speciality of posing beside the bodies of murder victims. In one week last month it was carrying reports of a Briton, Alexander Downey, caught with three packs of "ice" (pure amphetamines), and a report that noted that "the Brit's landlady said she believed he had made some enemies in Pattaya and they had decided to put an end to his nefarious activities". Another report told of a "Swiss guy found expired in condo - possibly hit with hard object".

It is not only British criminals who are attracted to Thailand; while the British and Australians are the most involved in the counterfeit business, some sex trade and drugs, Russians are involved in prostitution and West Africans in drugs and diamonds. Down on the front, one 20-year-old Thai businessman offering fake YSL suits says that Englishmen have a bad reputation locally: "They get very drunk and sometimes you get a group of them and they take a woman and they don't want to pay her and they rape her. There are Germans, too, but the English are the worst." Pat, a 27-year-old Thai bar-girl, says the English are the best and the worst customers. What does she mean? "They do like to get very drunk."

Unlike Patong, Thailand's other main hangout for British expats and tourists, Pattaya was not affected by the Boxing Day tsunami. There is little doubt, however, that the catastrophe in the region may have provided some people with a perfect way of disappearing. There are many apocryphal tales in Pattaya about British criminals who got new identities after claiming that their passports had been washed away in the waves. Even if they can't secure a phoney identity in Thailand, a taxi ride from Pattaya takes you over the border into Cambodia where it is even easier to disappear. Last summer, a bogus passport ring was busted in Bangkok with false ID from New Zealand, France, Belgium and Spain being sold for as little as €1,500 (£1,000 each). There are services available, too, for criminals who want to stay in Thailand but who do not want the risk and bother of travelling abroad to get their visa renewed. For 3,200 baht (£42) for a tourist visa or 7,500 baht (£100) for a three month non-immigrant visa, someone will leave the country on your behalf and return with the necessary renewal stamp.

There are currently 41 Britons in jail in Thailand, according to Prisoners Abroad, mostly on drugs charges; some are serving sentences of 49 or even 99 years, their only faint hope a royal pardon. The jail where they are housed, the Bang Kwang or "Bangkok Hilton", has now become so notorious that visiting a detained Brit has been added to the list of things to do for backpackers in the area. In a recent book called Guns, Girls, Gambling, Ganja, three Thai academics from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok wrote that "Thailand has acquired an international reputation as a country where illegal businesses can flourish because of poor law enforcement. This is bad for Thailand's international reputation." It is, however, good for a Brit on the run.

[The_Moog]

Oy ! Oy! Rule Britannia !

I've never felt much urge to visit my lonely compatriots in jail.

[Ajarn]

Sure to sound more like a Promotion from a travel agent, prices included, to many of the more Neanderthalish of their readers... Sure to be effective, too.

I've never been to Pattaya, even when I was working 50 k's away in Phanat Nikom. Never heard anything positive, only negative, so I never bothered. So many places more interesting nearby...

Thankfully, they didn't mention Chiang Mai. They have enough problems already

[Thomas_Merton]

...Down the narrow street that leads to the Pattaya beachfront, past the cafes offering a full English breakfast and the masseuses offering full everything else, every middle-aged British male seems to be accompanied by a Thai woman half his age, half his size and seven times as attractive.

On the crowded beachfront, as jet skis skid across the bay, every counterfeit imaginable is available, from Ray Bans to Rod Stewart CDs. Newly arrived Brits, identifiable by their fake Premiership football shirts, shorts and hairless alabaster legs...

To misquote Lenny Bruce, "Thank God, nobody is black, or he really would have gone overboard!"

This is just another example of modern British Puritanism coupled with its ugly sister political correctness.

The author forgets that the British upper classes, for hundreds of years, have made fortunes out of illegal trade with the Far East, in everything from Opium to peppers through money laundering. In fact Great Britain was built upon this trade.

On the question of ids: new ids are easier to establish in the UK where there is no official and agreed ID card, despite post 911 paranoia.

I think the main impression I get from this article is that this young journalist is offended by the fact that a couple of working class, old, ugly, bad-boys can get laid with beautiful girls for £10.

If this is not envy disguised as PC, what is?

[HarryHacker]

Duncan Campbell, the writer, sounds like that pr1ck Andrew Drummond who writes the same <deleted> every 6 months or so for various British newspapers, pity the Guardian is going down the same road!

[ProfessorFart]

Utterly pointless cheap sensationalism which has seen the plummet of the Guardian from a once respectable paper into the murky depths of a tabloid in a broadsheet disguise.

There is nothing new in this article. Indeed this could have been written by reading this, or a similar forum but I'm afraid this is just a recycled tale. I wonder how these 'journalists' make a living churning out the same dross every few months.

'A smack in the mouth' is the least they deserve.

Who Knows? With the Guardian now reaching this cutting edge of reporting, there may well be a piece in a few months revealing to an astonished World that there are lots of prostitutes in Thailand.

[davethailand]

[gburns57au]

And some of the Brits here actually said that this rag is their preferred newspaper when visiting Thailand......

[britmaveric]

Utter rubbish...

[Boon Mee]

Give me the Sun and page Three girls anyday!

[davethailand]

I used to (sorry) buy the sun everyday back in the UK and my Dad always used to comment on why I was reading that "rag".

I've bought it 3 times since i've been in pattaya and he's right.. Complete rubbish.

[thai_norman]

David now reads it on the internet for free everyday. www.thesun.co.uk

[davethailand]

David now reads it on the internet for free everyday. www.thesun.co.uk

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Another one of my secrets out

[Pattaya_Fox]

...or read em all at www.thepaperboy.com

[bodypaul]

I used to (sorry) buy the sun everyday back in the UK and my Dad always used to comment on why I was reading that "rag".

I've bought it 3 times since i've been in pattaya and he's right.. Complete rubbish.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Congratulations Dave .... you are growing up at last!!

[DJ Pat]

David now reads it on the internet for free everyday. www.thesun.co.uk

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Me too and quite frankly it is &lt;deleted&gt;.

[bambob]

Duncan Campbell, the writer, sounds like that pr1ck Andrew Drummond who writes the same &lt;deleted&gt; every 6 months or so for various British newspapers, pity the Guardian is going down the same road!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Duncan Campbell ,isnt he the guy who was always being arrested by MI5 and MI6 back in the 80s for leaking info on UK security ? he has writen a few books .

[Rinrada]

yes

[sateef]

A face only a mother could love

[sateef]

And I wonder if in true British journalistic tradition he politely declined their kind offers.

[HarryHacker]

Duncan Campbell, the writer, sounds like that pr1ck Andrew Drummond who writes the same &lt;deleted&gt; every 6 months or so for various British newspapers, pity the Guardian is going down the same road!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Duncan Campbell ,isnt he the guy who was always being arrested by MI5 and MI6 back in the 80s for leaking info on UK security ? he has writen a few books .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Indeed, I would expect something more meaty from him, maybe still to come?

[sriracha john]

Certainly to ex-pats it reads a bit trite... but I thought it was a good article to remind people (not ex-pats here, of course) of the seedy underbelly of Pattaya. It's a nice counter to the glossy, bright TAT brochures for Pattaya depicting beautifully clean beaches and loads of "family entertainment." It is factual, afterall, in that more than a few of the less desireables of this world have washed up on Pattaya's grimy shores. It serves as a warning to the less initiated to be careful of who you trust there. Of course, the downside is that the article makes it so attractive to the aforementioned undesireables that more are sure to come now.

[bartender100]

You could paint a similar picture in a lot of cities in the uk,I come from a seaside resort that you would not walk around in alone at night.

Eastern European gangs are running prostitution in just about every major town and city in the UK,a lot of it underage.There was a big article a few weeks ago in the UK press.

Drug use in my home town is one of the worst,with heroin being the drug of choice,being a port town its flooded with the stuff.

Copyright goods, go to any boot sale,and you can buy the stuff being sent from Thailand,and other Asian countries,but at 3 times the price.

I don't disagree with some of the things in the article but I know were I'd sooner be any day.

[fourbaht]

SINBAD

The Guardian newspaper along with the Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Independent are the UK's leading newspaper publications. They employ investigagtive journalists of the highest quality on a world scale. Duncan Campbell's report was based on observation and fact.

The two questions that have to be asked are: what was not true about Duncan Campbell's report in the Guardian newspaper? What particular point was sensationalist?

People like Prof. Fart, Thomas Merton, and Britmavia, who responded to the article in a negative way, used phrases like, "cheap sensationalism...a smack in the mouth is the least they deserve (referring to the journalist)"; and "...the ugly sister of political correctness"; and he's offended "...by bad boys who can get laid for as little as #10 pounds";and "utter rubbish". To any normal person, these comments say it all; that is, the warped mentallity of these people is clear for all to see. There are, in fact, some normal people living in Thailand; and, most normal people cannot help but draw the obvious conclusions from such comments -that these people have lived in Thailand for so long they have lost all touch with reality; they no longer know who they are who what they stand for; they are living in denial; they have never lived in Pattaya or drunk in bars like the Dogs &lt;deleted&gt;; or a raw nerve was hit psychologically, because, perhaps in trying to justify their own private antics they feel they must go on the attack (so perhaps they do live in Pattaya and frequent themselves with the type of people who frequent bars like the Dogs &lt;deleted&gt;); they refuse to admit they are hypocrites.

Pattaya is an unreal world. It attracts a huge number of the worst kinds of people, both farang and Thai. There is very little social control, and the police are a mafia unto themselves. When people open page three and four of the Pattaya Mail or Pattaya Trader and read all the horror stories of murders, suspect suicides, and crime, have these stories been made up? The sign outside the Dogs &lt;deleted&gt; that said Charlton versus Yids, was that not really there? The huge number of old, ugly men that can bee seen walking round with young tarts on their arms, do they not really exist? The murder case that Duncan Campbell referred to, was it fiction? The fact that hundreds of girls are drawn from poverty stricken rural areas and choose to sell their bodies for as little as ten English pounds, as one writer boasted, is that not true?

We are all hypocrites to a certain extent, some more than others, but don't live in denial and try to justify and defend the downside of this place; otherwise, things can never improve or move on.

Sinbad

Your point is partially valid, I doubt if there is anything "Untrue" per say in this article, however that does not mean it is not sensationalist.

Live here and you will see that Pattaya has a lot more on offer than cheap goods for petty criminals to buy.

The article picked up on what the vast majority of people who live and work on Pattaya legally will tell you is a very small part of life here.

Bangkok I am sure has a larger international criminal element than Pattaya does, a check of where the foreigners that reside in the BKK hilton and where they were arrested would easily verify this I am sure.

Crime in Pattaya sells news papers, would a story advising that the number of families holidaying in Pattaya has risen 45% in the past 3 years be of any interest?

Would the fact that foreign investment in property and the retail sector has doubled in the past 4 years be of interest? No is the simple answer.

The problem is not with the press, it is with the readers, the papers only print the crap that sells, not what is fair and balanced.

The fact is fair and balanced stories do not sell newspapers.

A sign on Rupert Murdochs desk reads "give the people what they want not what they need" That about sums up the whole of the british press at the moment and why not they want to sell newspapers.

So the answer to your first question is no, nothing untrue, the answer to your second depends on your view of sensationalism.

But were you asking the right question? perhaps the question should have been is was this a balanced report on a town where 650,000 British and 2 million other visitors choose to holiday every year.

Real life is never quiet as interesting as the news papers will have you believe.

[Thomas_Merton]

People like Prof. Fart, Thomas Merton, and Britmavia, who responded to the article in a negative way, used phrases like, "cheap sensationalism...a smack in the mouth is the least they deserve (referring to the journalist)"; and "...the ugly sister of political correctness"; and he's offended "...by bad boys who can get laid for as little as #10 pounds";and "utter rubbish". To any normal person, these comments say it all; that is, the warped mentallity of these people is clear for all to see.

“Warped mentality” is a valued judgement based upon those values – Puritanism and its ugly sister, political correctness – that I personally abhor.

Personally abhor because if any values are based on hypocrisy it is these.

We all have our lighter and darker sides – no man is Jesus Christ - and we wander in and out of these sides throughout our life.

Appealing to these darker sides appear places whose attraction appears to be only the satisfaction of these “lusts”. Be it a simple pub, a betting shop, a race course, a strip joint, a Casino, Blackpool, SOHO in London, Istegade in Copenhagen, the Red Lights of Rotterdam or even Pattaya (I have often described Pattaya as a combination of Istegade and Blackpool).

There will always be people like Sinbad (Duncan Campbell) who crusade to get these places changed or closed, unable to see, that the cessation of these places would be as catastrophic as the repression of these darker sides of our personality.

The resulting psychosis, should these puritans win, would certainly put any accusations of “warped mentality” into perspective.

And why is this? Because it is the nature of being a human being.

We, as we develop a personal morality are forced to make choices with respect to our reactions to these sides of our personalities. What choices we make, why we make them and how we make them, develop our personality. The choice is always ours, and ours alone.

If you do not like the TV show – turn the TV off. If you do not like Pattaya – stay away.

But do not go into a state of denial, hypocritically campaigning for the removal of attractions that undoubtedly strike a light on a repressed darker side of your own personality.

Visit Switzerland – it is sanitized (well, on the surface, but that is another story).

One final thought: Jesus Christ is often pulled out of the bag to defend the puritans of this world. But who did JC befriend: the prostitutes and tax collectors (thieves). His enemies were the finger pointing hypocrites like Sinbad (Duncan Campbell).

Let those who are without sin, caste the first stone.

[ProfessorFart]

I fail to see how anyone is living in denial by ridiculing a piece of cr@p sensationalism?

[bartender100]

A point is,there is also 2 local English news channels,and three papers,that cover every bag snatch,accident and drunken idiot.

You don't get this coverage in other cities especially Bangkok,if you did, the crime rate in Pattaya would look insignificant.

[Thomas_Merton]

I fail to see how anyone is living in denial by ridiculing a piece of cr@p sensationalism?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think you are reading me incorrectly (or my writing is getting worse):

I am saying it is Sinbad (Duncan Campbell) who is living in denial.

[daxbr]

Guardian has once again earned its nickname, DEATHWISH PRESS.

[ProfessorFart]

Thomas, I'm agreeing with you 100%!!

Unlike Duncan Campbell you actually made a point and made it well!