Clueless in Paradise?

No, I did not get lost between my three worlds. I have just been busy visiting them all! Sometimes there are just too many amazing things happening too fast to even take notes.

I recently read a book titled Hotel K by Kathryn Bonella. It is based on several extended interviews with foreign prisoners who are or were incarcerated in an infamous prison on a certain southeast Asian tourist island. It was a horrendous tale of life inside a prison where money will get you anything, anything at all - and lack of money is a serious problem. Most of the foreigners in there were there on drug charges. It should be required reading for anybody even thinking of using drugs!

Today I read about a 56-year-old British woman who, along with four other foreigners,  was recently arrested for smuggling several kilos of cocaine in her suitcase into that same country. It is truly difficult to grasp how someone that age can be so clueless. Her excuses are impressive. Even though she has supposedly been living with a new "husband" in India for the last 5 years,  she was smuggling this stuff to prevent someone from killing one or both of her troubled adult sons back in Britain - one having recently been released from jail. She has no money, yet somehow jets around to Britain, India, Bangkok, and the tourist island. She knew she was bringing in something and figured it wasn't tulips or cheese but hoped that somehow she could get it in anyway. She got caught in the airport and then agreed to continue on and help the police with a sting operation on the people she was supposed to deliver the cocaine to. She obviously never read Hotel K.

On the one hand I feel no sympathy for her doing such a stupid thing, but on the other hand,  having read Hotel K, well, I can't help but feel some sympathy anyway.