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Ugh. I did not like this at all. I checked out the other link you provided and I like this even less. And the title, oh man.

    The cell I had been placed in was filled with heavy smokers. At night I wore a facemask, sleeping only fitfully, waking each morning with eyes and throat burning. I was staggered to learn that all prison cells are non-smoking and that to complain was to suggest the prison officers were not doing their job properly.

If you are in a Thai prison and this is what gets your goat, it is probably not that bad. Not to mention the fact that he ate chicken for most of the time he was there. Whole, young chickens are much more expensive than rice husks (which are basically free). Also, in what third world prisons do prisoners have "the right" to medicines? I've been to hospitals in that part of the world that immediately stop treatment if it's clear that no payment is forthcoming.

    On yet another, the body of a young man who had hanged himself in the hospital dangled from the rafters for hours before it was removed.

For hours! Hours, I say! If he was that concerned, why didn't he take it down himself?

    Nothing can prepare a person for the experience of being shackled. In front of us was a giant iron pincer bolted onto a slab of wood the size of a sleeper.

There are many things that can prepare a person for the experience of being shackled. For example, setting the shackles around one's ankles before they are fastened together. Or someone saying, "hey, you're about to be shackled."

    Before I boarded the flight to Melbourne, my brother called to say he would meet me at Tullamarine. My father would come too, but not my mother: she had suffered a severe stroke. My jubilation at being released vanished and, ever since, my life has been in turmoil.

That's a sad coincidence. However, most people are capable of feeling more than one complex emotion at a time. There's even a phrase for it. Shockingly, the phrase is "mixed feelings."

Everyone who has traveled to Thailand knows just how revered the royal family is, even if the populace doesn't really care for the prince. I mean, the king's face is all over the place. It's not like any literature on the royal family would fail to convey the reverence the Thai people have for their royals, either.

Perhaps this really was an ordeal, but the way that was written has rendered me entirely unsympathetic to the guy.