On the National Geographic Channel, this series tells the stories of (mostly idiot) tourists who usually agree to smuggle something and get caught and are locked up in prisons abroad.
I have my students in my Critical Thinking class watch it, simply to show them the multiple red flags in these supposedly “fool proof” schemes to do a bit of smuggling for a big payoff.
They are showing episodes every Monday night, with the new series beginning in April.
As one who has traveled in many countries, and heard many a horror story, I think this series is great - when you are young and stupid, schemes like this seem simple; hey, you are invincible and nothing bad can happen to you! That is, until it does.
If I get a chance, yes, I’ll watch it. Agreed that it’s probably a good primer for youth considering going abroad for the first time. One word of caution though; a friend and very seasoned traveller said he almost became physically ill after watching the Uganda show, it was so disturbing. While the behavior of goverments can be bad enough, individuals and gangs left to their own devices can be ‘off the charts’ cruel and inhumane.
For the episode on smuggling gold from Hong Kong to Nepal, I gave my class a worksheet before viewing the episode; gave them the same spiel the guy used to convince those guys to do the smuggling. “Foolproof”, “big money”, “free trip to nice hotel”, “nobody gets hurt”…
Out of 14 students in my class, 5 of them EAGERLY agreed to do it and another 3 were considering it. Then they watched the episode - you should have seen their faces as everything came crashing down.
It is a good show, but to be fair, not all of the people in the series are dumb tourists looking to make money from smuggling. Some of the people have been kidnapped by terrorists and put in jeopardy beyond their ability to control, such as the people in Uganda, which was supposedly “safe” for tourism, and their circumstances are truly terrifying. The victims in those cases are indeed innocent of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I saw a few episodes in the UK - think it was called ‘banged up abroad’ if it’s the same programme. The Venzuela one was excellent - the British guy’s account of his stint in a Venezuelan prison was hellish. Armed prisoners, grenades being thrown about as part of inter-gang warfare within the jail. Sounded like he was lucky to make it out alive.
That Nepal one was pretty tame, I thought. They do 8 months in what looks to be some very low security, quaint, tibetan guesthouse, and then one of them calls in his mysterious RAF uncle who meets up with lucas the “fixer”, who takes pity on them and bribes officials to have the king pardon them on his birthday. They got off pretty lightly, IMHO.
FYI, NatGeo is showing some new episodes on Wed. nights around 10pm-ish EDT. This week they had 3 or 4 of them back to back. I wonder how much these people get paid to tell their stories(?)
There have been a couple of very famous subjects. One of them was Billy Hayes of Midnight Express fame. And the season premiere featured Henry Hill, who was the focus of the movie Goodfellas.
I’ve watched several of these shows and I really can’t bring myself to feel sympathy for any of the subjects. Being an american myself, I cringe when one of these “american innocents” is pushed into “doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do by some smooth talking foreigner”–please–they’re just sorry they got caught. I feel sorry for their families.
OK, so I thought for a minute I was going senile…I saw my name on this OP and thought “when did I start this thread?!”
Aha - zombie!
I have taped a few of the newer shows, but haven’t had a chance to see them yet.
Now, having watched many of them over the years, I am constantly amazed at how stupid people are…I mean, seriously - at some point you have to see things are not going well when you have 30 pounds of coke strapped to your thighs and stomach and you are walking like Frankenstein with hemorrhoids…
That is when I would rip that crap off, contact my local embassy and get the hell out of Dodge with police meeting me at my home town airport to make sure whoever is waiting for me gets picked up before I get shot to death.
Then again, there are suckers born every minute. As I mentioned, even some of my students would have fallen for this type of scam, not looking at the big picture.