Pregnant Brit Facing Execution in Laos -- Don't Smuggle Drugs in SE Asia, People!

[Siam_Sam]

Looks like she’s on her way home now. Story here.

[Inigo_Montoya]

@Mangosteen

At the border crossing into Singapore from Malaysia in the mid 1970’s, there was a poster that said more or less, “This is a man’s hair cut” and it showed both a front and back image of an individual with quite short hair. The sign went on to say that Singapore didn’t allow long haired males into its territory. But there was a Barber shop right there at the crossing if you really wanted to get in.

Can you imagine the kind of hair cut one would have gotten in that place?

I passed and headed back into Malaysia.

And I never will go to Singapore
The people there will cut your hair
In Singapore

[Philster]

@Sage_Rat

Interesting

According to the numbers in that, addiction is Singapore is about 1 in 750 people, whereas it’s 1 in 67 in New York.

As long as everyone defines ‘addiction’ and has the option to treat ‘addiction’ you are two steps closer to an apples-to-apples comparison.

[user_hostile]

According to the numbers in that, addiction is Singapore is about 1 in 750 people, whereas it’s 1 in 67 in New York.

As long as everyone defines ‘addiction’ and has the option to treat ‘addiction’ you are two steps closer to an apples-to-apples comparison.

Alas, Philster, there’s no comparing to the Big Apple.

[Siam_Sam]

And she’s back in Britain now.

Odd, but I just discovered the British ambassador to Laos is Quenton Quayle, who also happens to be the ambassador to Thailand. Pulls double duty. Are there many cases in which one person serves as ambassador to multiple countries? He speaks fluent Thai, and Lao is very similar.

[DMark]

Let me just say that some 20-somethings are simply stupid.

I did something rather stupid when I was about 25 that, luckily for me, was never discovered but could easily have landed me in a foreign prison for many years. What I did was nowhere near as serious as what that woman did - but idiotic just the same. Years later when I thought about it, I realized how totally stupid I was, but at the time, it seemed I was invincible.

Now I teach college students. For those of you who watch Locked Up Abroad, you might remember the episode about the four guys who smuggled gold into Nepal. As usual in that show, it didn’t end particularly well for those guys. I taped that episode and put it on a DVD…however, before showing this to my class, I asked them how many would be willing to take some gold from Hong Kong to Nepal, for a nice chunk of change, and a free stay in a first class hotel. I gave them the EXACT spiel that was given in that episode. From 15 people in that college class, four of them raised their hands and said, “Sure! Why not?!” Another couple of them were on the fence and I probably could have convinced them if I pressed a bit harder.

You should have seen their faces after I showed the episode. None of them had given a single thought to the idea that people lie, that laws are different in other countries, and that punishments are not the same as here in the US.

[Clothahump]

When I was flying around in that part of the world, every immigration card that I filled out had a warning in big red letters:

Trafficking in drugs is punishable by death!

I doubt things have changed. And yet stupid people continue to do it…