FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Bangkwangs building 13 is actually a huge market garden covering many acres. Pigs are reared there and there is also a fish farming operation but the mainstay is to grow vegetables. The sole purpose of this prison farm is to supplement the food allowance supplied for the 5000 prisoner population, over 150 of which are put to work there every day.

Unfortunately the prisoners do not benefit from this rich source of dietary essentials as they should. Only the poorest quality and lowest value vegetables are set aside for the prison ‘Cookhouse’. Usually just one type of vegetable will make it into the prison ‘slop’ supplied for the inmates. More often than not it is watery cucumber, a cheaply produced vegetable of low dietary value and little taste. The same goes for the pork. Only the cheapest of body parts, Offal, fat and bones make it into a prisoners serving. Fish head soup is sometimes brought around on the food barrows but the cheap fish in the soup, literally a head and tail connected by a rare spinal column, are not the highly prized and delicious variety of catfish that are farmed in building 13.

So where does all the stuff go? Why, to the local produce markets of course to be sold to the general public at top dollar, but not before the guards have helped themselves to a share to take home every day. One enterprising guard even spends the first couple of hours on duty each day pushing a full barrow of the lush green Vegetables (with the aid of a sniveling Thai prisoner/manservant) around to each building in turn and sells them to the inmates who should have got them for nothing. Prices, in cash, average 3 times those to be found at market of which we have no access to. Private enterprise at its best! Fresh meat, fish and vegetables from building 13 are also sold back to inmates through the buildings ‘Coffee Shops’ the large percentage of Coffee Shop profits are collected or channeled to each building chief every month, the inmates footing the bill for these ‘Bribes’ by having to pay extremely high prices for needed Coffee Shop items such as soap, toothpaste, washing powder, bread and even bottled water.

The ‘Owners’ of these Coffee Shops, usually Chinese inmates, also draw a wage from their profits and so all the cost of the Coffee Shop operation is passed down to the consumer, the prisoner himself. Without money an inmate cannot provide a wholesome diet for himself and must rely on the meager prison rations to sustain himself.