Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  Mick also turned up drunk and stoned from many of the afternoon party sessions. He would make a coffee and then sit on his bed, rolling a joint and passing it around, or smoking some smack, sharing it with Robert and Chris. He would then draw, or read one of his books on metaphysics, pulling down a dark blue sarong he’d tacked to the upper bunk for some sense of privacy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t soundproof.

  Robert was, of course, a loud, drunk, bombastic nightmare, often arriving covered in blood from a bashing and with his trousers dripping with piss. Most afternoons, the Scotsman was picked up from a concrete bench, or off the grass, and carried to his cell by three or four tampings, waking in fits and screaming, ‘Fucking idiot, fucking idiot, put me down!’ before passing out again. In the cell, he and Chris fought like cat and dog, shouting abuse across the room, both completely out of their heads. Mick would angrily kick the bottom of Chris’s bunk and tell them both to shut up.

  Throughout the night, Robert would have outbursts of yelling ‘Fucking idiots!’ and ranting in his foghorn Scottish-accented voice about sailing the China Seas. Mick would start off by saying, ‘Robert,’ in a schoolmasterly tone, shutting him up for a minute or two, and then Robert would start again. It would soon escalate into Mick screaming, ‘Shut up, you stupid fucking Scottish bastard!’ or leaping to the end of the bed and throwing a few punches. But nothing worked. Until sunrise, Robert intermittently broke everyone’s sleep – every night.

  Some nights, Mick set up his easel and canvas near the door. He’d sit with his brush in one hand and a beer in the other, a cigarette in his mouth, quietly painting until 4 or 5 am, often using his sleeping cellmates as models. He used the nights to regain a bit of sanity, despite the cacophony of croaking toads, high-pitched screams of feral cats and Robert’s disruptive outbursts.

  One of Arman’s boys would walk around each night, selling a smorgasbord of drugs from a tray for a set price. ‘What do you want?’ he’d call out, taking orders. Prisoners would yell for pills, smack, ice, dope, whatever they felt like. The boy would fill the orders, piling the drugs onto his cardboard tray, and go around like a waiter, passing the drugs through the doors. He accepted credit if anyone was out of cash, writing it down officially in a note book that he carried. All night, people would call out for more drugs – it was a twenty-four-hour service. If the boy ran out of anything, he’d call Arman, who’d send somebody with supplies.

  Sometimes I was sitting painting and needed a smoke to give me inspiration. I’d pay 100,000 rupiah [$13] for some dope rolled in newspaper. If Chris was awake, I’d give some to him.

  – Mick

  On sex nights, there was frenetic activity outside Mick’s window until daybreak, as inmates dashed past, buying mosquito coils and cigarettes through the window of Room 12. The cell was used by local prisoner Wayan to run a twenty-four-hour convenience store, selling such things as energy drinks, chocolate, biscuits, cigarettes and noodles. Wayan had bought the business from another prisoner for ten million rupiah ($1300) to run during his four-year stint in Hotel K for murder. The killer was a former professor of business development at Bali University.

  He caught a guy screwing his wife in a car out the front of his house. He stabbed him to death. He was a little bit of a mongrel, actually.

  – Mick

  Only two prisoners were authorised to run little shops from their cells, catering to all blocks; they had paid to have this exclusively, and the guards enforced it for a fee. Dutch inmate Aris shared Room 9 in Block A with a local prisoner who was covertly selling cigarettes and drinks. The guards were tipped off, but raided Room 6 by mistake. Aris’s cellmate shut down his illicit business anyway, as the guards would be back, and it wasn’t worth losing his cartons of cigarettes to them and being punished.

  Every day at around 7.30 am, Room 13 was unlocked, and Chris, Mick and Robert ambled out. In his previous cells, Mick had usually woken early and angry, desperate to get out, standing at the padlocked door, and wildly shaking and kicking it, screaming, ‘Let me out of this fucking place, you fucking monkeys!’ The guards always scurried to open his cell first, to stop the tirade.

  I would be out of my head. I had to get out of there. I was furious, I just wanted to get out and kill a couple of people. I was like a tiger in a cage. Mad. If I did a bit of a run in the yard, the guards would watch me. They always watched me. If I had a knife, they’d watch me. Others had knives, no problem. But I was madman.

  – Mick

  By the time he was living in Room 13, Mick had adapted a bit, and his late-night art sessions meant he often slept until mid-morning. But just knowing that the door was open and that he was able to step outside the tiny cell was a relief.

  In his sober morning state, Robert was useful and likeable. He enjoyed using his hands, and spent time doing things like building wooden boats in Iwan’s workshop, making a lamp-shade from a Vietnamese farming hat that he hung on the wall above his mattress, and fixing an old Nokia phone to run on an ill-fitting Ericsson battery that he taped to it.

  He also, of course, worked as Hotel K’s electrician, wiring up cells with power. He spent days working in Room 13 to give it round-the-clock electricity, increasing the allotted twelve hours of power. Using a single power point on the wall, he spun a web of wires throughout the cell to give all four of them power points to run a reading light and a fan by their beds. His wiring job was effective but crude. Cables for the four lights and fans turned the cell into a tangled electrical minefield, with unearthed wires hanging off the walls and crossing the floor. Every day, someone would walk into Room 13 and get a shock. Given the low voltage, it was more a nip than a bite, but enough to cause a jig. Mick thought it was hilarious.

  One afternoon, a new prisoner arrived and asked the guards, ‘Which room can I have some fun in?’ They told him Room 13. Exhausted from being at the police station, holding his little bag and a pillow, he looked around Room 13, saying, ‘Hello, hello’. He took a step inside and put his foot on a wire, jumping like a spring, and still clutching his bag and pillow. ‘Be careful of the wire,’ Mick warned, laughing. The new inmate put his bag down on the floor and went to take a shower, being careful where he trod. But coming back, he forgot about the wires, and stepped onto one with his bare foot. He jumped, cursed, and walked straight to the window, shouting, ‘Please, please, take me out, take me out!’ The four cellmates smirked. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,’ Chris told him. But the man, who was a big German body builder named Wolf, paid 200,000 rupiah to move out the next morning.

  It had actually been a bungled wiring job that had set Robert on his path to Hotel K. He’d been friends with Englishman Steven – the inmate whose back was burned by Filo – in Hong Kong and had offered to rewire his apartment so that Steven could use his neighbours’ electricity. This would save him a fortune, as he used copious amounts of electricity to grow a hydroponic marijuana crop in his lounge room.

  Not long after Robert’s shifty rewiring work, the apartment building’s caretaker and a police officer arrived at Steven’s door. The caretaker knew something fishy was going on when she saw the electricity bills and that only Steven’s account was being charged. And his bill was astronomical. The police officer found Steven’s crop and he was charged – thanks to Robert having tweaked the wires back to front while he was drunk.

  Steven and Robert flew to Bali for the next instalment of their farcical adventure. To pay the fine that the Hong Kong court would inevitably impose for the marijuana crop, they planned to make some fast bucks by selling two kilograms of hashish. They sat in a McDonald’s in Kuta, eating Big Macs, and waiting for their first buyer to show up. When he did, he passed the cash and Steven slipped him the hashish. In the next instant, they were gone; the buyer was an undercover cop. Police sprang from every direction and snapped handcuffs on the stunned duo. The police had covertly surrounded the store. Steve and Robert admitted to the police that they brought the hashish from Hong Kong, where it was only $3.50 a g
ram, to sell in Bali.

  Two British nationals who lived in Hong Kong were arrested trying to sell 457 grams of hashish to an undercover policeman … The friendly looking Robert said this was his first visit to Bali. ‘I met Steven in Hong Kong as I work there as an engineer. He invited me to come to Bali, but it ended up like this,’ said Robert sadly.

  – Denpost, March 2002

  One afternoon, Robert, Chris and Thomas were already inside Room 13 waiting to be locked up for the night when Mick arrived and noticed the floor was soaking wet. ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘Fucking Robert, he piss on the floor,’ Thomas replied. Mick instantly flew into a psychotic rage. He punched Robert on the cheek. Robert slurred, ‘Fucking idiot!’ and threw a punch back. He missed. His flailing fist went into thin air as Mick ducked. Mick didn’t miss a beat. He turned and hit him hard in the ribs. It knocked the breath out of Robert, who fell to the floor. Mick gave him a deadly look, saying, ‘You make one more noise out of your mouth and I will fucking kill you, Robert’.

  A guard locking the rooms couldn’t have failed to hear the fight, but simply snapped the padlock on the door shut and walked away. Robert sat quietly on the floor. Mick was trembling with anger. Thomas moved to start cleaning up but stopped abruptly when Mick yelled ferociously ‘Clean up your own fucking piss, you stupid Scottish bastard!’ On his knees, Robert grabbed a T-shirt and provocatively started spreading the piss across the tiles. Mick exploded. He leaped off his bed and attacked Robert, punching him in the face, the ribs and the stomach. Robert hadn’t given up. He tried to block Mick’s fists, yelling, ‘Fucking idiot!’ and provoking Mick even more. ‘Shut up, you fucking bastard!’ Mick yelled back. ‘Fucking idiot, you’re supposed to be a spiritual person. But you’re a spiritual person in my arse, Mick!’ Robert shouted back. Mick grabbed a piece of wood and screamed, ‘I’m going to kill you!’

  Thomas, who had just dashed into the bathroom to shoot up, ran back out, holding his syringe and smack in his hands, and pleading, ‘Please stop, Mick’. He was desperate not to bring the guards back. Mick ignored him and slammed the piece of wood into Robert’s stomach. Chris jumped from the top bunk, grabbing hold of the wood before Mick killed Robert, telling him to stop. Mick was still raging, but let go. He walked across and sat on his bunk, angrily snatching down the dark blue sarong. Robert spent the rest of the night as quiet as a mouse, and the next morning apologised to Mick for pissing in the cell. His cheek and neck were visibly bruised.

  I was a crazy man. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I see this guy, Thomas, shooting himself with smack, his eyes going crazy, and he falls down on his mattress. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. And this shit Robert getting drunk every night, pissing on the floor – a 40-year-old man. And Chris was always drunk and smoking ice, loudly arguing bullshit crap with Robert all the time. We were living in a dirty rat hole, and on top of this dirtiness, to be with this Scottish guy and next to you this stupid guy putting a needle in his arm – I felt disgusted and dirty.

  – Mick

  In addition to its colourful occupants, Room 13, like all the cells, regularly had things crawling around it. The inmates could wake up some nights with a trail of big red ants crawling across their pillows, or with several rats scurrying across the floor or over Thomas’s and Robert’s mattresses. They came through the door or the bathroom drain. Mick started leaving out chicken scraps sprinkled with chilli to try to eradicate them, a trick many prisoners used. Many times, Mick watched a rat snatch a bit of chicken, run a bit, and then drop the morsel on the floor as its mouth started to burn. Mick was often woken by one of the many mangy, furless and sick feral cats that ran in through the barred door, across the cell, up onto his stomach and out of the window.

  During the day, Mick, Robert and Chris spent little time in their cell; going inside only intermittently to grab a beer, a book or a quick lie-down. Mick was furious when he walked in one day and found American Gabriel lying topless and sweaty on his clean sheets, watching TV. Mick tried to keep the cell clean and fresh, and yelled at Gabriel to get off his bed. Some days, a few of the guys would sit around on the floor chasing the dragon, blowing smack into a junkie cat’s face whenever it slunk inside. The pet musang would also sometimes come in, and cheekily snatch a banana from the small table and scamper out. They’d all sit around watching, entertained by small things.

  By the time Thomas was in Room 13, Arman was the drug lord and the Austrian was no longer allowed to sell. But Thomas was still getting deliveries from one of his Bali contacts, who needed to move smack being flown in from Nepal. He used Thomas to sell it for him. Just before lockup one afternoon, he got a delivery of half a kilogram.

  Pak Giri stood outside the door, pulling the smack from his shoes and his pockets. Robert was watching and slurred to Mick, ‘Shit, it’s a huge bag’. Mick wasn’t impressed. ‘Thomas, don’t you bring that shit in here!’ he yelled from his bottom bunk. ‘You get caught and we’re all fucked up.’ But Thomas walked inside, clinging to the bags of smack and mumbling, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sell it fast,’ and quickly stashed it under his pillow. During the night, he laboriously filled hundreds of straws with it, as he talked to Mick, who was sitting up painting, about his life in Austria.

  While drunkenly rambling around Hotel K the next afternoon, Robert told Englishman Steve Turner – Juri’s best man – about the delivery. As usual, Steve was out of it on Xanax, but somehow he had an inspiration; they could steal the heroin. He knew that Thomas protected his smack like a mother protects her newborn, but Steve was thinking creatively. They could spike his coffee with crushed Xanax pills so he’d sleep like a dead man, and then Robert could pinch it from underneath his head.

  That afternoon, Robert staggered back into his cell just before 5.30 lockup, carrying a cup loaded with a lethal mix of Nescafé, sugar and twenty-four crushed Xanax pills – enough to knock out an elephant, let alone a skinny heroin addict like Thomas. Robert switched on the kettle, which would take thirty minutes to boil at lockup time as everyone was using power, and waited. The other three were busy: Thomas was shooting up in the bathroom, Chris was smoking ice on the top bunk, and Mick was reading on the bottom bunk. None of them took any notice of Robert hovering interminably over the kettle, until he started moving erratically in and out of the light, casting shadows.

  ‘Get out of the light,’ Mick yelled as the shadows flew across the pages of his book. ‘It’s not a fucking bus stop.’ Robert was jigging from one foot to the other, desperate to use the bathroom but not wanting to leave the spiked cup or piss on the floor again. ‘It will boil in a minute,’ he mumbled, before feverishly muttering his mantra, ‘Fucking idiot, Mick, fucking idiot, Mick’. Mick pulled down his blue sarong and pretended not to hear him.

  Minutes later, Robert asked, ‘Thomas, you want a coffee?’ Thomas, who was sitting cross-legged on his mattress with his eyes closed and a cigarette dangling from his lips, replied, ‘Sure, thanks’. Robert gave him the cup, and then ran to the bathroom. Thomas took one mouthful and spat it across his mattress. ‘Fuck, did he piss in that?’ he asked, putting the cup on the floor near their pillows.

  Robert came out of the bathroom five minutes later, so drunk and stoned that he’d forgotten all about his plan. He climbed onto his mattress, and sat against the wall with his legs stretched out under Mick’s bunk. Mick passed him a joint. Robert took a couple of puffs and handed it back, then lit a cigarette. He spotted the cup of coffee on the floor and reached out for it. Thirsty from all the smoke and booze, he gulped down half the cup. Within sixty seconds, he was out.

  When Mick looked up from his book, he instantly grabbed his sketchpad. It was a sight too good to waste. Robert was asleep, sitting slumped against the wall with a burning cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, and his glasses skewed awkwardly across his nose. Mick sat on his bottom bunk sketching Robert for forty-five minutes. He was the perfect model; still as a statue, unflinching even when hot ash fell onto his neck. When Mick was finish
ed, he plucked the dead cigarette butt from his model’s mouth, switched off the light and went to sleep.

  When Room 13 was unlocked at 7.30 am, Robert hadn’t moved a muscle. He was still sleeping against the wall with his glasses on the end of his nose. But no-one took any notice, except for English Steve, who was initially shocked to see Thomas up and about. Steve walked past Room 13 a number of times throughout the day, calling out, ‘Robert, Robert!’ He finally asked Mick, ‘Why’s Robert still asleep?’ Mick answered casually, ‘He’s probably still drunk,’ a bit surprised that anyone was interested in Robert’s sleeping habits.

  Robert didn’t wake up that day, or the next. He slept for two days and nights, only coming to forty-eight hours later, confused and angry.

  He was like a bear coming out of hibernation. He was hungry and thirsty, looking for food, stumbling around, gasping for water, saying, ‘I feel dizzy, I can’t see properly. I need water’.

  – Mick

  Robert later confessed his devious Xanax plot to Mick. ‘You fucking idiot, Robert,’ Mick rebuked him, ‘you could have killed him. Why did you use twenty-four tablets?’ Whimpering like a child, Robert said he’d only wanted to use two pills but that Steve had convinced him to use twenty-four, to knock Thomas out in the first one or two mouthfuls. When it dawned on Robert that the plan had worked perfectly on him, he was furious with Steve, walking around for days like a madman mumbling, ‘Fucking idiot, Steve, fucking idiot’.