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The Prison Diaries of Donny Osmond

1/ Today is the first day I finally concluded I’m not getting out until I’ve served my time. 14 months, and a week. 433 long hard lonely days to be precise. Must keep focused, and look forward, forget the past. Today i am just another cog in someone else’s machine, another maggot ensnared in the system. Home for me is now Big Tiger aka Bankwang Jail, Bangkok, Thailand, South East Asia. The old Donny is dead.
Nobody cares who I am here. Just another foreigner, an American abroad, a yank unwanted in a place for the unwanted, an Mormon American yank unwanted in a place for the unwanted in a country that don't want me. Every morning they swarm looking for weakness like vultures waiting for their victim to give in. I won't give in. This is me now. Must focus, must stay strong. Must get my prison face on.

2/ They say the first weeks are the toughest and after that if you survive the madness, and violence aimed at a new foreign inmate you kind of become part of the furniture. I know the inmates are coming for me and I’ll be ready. Must fight, must be strong. I am Donny Osmond.
I am a winner. Today I started lifting weights fashioned from books stuffed into my pillow case and I could feel a little strength returning. You see I’ve always kept in shape during all the years of touring. It was drummed into me. My manager used to tell me “Tan and tone Donny, Tan and tone” “You’re not getting any younger Donny and you have to compete with the young ones coming through”
Those words were hard at the time but now I’m glad I listened.

3/ Today I got a cell mate. His name is Chaa a rapist from Chiang Mai. He speaks a little bit of English and claims he was set up by his sister over a family debt. But as the old saying goes everyone is innocent in the big house.

4/ I’m starting to worry if Chaa has been sent by one of the other inmates to find out my crime. My lawyer told that sometimes the older inmates pay off the guards to arrange a younger venerable inmate to share a cell with a foreigner. The information would be passed back to the older inmates and used for ammunition to taunt me. It’s irrelevant anyway as I’m not talking about why I’m here to Chaa or anyone else. The thing that worries me is that I’ve been told in extreme cases foreigners are stabbed as they sleep by their cell mates. The cell mates aren’t paid anything but threatened with death if they don’t do it. I’m sleeping with one eye open. I don’t trust rapists.

5/ Chaa’s behaviour was very bizarre last night. He spent the whole night rocking back and forth on the edge of his bed and whenever I went near him he just gave me a strange longing look. The more I think about the more I believe Chaa will come for me in the night. I have to keep strong and ride out this storm. If Chaa comes I have to be ready. This is not Friday night at the MGM grand this is Jail. I’m no longer the entertainer I once was, I’m no longer loved by millions I am now a parasite. I am prisoner number 56325486.

6/ The most dangerous thing about Bankwang is that of it’s 7000 inmates 900 of those are on death row. That’s 900 people with nothing to lose. The reality of death row in Thailand is that you are told only 2 days before the fateful day. That scares me. I’m still unaware if Chaa is on death row or not. I’m still waiting for an attack. Chaa has said no more than 5 words to me since we became cell mates. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s just plain crazy or just pretending to be plain crazy to unnerve me. Either way it’s working and I feel something is going to happen. I’m probably physically tougher than than Chaa but it’s a shank that worries me.

7/ I got a visit from my brief yesterday and all my final hopes of an appeal have been finished off. They authorities wanted to make an example of me as they do with most Americans who find themselves in the belly of this beast. They call Bankwang “big tiger” because it is a man eater. Some say it has a personality of its own and that personality is as close to the devil as I’ve met so far in my life. We are woken just after sunrise around 5am but that’s only a guess. There are no clocks here. Then it’s downstairs to the dining hall where I sit alone sucking up the dirty looks from the yabaa heads that mostly congregate by the far end of the hall looking painfully thin and desperate with a violent look in their eyes. Yabaa is a potent mix of Methamphetamines and caffeine which causes madness, and worse violent outbursts.
I try to eat breakfast with consists of mostly oats and water. The bare minimum for survival. I try not to mix too much hoping the gangs will lose interest and accept me as part of the fixtures. I spend the rest of my day reading, trying to forget the past and exercising keeping in shape for when the inevitable attack rears its head. We are allowed showers once a week on a Wednesday. I’m yet to take up the offer and feel it wiser to try and stay out of the way of the general prison population as much as I can.
Sometime in the evening a piece of bread each is slide under our cell door sometimes accompanied by a piece of fruit. Often not. Sunlight is a walk round the yard 30 mins Tuesday, 30 mins Sunday. I try to keep moving realising an attack is most likely in this environment. If you’re lucky you get to deliver books to inmates, work in the laundry or the Kitchens. I’m yet to get those breaks and prefer it that way. Other wise it’s 20 hours lock down per day. This is an average day in Bankwang. This is hell.

8/ Last night it happened. I was reading in my bunk just before lights out and assuming I was asleep Chaa shot out of his bed and went for me with a blade. Luckily my reactions were such that I managed to knock the blade out of his hand jump down out of bed, pin him down and punch him a few times. After I’d managed to get Chaa under control beneath the sink I noticed the shank glistening, I managed to reach over, grab it and throw it through the cell bars and out over the top level. At that point I noticed my hand was bleeding but not enough to warrant a trip to the infirmary.
Chaa sat down put his head in his hands and began to cry, it was then I found out Chaa could speak English all along.
He started whimpering: “I’m sorry Mr Donny, they made me do it. They made me”
The old Donny would have shown compassion but the old Donny has gone now. That little ass hole cock sucker tried to kill me. I did the only thing possible in that situation. I showed no mercy. I hit again this time harder with a right cross. This promoted more tears. I climbed back onto my bunk, lay back the adrenaline still pumping and drifted off to sleep beneath the slow, shallow sounds of a grown man crying in the moonlight.

9/ Despite my better judgement I had a shower this morning. It isn’t something I’d recommend in a hurry or an experience I want to particularly repeat but at least I’m clean. The showers in Bankwang is where most of the business goes down. I’m talking drugs and ass. If you want it you can buy it. Money talks. Those who find themselves addicted to Yabbaa without money trade their bodies for a fix. Some trade their bodies for the money. Junkies with money blow it the minute they get it and then trade their bodies for a fix. Some do it for free because they’re bored. I feel like I have enemies at every gate. Bankwang is a monster.

10/ Chaa has tried to open up to me over the last couple of days explaining that he never had any personal interest in harming me and that he was instructed by one of the main prison gangs to kill me. He explained that the killing of new American inmates in Bankwang is to promote and environment of fear of the gangs. I’m not so sure if he’s trying to find weakness by drawing me in and will potentially try again. Must keep my head. He has also said that he now fears for his own life after some of the older inmates discovered his tried and failed attempt at my life. If they get him they get him. Life may be cheap here but I value my own more than his. Sometimes it’s dog eat dog in the big house and my bark has to be louder than Chaas.