Word: prem
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...makes a fair job of conveying the sheer tedium of prison life, in the sense that reading his book feels like a jail sentence. After describing the already well-documented horrors of Klong Prem Central Prison (rats, roaches, squat toilets), Botts spends his time smoking heroin and giving his fellow convicts amusing nicknames. "The Brit looked like a gravedigger with his wide stained teeth and sinister smile," he writes. "We named him the Gravedigger...
...According to a front-cover quote from David McMillan, the author of Escape - another Klong Prem memoir, released in 2007 by the same publisher - Botts "opens his real-life experiences like a knife opening a cadaver." In fact, Botts' account is unharrowing. His description of a prison shack in what he calls "the garden," a flyblown island of mud and compacted human waste where the cons passed their days, reminded me of a scuzzy bungalow I once stayed in on Koh Samui...
...problem with Nightmare in Bangkok, and books like it, is that it is hard to sympathize with the narrator. Botts, who is eventually transferred to a U.S. prison and granted parole after spending less than five years at Klong Prem, is not a lovable rogue but a thief and heroin trafficker, and his time behind bars prompts little self-reflection. Seeming to sense this, he closes the book with a lame attempt to recast his dismal life as a parable about overcoming addiction, with the suggestion that he should never have been jailed. I agree with him that criminalizing drug...
Christmas in Paris. OpenSkies is offering flat-bed business-class seats from New York to Paris for $1,100 one-way, and New York to Amsterdam for $1,050 one-way. Prem+ class seats are going for $600 one-way to Paris and $550 one-way to Amsterdam; you'll get 140 degrees of recline and 52 inches of legroom. Fares are available until Nov. 21 for travel through March...
Euro Special. Open Skies, a new subsidiary of British Airways, flies smaller 64-seat Boeing 757s, from New York to Paris. There are only two classes: Biz, with a flat bed, and Prem+, a step up from economy, with reclining seats and 52 inches of legroom. On Oct. 15, the carrier will begin service between New York and Amsterdam; the first 1,000 customers flying Prem+ will pay just $499 roundtrip. The airline will also sell 1,000 Prem+ seats from NYC to Paris...