Locked Up Abroad: Thailand
Thailand is a popular tourist destination, attracting visitors for its tropical climate and exotic culture. It is also a major junction of global heroin trafficking, and Thailand has taken strong measures to fight the drug trade.
- Thailand was known as Siam until 1939.
- Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power.
- Thailand is a large country, roughly the size of France with a population of 65,905,410 people.
- Bangkok, known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (the rough translation of Krung Thep is “City of Angels) is the capital of Thailand.
- Bang Kwang Prison is a maximum-security prison on the outskirts of Bangkok.
- Built in the 1930’s the prison was designed to hold 3,500 inmates but its current prison population is over 8,000.
- The name Thailand means Land of the Free.
- More than half of all male prisoners inside Thai prisons are there for narcotics offenses.
- In 1998 the year that Tim Schrader was released, Thai prisons held a total of 164,323 prisoners.
- Thailand was the main trafficking route for heroin in Southeast Asia until the early 1990s.
- The original goal of Operation Tiger Trap was to reduce the heroin supply to the United States by disrupting heroin trafficking operations in Thailand through arrests and prosecution of key Shan United Army (SUA) functionaries.
- Conviction for trafficking heroin carries the death penalty in most Southeast Asian countries, as well as in some East Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand are the most strict regarding drug crimes.
- Bangkok is a safe city, and incidents of violence against tourists are rare. However, scams aimed at separating you from your hard-earned cash are so prevalent that the term "gem scam" has become almost synonymous with Bangkok.
Read more: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/bangkok-4731/facts#ixzz19wmlTAyM