The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison by Susan Aldous, Nicola Pierce

usually the case that I just can’t afford to give ‘tourist’ amounts.
    I had asked my mother to bring me over a list of things that I missed and she duly arrived with liquorice (which I sorely missed), Vegemite (but of course!), and lots of bras and pants. At that time, underwear was really expensive to buy in Asia, except for children of four, or for those huge granny knickers sported by grand old ladies past their prime; they were even bigger—the pants, that is—than the pair Renee Zellweger wears in the movie, Bridget Jones’ Diary , and they were made from a horrible plastic, nylon material. My poor mother sent me a mountain of cheap, colourful underwear over the years. Fortunately things have improved in that department, and nowadays the underwear that is made in Thailand is also sold, cheaply, in Thailand.
    We ate out every night; sometimes we’d go to my kind of place—cheap, greasy with dodgy décor, and we’d also go to their sort of place—quiet, candles, and gorgeous western-Chinese food, which is much different from the local Chinese fare, unless you have a lot of money. I enjoyed a week of good food, beer, wine and swims in the hotel pool.
    The weather was glorious and I believed them when they told me that it was the best vacation they had ever had. In hindsight, I think that Asia surprised them with its beauty and its gentle, friendly people. They could see why I loved it. They also didn’t feel too isolated thanks to the British bars, restaurants and tourists. I think they might have been hoping to hear me say that I was coming home with them, or in the near future, but to their credit they never said it to me. To this day I know they would love for me to return to Melbourne and get a good, secure job but they also realise that that is probably not going to happen.

    Some time later I was eager to stretch my wings and move on from Penang. I think I always knew that I would be leaving at some stage and was just waiting to see where I would be directed to. We got a call from a wealthy Chinese guy who was a Christian and was living with his wife in Indonesia. I had met him about a year before and he had generously donated to various causes, which were not my own but which I felt were good investments, spiritually, for him.
    He owned quite a few properties and wanted to donate one of them to be set up as a drug rehab centre for the troubled youth in Jakarta. The city had a particularly bad drug problem and its rehab facilities, as in most Asian countries at that time, were dismal to say the least. Drugs could be quite cheap to get; the likes of heroin and gancha were the poor man’s drug of choice. The addict was perceived to be the worst kind of loser and the solution, at the time, was to lock him, or her, up in an ugly cell and let them go cold turkey without any help or care. Someone was needed to help set up and run the project.
    I jumped at this perfectly timed opportunity and packed my few belongings, ready for a new beginning and a new challenge.
    Jakarta wasn’t as pleasant a place as Penang. As I’ve said Penang had the most wonderful beaches, making it the perfect holiday spot, and the people were incredibly friendly. I had always felt very safe there. Jakarta was different; it was a mad house—dirty, polluted and over-populated. It was also, at a moment’s notice, a hot bed of rebellion. One time I had to stay holed up in my hotel room while 10,000 people rioted outside my window as a protest against the government. There were a lot of under-privileged, poor people which made it a perfect place for me to do my work and stretch myself.

    I spent the next few years project-hopping from country to country. As usual I had no particular plan or schedule and just set about being open and available to whoever needed me. I was beginning to make a name for myself; people would ask for me and send me plane tickets so that I could head out for short periods of time, though always within Malaysia.