The Thailand Baby Snatchers

This story was entered into the first Big Chilli New Writers Award competition, 2003. The idea came from an actual news story in 2002 about a young girl who was stolen when she was young and then found her mother working in a bar in Phuket a few years later. I decided to write the account from the young girl's view to show the terrible tortures these innocent children go though. If you are visiting Thailand, don't support this terrible trade by buying anything from the young children who circulate around the bars at all hours of the night selling chewing gum, cigarette lighters, etc.

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I grew up in a loving household with my mother and father. I've always been small for my age. When I was snatched I was six years old, but I looked a year or two younger. I guess that's why they chose me.

It happened when I went shopping one day at a big department store with my mother, Pranee. Mother loved to shop. Sometimes she would spend hours looking for a dress. While she shopped, I would amuse myself wandering through the racks of dresses in a maze of rainbow colors and exciting textures. I especially loved the satin and silk dresses. They were so smooth and cool to the touch.

No one could see me below the racks of dresses. I could imagine I was a fairy princess searching for the perfect gown for a royal ball. I would watch people walking by in the next row and imagine they were my faithful servants. It was such fun.

I had almost decided on a slinky red satin dress trimmed with white piping for the ball when I was grabbed from behind and a foul smelling cloth was pressed over my face. I couldn't scream. I couldn't move. All I could do was breath in that horrible smell as I struggled to get away. But it was no use and everything went dark.

When I woke up I was in a small dark room chained to a bed. Two other small sleeping girls were there with me. They looked terrible. They were covered in bruises and cuts. Their hair was short and spiky, and they were wearing nothing but an old T-shirt.

I reached up and felt my head and realized my beautiful long hair had been hacked off too. What was going on? Where was my mother? Why was I in this room with these girls? I had no answers so I started to cry.

The door to the room opened and a fat ugly woman came in with a bamboo stick. She started to beat me, screaming at me to be quiet. She kept this up until I went quiet. Then she made me take a pill washed down with water and I soon fell asleep again. This happened a few more times. I never knew how many times because I was always so befuddled and sleepy.

Sometime later I woke up to a terrible pain. Someone was pulling my hair and dragging me across the floor. I didn't dare scream again for fear of getting another beating.

I was taken into a big room where a group of old women sat around chatting to each other. They were so different from my beautiful mother. Their teeth were stained red and black from chewing betel their clothes were coarse cheap sarongs and dirty shirts. Their voices were raucous. I hated them immediately.

The fat woman dragged me over to one of the women and dumped me in front of her. As I sprawled at her feet I was overcome with fear and broke into tears again. The fat woman just laughed and beat me with her stick again until I went quiet.

Here's your girl, Daeng. Look after her and make sure she doesn't give you any trouble. Give her a good beating if she does.

Then she walked away. I looked up at Daeng and she bared a mouthful of rotten teeth at me in what I realized was supposed to be a smile.

"You and me are going to make some money my pretty little lovely." she cackled.

She forced another pill into my mouth and made me drink some water to wash it down. This time I didn't go to sleep, but I felt dizzy and very weak instead. Then she picked me up and we left the room. We got into a tuk-tuk and I watched the traffic going by as if in a dream. It was a very strange feeling, like floating on a cloud of cotton wool.

Daeng stopped the tuk-tuk (a 3-wheeled motorbike taxi) on a street filled with traffic and people. She took me up onto a pedestrian bridge and we sat down. She told me to lie in her arms like a little baby and to be very still. This wasn't hard to do because I was feeling very relaxed.

It was very hot in the sun even though Daeng had chosen a shady part of the bridge. All the exhaust fumes from the cars made me feel sick and I threw up. We moved to another spot and sat down again. My throat was sore and I was very thirsty. I asked for a drink but Daeng refused, hissing at me to be quiet.

People passing by dropped coins into the bowl Daeng had placed in front of her. I was only given a few sips of water during the day to wash down the pills she kept giving me. After what seemed like forever the steaming hot day started to fade. We went down to the street and took a tuk-tuk back to the house where I had woken up in the morning.

This happened every day. I lost track of time. The only thing that seemed to matter to me was to get my little pills and to avoid getting beaten by the fat woman.

One day the fat woman and Daeng took me in a taxi to a big bus and we traveled for hours until we came to another big city where we went begging again. We stayed there for a while, and then we moved to yet another city. By this time I had become very docile and easy to manage, so I was allowed to have my own begging bowl and sit on the same bridge as Daeng to beg for coins.

I had no idea which cities we visited. They all looked the same to me because I only ever saw the room where I slept with other kids like me, and the pedestrian bridges where we went begging.

But one day all this changed. By now I had grown a little bigger, although I was even skinnier because of the drugs I was taking. Daeng took me to a city that was full of foreigners and bars. I heard people around me saying 'Pattaya' all the time so I realized that was where we were. My job was different this time too. We started working at night.

I was given a tray of chewing gum, cigarette lighters and other small items and told to wander through the bars to sell them to the foreigners. I had to go up to them and tug on their arms or pull at their shirts to make them look at me. Then I had to give them a sad look and push my tray towards them. Some of the foreigners just ignored me, but others were very generous and paid me lots of money for a couple of sticks of chewing gum.

Daeng was very pleased with me and gave me stronger pills now, which I had come to enjoy. I liked the feeling they gave me. My whole body was relaxed and I even felt happy. Happy, that is, until the feeling started to go away. Then I rushed to Daeng to get another one.

I was feeling very good one night when I tugged on the arm of a big foreigner and looked up at him with my sad eyes. He was sitting with a very beautiful woman and I peeked quickly at her.

I couldn't believe my eyes. She looked just like my mother. But she couldn't be, could she? She was married to my Thai father and she had never taken me to a place like this.

After making a quick sale of a cigarette lighter I started to walk away, but I couldn't. I turned around and went back

Mother? Mother Pranee? I said.

The woman looked at me startled, then she screamed and grabbed hold of me and hugged me close to her. "My daughter! Wasana, my daughter." She sobbed. She really was my mother.

The next thing I knew, police asking me questions about Daeng surrounded us. I told them where Daeng and I were staying and they went around there to wait for her to get home from work. The police arrested her and the other women staying in the apartment and took them to jail.

It took me a long time to stop wanting the little pills Daeng used to feed me. It was terrible at first. My whole body screamed out for them, but with gentle treatment, my mother and a doctor helped me stop. I was able to grow my hair long again and I started going to school.

My mother told me that after I was snatched away in the department store she and daddy went through a terrible period of grief and unhappiness. My father blamed my mother for losing me and they fought together all the time. Eventually, my father left. My mother had no working skills. She had married my father while still a young teen. She felt her life was over so she went to Pattaya to work in a beer bar. Bad luck for Daeng, but good luck for us.

© Marc Holt. All rights reserved by the author.