Original subtitles

I thought I was going to have the absolute holiday of a lifetime.

This was a dream come true.

But during this time, this chap moved into the bungalow next to me. His name

Robert. And he basically said that if I was to take a small package to Tokyo for

him, he would give me a thousand pounds.

The whole time sitting on that train, my heart was just pounding.

And I just felt as though everybody on that carriage knew what we were doing.

I kept thinking, get off the train.

But it was too late to get off the train. If I'm honest, I knew I was going

be arrested and I just knew it was all going to go wrong.

I could have got rid of the drugs.

I should have done. When we walked into the airport, two men ran up behind me.

And they just grabbed my bag and dragged me to the custody room.

And of course then I did begin to panic because I thought there's no way out of

this at all. They will impose the death penalty.

I was 27 at that point.

I left for Thailand because I could leave for Thailand and I went with a

of a friend who was already going. He'd already got his trip planned and I went

along with him. Less than a week after talking about it, I was on a plane

I thought I was going to be away for three months. I thought I was going to

the absolute holiday of a lifetime and I was going to see tigers and elephants

and jungles and rainforests and all that wonderful stuff.

We decided, John and I, that we were actually going to walk to Bangkok

it was a nice day. It was about 5 o 'clock in the evening, so the sun's not

going to go down for hours because, of course, the sun doesn't go down for

in the middle of the British summer.

Wow.

So we started to walk to Bangkok along an eight -lane highway past loads and

loads of bus stops full of people and children coming home from school and

things.

And taxi drivers would pull up and say, you know, do you want a lift?

cab to bangkok like oh no no no i promise you this is the best way to see

thailand well when i first got there it was just totally overwhelming and i was

excited and anxious and a little bit nervous and and cautious but almost i

on sensory overload really with the sights and the smells and and everything

that was going on around me and i was just in awe of the whole place really

And I just felt like I was living an adventure.

It was great and I loved it from the very beginning. I really did.

Well, I didn't stay in Bangkok very long. The guy I went with was going

That was the end of that relationship.

It wasn't an intimate relationship or anything like that. And that's when I

the Khao San Road, which is the sort of young, hippie, backpacker area.

And I was quite disappointed with it, really, because it was so western. It

not like being in Thailand at all.

And I honestly didn't stay in Bangkok very long. It was a bit too much at

It was just so overwhelming.

So I bought a ticket. I bought a boat ticket to go down to one of the islands.

Didn't really know which one to choose, so the woman said, you might as well go

to Koh Samui.

You know, when that boat docked in the harbour the next day, I honestly had to

start pinching myself because I thought I have died and gone to heaven.

I have landed in absolute paradise on earth. Check this out.

I'd never seen tropical beaches, but...

Within a couple of days of being there, I just knew I was born to live on a

beach because I just came alive on that beach. I loved it. The white sands and

the turquoise waters and I was into the water sports and the volleyball on the

beach and I just loved it. And you know, for another five weeks I stayed down

there and my life just drifted on by as I became the stereotypical beach bum.

Got my hair all plaited up and got the suntan and loved it. Absolutely loved

And I really was beginning to fall totally in love with Thailand.

As I was laying in my little bamboo bungalow this one night, the person in

bungalow next to me was playing some sort of tinkly music. And as soon as I

heard that music, I realised I haven't had enough. I have not had enough of

incredible country.

And I was not ready or prepared to go back to what I remembered as that

miserable grey little island that I was supposed to call home.

I went straight back to the city, and I got work, and I got an apartment, and I

got a social life, got a boyfriend.

Loved it. I loved Bangkok.

It used to take up to three hours to get to this school that I was working at,

if I used the road. So I would ride the canal.

But the trouble with the canals is that you are riding on an open sewer.

an untreated, unfiltered, open sewer. And the Thai people just take a book or

piece of paper, fold it in half, and they put it over their mouth and nose,

it protects them from the water. It's such a simple solution, but it works.

Now, I wasn't very diligent with my book or my piece of paper, and I remember I

got splashed one wall.

I like to think that I didn't lick it away, but I think I probably did, and

just kind of hoped, oh, I'm sure that'll be okay, you know, a bit of dirty

water. It'll be okay.

But of course it wasn't okay.

And I woke up the next morning and I was so violently ill that I honestly

wondered whether I was in the process of dying.

But I am prone to hysteria and overreaction, so I told myself, just

bit, it'll be okay.

Went along to see this doctor and he said, you've got amoebic dysentery,

picked it up from the canal water.

I was just absolutely horrified at the idea of having parasites in me.

Life seemed to be going from bad to worse, and I was getting more and more

miserable.

So I decided that, yeah, I would go down to this island. I'd take a break. I'd

be in a nice place with nice people, get my head together, then come back and

make a fresh start in Bangkok, get work, and buy my ticket to go home.

Shortly after going down to this island, I woke up one morning, and I was really

quite ill.

And I was ill with a headache and a fever and really just not feeling 100 %

all. And of course I'd caught dengue fever.

It's a bit like malaria.

The biggest difference between dengue fever and malaria is that they can't

dengue fever.

The headaches were so intense that I used to sit in the shade wearing a

hat and a pair of sunglasses.

And I would still feel as though my head was going to explode.

I just wanted to come home. I didn't have any money. I mean, I had enough to

survive on, but I was literally counting the pennies.

So I'm down on this island, and paradise had actually turned into hell on earth.

I felt so alone.

I had no connection with any of the foreigners who were there, who were all

there on holiday, enjoying the beach.

I wasn't on holiday, I wasn't enjoying the beach, and I just didn't want to be

there.

But during this time, this chap moved into the bungalow next to me.

All right.

You English?

Yeah, you.

His name was Robert.

Sandra. Nice to meet you.

It's hot, isn't it? And when I look back on it, that chap was like a refreshing

breath of British fresh air. He was so English.

The room's nice?

Yeah, yeah, not bad at all. Yeah? Yeah, it's fine.

I'll check in and I'll come out and say hello, yeah? OK.

He looked like he had just stepped off a plane from the country which, at that

time, I probably would have crawled over glass to get to.

We didn't spend a lot of time with each other, we didn't get to know each other,

but it was nice to touch base with him and talk about the weather, because you

do when you meet an English person, you talk about the weather.

I can't say I clicked with him.

I can't say I actually connected with him in any deep way. We didn't really

an awful lot to do with each other.

He knew I'd been away from home for a long time because I didn't have the

at that time for a ticket home.

He told me he travelled around Asia, he went to Japan, he went different places,

he dealt in jewellery and gems and things like that, which isn't uncommon

because lots of people were involved in the import -export business.

Now I had no idea that he was going to be...

The person who changed the rest of my life. I mean, I didn't, I can't say I

liked him.

I don't think I disliked him.

But he wasn't my sort of person.

I certainly didn't fancy him or anything like that. We didn't have an intimate

relationship. We just had this very fleeting meeting for a couple of days

because we were neighbours in a beautiful spot on a beautiful island.

Now I would say I'm quite a good judge of character, but I think I'm a good

judge of character because of where I've been and the sorts of people I've met.

At that time, I was still very naive. I was certainly very gullible, but I was

very naive and I was very immature.

And I didn't see people for what they were. I saw people for what I thought

were. I certainly had my suspicions, but to be fair...

An awful lot of people who do that backpacking route through Thailand and

out on the beaches for a long time are partial to drugs.

And I just assumed that people were good -natured and honest and loyal and

decent people.

Not everybody is.

I needed to get back to Bangkok because I needed to phone my family at Christmas

time.

I could have phoned from the island but I couldn't remember their phone number

at the time and I knew I had to get back to the city where I had my phone book

so I could make this phone call and wish them all a happy Christmas.

And I made it just in time, just before the 25th and I phoned.

It was quite an emotional phone call because again I was lying and saying

everything was absolutely fine and everything wasn't absolutely fine at

I'm not really a fan of Christmas and I never thought it was that important but

that was the first Christmas at which I would have given just about anything to

be sat there with my parents.

A few days after Christmas the dengue fever had started to pass, I was feeling

bit better.

I was out shopping one day or doing something in Bangkok and I bumped

That guy from the island, Robert.

Robert, hey, how you doing?

Whether it was a coincidence or not, I don't know whether it was fate. Some

people talk about fate or your destiny.

I don't know.

I can only surmise on that one, really.

It certainly changed the course of my life, though.

There's a really nice little place I know around there, actually.

He said he had an idea how I could raise enough money quite quickly to buy a

ticket back to Heathrow.

Would I like to listen to his idea?

I was hugely grateful. I thought, wow, if he's got a good idea and he's

to share it with me, then that's wonderful.

Thanks very much.

You've been all right?

Yeah.

I'm still not well.

Still feeling a bit shit.

I just want to get home to get home. It's good to bump into you, actually.

And he basically said that if I was to take a small packet to Tokyo for him, he

would give me £1 ,000.

So that's the thing I was saying to you back there. If you want, I can help you

out a little bit.

If you're looking for a bit of work, I can just get you to carry a packet for

me.

That's worth it.

Yeah. And of course my mind started to tick over that, oh, well, package, it

sounds a bit dodgy, doesn't it? Package to Tokyo.

It's up to you, like. But he told me he was a jewellery dealer and I assumed

that what he was talking about would be gems.

But as I was pondering the gem smuggling and, oh, I don't know about this, it

all sounds a bit dodgy, I saw the back of his left hand.

What have you done to your hand?

I hit an artery instead of a vein.

The other day. Oh.

Yeah.

And that was the point at which I realised he seemed to have a bit of a

with drugs.

He

was

very matter -of -fact about it. He didn't try to persuade me. He didn't...

conned me into doing it. He just asked me if I wanted to do this or not.

He asked for you for the five weeks.

Okay, well, I'll have to think about it a little bit.

Yeah, we'll think about it.

I will.

Well,

I was a bit surprised and I didn't really know what to say and I

didn't say anything at all.

I went home and I thought,

Only that, well, you know, it's not my fault he's a heroin addict.

It's not my problem. It's not my fault. I didn't force it on him.

If I didn't do it, somebody else was going to do it.

And I knew that he wasn't going to sell it. I thought, well, if he was standing

outside of school gates and selling it to 10 -year -olds, then it would be a

different. But he's not even going to sell it. So maybe it's not so bad after

all. And anyway, nobody would ever know.

If I did it just once. And beyond that, I didn't really think about it because

all I wanted was for it to be okay.

I just wanted to do this one thing and it seemed so easy.

Just go to Tokyo, come back, buy a ticket and go home.

I should have thought it was strange.

And now, of course, I'm asked all the time, didn't you think it was odd? Why

didn't you ask him to take it himself?

Well, that's logic thinking and I wasn't thinking logically.

And I think being English...

I trusted him.

He was the same age as me, same nationality as me, and I just assumed I

trust him.

And if I'd stopped and thought about it for long enough, I wouldn't have done

it.

And if I had have done, somebody would have said, go to the embassy. The

will help you. Phone home.

There's ways out of this. There's people there to help if you're having a

problem. And I could have asked for some money.

But I didn't.

And I didn't because, well, pride always comes before a fall.

And I'd gone away on a holiday of a lifetime.

And I thought that in asking for help, I would be admitting defeat.

I didn't need a thousand pounds. I needed about 500 pounds for a one -way

to go home.

Once I decided that I was going to do this, and I'd agreed to do this, The

just seemed to disappear in a bit of a haze, to be honest with you. I didn't

think about the negative consequences and I didn't make a list of pros and

All I was thinking about was just do this one thing. Just do this one thing,

it over with, come back, buy a ticket and go home.

Well, the morning of the 5th of February, it's hard to describe how I

feeling because I wasn't really feeling anything. I was feeling very numb, as

though I was living in a bit of a dream.

And I didn't want to do this.

But it was too late to back out. I'd agreed to do it.

He'd already bought the plane ticket. It had already been organised and it felt

as though it was just too late to back out.

I was going home.

And I was even thinking, will I need a coat when I get there?

It's February, March time. It's going to be cold in London.

My mind was at home. My heart was at home.

About halfway through the day, I'm not sure what time it was, Robert came

Yeah.

How you doing?

He put these four packages, quite small packages, down on the side.

They were wrapped in masking tape. He'd already wrapped them.

Okay. And I was not going to be putting these in my pocket.

It's all well wrapped up and everything.

And I didn't want him to be there. I didn't want to see him.

I wanted him to go away as quickly as possible. I just wanted this to be over.

See you in a bit. See you later.

See you later.

We'd arranged to meet at the ticket office to the express train to the

Horribly, at the end of the day, we were at different ticket offices.

I spent what seemed like days and days sitting at the station waiting for

Robert. It wasn't days, it was probably about an hour.

And the time was ticking by, I kept looking at my watch and realising he's

he's not here, where is he?

And I had a sneaking feeling somewhere in the back of my mind or the back of my

heart that this was all going wrong.

If I'm honest, I knew I was going to be arrested and I just knew it was all

going to go wrong.

And eventually I walked up the platform and I saw his girlfriend running down

the platform. And she looked very angry and, oh, where have you been? And we've

been waiting for you. And I said, but I've been waiting for you.

And it turned out that there was more than one ticket office.

We eventually found a train that was going to the airport. It wasn't the

train, it was just a normal train that stopped at every single train station on

the way to the airport.

And the whole time sitting on that train, I was ill. I had this incredible

in my thigh that I was sort of wedging under my ribcage into the back of this

seat to make this pain go away.

We were the only foreigners on the train, everybody else was Thai and they

commuters.

And I just had a feeling that they were all looking at us because they all knew

what we were doing.

My heart was just pounding, I was sweating, I was ill and I just wanted it

And again I kept thinking, get off the train, get off the train and either go

home or get in a taxi and go separate.

And shortly after we got on that train, there was actually a citizen's arrest.

And when I realized that this was a citizen's arrest, it just seemed like a

warning from the God that Sandra, stop what you're doing, just get off the

train.

But it was too late to get off the train. I couldn't get off the train

Robert was there and it had all been organized and I just felt like I

I couldn't get off, it was too late.

When we walked into the airport,

It just seemed very, very, what we were doing became very, very real.

And Robert said, we're late, but we'll check in so they know we're here, and

then we'll separate.

I said, okay.

So we found the check -in to the flight that we were on. There was nobody there

because we were so late. Everybody who'd already booked onto that flight were

already sitting on the plane.

Robert went up and he handed in his passport and his ticket.

And these chaps in plain casual clothes appeared.

Oh, they looked really pleased to see him. Oh, Mr. Locke, Mr. Locke, good.

Please come this way. We've been waiting for you.

And I just assumed that they were holding the plane up for him because

booked a ticket and he was late. So they were going to escort him quickly onto

the plane and I couldn't. I thought, I've never heard of such a thing, of

somebody getting such VIP treatment, and he's not really a VIP, but how come

he's getting the VIP treatment and not me? And they asked me whether I was with

him, and they said, are you with Robert Locke? And I said, yes.

And they said, oh, good, then you come this way as well then, please. I said,

oh, thank you very much.

And we all went trotting off together.

But we went all the way through the airport.

Down this little corridor and into this little room.

I didn't quite know why we were there.

And then all hell seemed to break loose.

Can you kind of explain what you're doing? And I looked up to my left and

there was a board covered in photographs.

And on the top of the board, they'd written customs seizures.

And that was the point at which I realised that these chaps from the check

counter were actually customs officers.

Just a book.

They had received a tip -off about Robert and the British Embassy had told

customs to wait for him at the airport.

And I just stood there thinking, oh, shit.

This is really bad news. This is not supposed to be happening.

I had a

feeling in the morning that it was all going to go wrong. And there, lo and

behold, it was going all terribly wrong. But nobody was interested in me or my

bags or they didn't take my shoes off or look in my belt or anything like that.

Robert was taken behind a screen and he came back and he said to Ruth, I've just

been x -rayed.

And I thought, hmm, that's not a good sign. And then Ruth was taken behind the

screen and she said, yeah, I've just been x -rayed. And I thought,

Looks like if they've done two, they're going to do three, even though they're

not searching my bags.

And then they didn't search my bags. They didn't search me. Like I say,

seemed to be very interested in me at all.

And then just at the end, one of them said, OK, we need an X -ray from you as

well. And of course, then I did begin to panic because I thought there's no way

out of this at all.

So they took an x -ray, and then they said, you can take your bags and you can

go now.

And we left.

I just assumed it hadn't showed up on the x -ray.

And I thought, well, gosh, that was quite lucky, wasn't it?

It obviously just hasn't shown up, and we're okay.

They took us to the Bureau de Champs because we didn't have any money.

So we went and we changed money.

The woman who was holding the plane up on the walkie -talkie said to me, if you

still need to go to the toilet, there's one just over there, and you can go now

if you want.

I didn't go to the toilet. I could have got rid of what I had. I could have got

rid of the drug.

I should have done. I shouldn't have done it in the first place.

I thought Robert will be annoyed at me. He's bought the plane ticket.

Then I'll owe him money for the plane ticket. Again, I was thinking, I'm just

going to do the... So it'll be okay.

So we changed our money.

and walked with this woman.

And she's talking to the pilot, and she's telling the pilot, we're walking

such and such a runway, and we'll be there within 35 seconds. And just as we

were walking down like a black ramp towards the gate and the plane, two

men ran up behind me, and they just grabbed my bag, my shoulder bag, and

me back to the customs.

They had the x -ray up on the glass screen with the light behind it.

And actually, it was as clear as clear could be.

Robert and Ruth were brought in behind me.

And he was very, very angry.

I turned to Robert and said, but Robert, look, they can see.

And he just denied all knowledge of me.

I'm sorry, I don't even know who she is. I don't know who she is. I don't know

who you are.

What? You can just, you know, take us from her completely.

Yeah.

Robert, tell them the truth. You've got to tell them the truth.

I don't know who you are.

We had never discussed what would happen or what we would do if we got caught.

I just assumed, and I assumed too much, obviously, but I just assumed that,

A, we wouldn't get caught.

And B, if we did get caught, that he would maybe be in it with me.

And I was really quite surprised and I was a bit hurt and terribly

But then, of course, I began to realise, I don't even know this guy.

I've just done this thing for him. I don't know him. And all of a sudden, of

course, I felt very alone.

And I was actually very alone because almost immediately we were all three

separated.

When they brought out a set of handcuffs to put on me, I just about lost it.

It was too real. It was just too much.

So he immediately did the cuff and took them off and I was like, oh.

That's okay then.

It was just a bit of a haze of panic and shock.

There was one guy who was walking around the room in front of me and he kept, he

was holding his fingers up to his head like that and he kept looking at me and

he kept laughing and he kept saying, hmm, you heroine, you bad.

In Thai, you die.

And I didn't know if he was joking, I didn't know if he was winding me up.

I thought, this can't happen to me. They can't shoot me for this.

I mean, I'm British.

They can't shoot me for what I've just done.

But that's when I began to realise that, you know what, I am in a bit of a spot

of bother here.

It was incredibly embarrassing, walking all the way through the airport, out

into this van and taken off to... I didn't know where we were going.

a police station somewhere in Bangkok.

It always takes a long time to get to where you're going in Bangkok because of

the roads. And it's a big city.

The traffic wasn't too bad, but it still took quite a long time.

I fell asleep in the van.

I always fall asleep when I've had a shock.

I was dreaming about, I don't know, and I was woken up.

And I turned to Robert when I woke up and I said, That was a dream, wasn't it?

Tell me that was a dream.

And he said, no, it bloody well wasn't a dream. Get out of the van.

We were put in separate cages that were opposite each other and separated by a

walkway.

I don't know if I should call it a cell. It wasn't really a cell at all. It was

like a cage, an old -fashioned gorilla cage that you'd see at London Zoo.

But that's where we spent the next six days.

I felt lots of things over those next few days. I felt just total shock and

disbelief that this cannot possibly be happening.

I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I am here.

I won't be here for very long because they'll realise that I've just been

and I didn't mean it and I've never done it before and they'll let me go because

they just will.

And then at other times I realise that this is a really bad situation and it

doesn't look like I'm going anywhere at all and the guy with his fingers up to

his head in the airport telling me basically that they will impose the

penalty and he was right actually, they do impose the death penalty in Thailand.

I was so totally disgusted with where I was and what I'd done and I was so

disgusted with myself and so ashamed of myself that I bought a piece of paper

and a pencil from the policeman downstairs and I wrote a letter to my

And I wrote and I told them to forget they'd had a daughter.

And I just thought that if they were to do this, they could just move on with

their lives. I told them to...

Burn all the photographs, tear up all my letters, never mention my name again.

Just get on with the rest of your lives and forget all about me.

A woman came from the British Embassy to see me, as they always do when there's

been a foreign arrest in a country.

And she said that she wanted my parents' name and address because she thought

they should be informed, and I said no.

Don't tell my parents, don't tell anybody.

And she said to me, well, Sandra...

the media might be quite interested in this case.

And I thought, well, she's off her head. Why would the media be interested in

this?

And she said, it would be better for your parents to hear the news from us

to hear the news from a reporter or to hear it on the radio one day.

So I gave her my parents' address and their names and they sent the policeman

round to their house and this policeman knocked on the door and told them.

And I assume he told them to sit down because he had some bad news.

And then he told them that their daughter had just been arrested in

a drugs charge.

And as soon as we left the police station, a camera was straight in my

all these people were saying, Sandra, Sandra, Sandra, you know, what are you

thinking? What's going on? All these questions in this camera. And down the

of this camera, I could see ITN.

Obviously,

I knew that this was the ITN news.

My grandfather watched the ITN news.

And as I walked out of the police station,

I thought this was going to kill him.

He's going to get up in the morning, he's going to turn his television on,

he's going to see me being taken to court, and this is going to kill him.

I don't know why they were interested in this case. There are men who are

arrested quite, well, not quite regularly, but there are men who have

arrested before and since me, and they haven't been followed by the press.

The next morning I was called for a visit.

And somebody said to me, oh, your parents are in the embassy room.

And when I went out, it was very emotional.

And they just looked so old. They paled.

And they just looked so small.

And they just looked so out of place there.

And they came and they sat down.

And there was chicken wire, so you couldn't pass anything through.

And my parents stuck their fingers through the chicken wire.

The sleeping conditions in Lajau were like sardines in a tin. No, they weren't

like sardines in a tin, actually, because the sardines have got lots of

tomato sauce.

We didn't have that much room.

The time passes because the time in front of you is so vast that you can't

count it.

But the time behind you starts to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

People used to write to me and say, oh, as long as you've got hope, you'll be

okay.

And do you know what? That's rubbish.

That is so rubbish.

Hope is absolutely no good whatsoever when it turns out to be false hope.

We went out to court once a month for three years. The trial took quite a long

time. When the trial was completed, we went out for sentencing.

This was a sobbing Sandra Gregory who arrived at court to hear her fate almost

exactly three years after she was arrested trying to smuggle three and a

ounces of heroin through Bangkok airport.

She was bundled into the court cells, still protesting they were not her

In evidence, Gregory claimed the heroin belonged to her co -accused, Robert

Lott, from Cambridge.

No drugs were found on him. The judge is reading in royal Thai, and the only

words I caught were pahan, shivit, which means termination of life.

After a ten -minute hearing conducted in the Thai language, Gregory had her

sentence confirmed by a translator.

And the guy at the airport with his fingers up to his head.

It was quite right.

The death penalty is the mandatory sentence for the crime I'd committed in

Thailand.

And it is death by machine gun. They used to bend people over a cross and

would hold on to the Thai orchid and they would be shot through the back.

And I turned to this journalist who I'd never seen before and I said, well, what

did Robert get?

He was stood about six foot away from me.

Oh, she said, he got yok fong.

They lifted the charges with him.

After a ten -minute hearing conducted in the Thai language, Gregory had her

sentence confirmed by a translator.

And it was a woman behind me. She was Thai, but she was working for an English

newspaper.

She said, no, no, no, no, he's reduced it to life.

And then he reduced it to 25 years for you.

Santa Gregory is about to leave this holding cell for what could be a long

period in a Thai jail. Her only hope, an appeal or intervention by the British

Prime Minister John Major, and that's thought unlikely.

It's not fair. Why are they doing this to me?

As she was driven away to prison, her last thought were of her family.

And I told the truth.

I never lied in this whole case. I never lied.

But he lied and he goes home.

Is that fair?

Mark Austin, ITN, Bangkok.

The death penalty wasn't the worst case scenario. Death is death, you die.

Life lingers with a life sentence.

And you linger in a state of false hope, denial and...

Just delusions, really.

Nobody actually copes, I don't think, with a life sentence.

You cope with today, tomorrow, next week, the next appeal.

I spent four years, four months and four days in Ladell Prison.

I wasn't counting.

As the flight from Bangkok arrived at Heathrow, the handcuffs for Sandra

were taken on board.

But she was home to Britain for the first time in seven years.

We flew into London in the morning.

The sun had just come up. I remember feeling absolutely freezing cold.

I was driven through London in the back of a van.

And London looked so clean and it looked so orderly. There were children waiting

at bus stops in their school uniforms going off to school and people going to

work. This is what I remember. This is home. I've finally come home.

The day I was granted my pardon was a big deal. It was a big day. I phoned my

parents again because my mother had told me on the phone in the afternoon, the

governor had told me to phone my mother.

And I phoned her and I said, just tell me what you told me this afternoon once

again.

And she told me again, very slowly.

the king of Thailand has granted you a royal pardon.

2002, I went to university for a geography degree. So I've spent the last

years at university, and that was my whole entire focus.

Tomorrow is my graduation ceremony.

It's all pomp and tradition and ceremony for ceremony's purpose, and I wouldn't

really go.

But my parents are calling it a proud day.

So I'm going for them.

Today's been a good day. It's been a very good day today. It's been the

conclusion of the past three or four years.

It's quite sad in a way.

Yeah, I think finally I've done something to make my father proud.

In the book!

So he didn't forget that he had a daughter. He's actually quite proud of

which is nice.

I know I'm a bit old to be caring what my father thinks, but I do still care

what he thinks, because he's a good guy and it's nice to see him happy.

And I'm happy with me as well.

Well, for many years, I'm afraid, she was a pain in the neck. I never dreamed

we'd have a day like today, but we couldn't have anticipated a day like

It was just beyond me. I mean, our thoughts were so crammed with problems,

Sweden and the King of Thailand together.

But that was our focus.

A rather nice, crowning moment.

Just wonderful.

People have often asked me, you know, do you really regret this, Sandra?

You did what you did. You went to prison and you're famous now.

You know, the media want to interview you and you've written a book and gosh,

it's such a big part of your life. Do you really regret it?

So do you know what? I regret it more now than I've ever regretted it before.

So yeah, I do regret it.

And if I could turn the clock back and change it.

I would.

Of course I would.