Original subtitles

I was in paradise, lots of girls coming into the island.

My life as a hash dealer began.

I felt like a pig in Zen, you know, just rolling it.

The golden rule, he told me, of smuggling hash, never body pack.

Please don't find that key, though.

And I just wanted to just yell and scream and punch something.

I was locked up.

Nothing there but me and the four walls.

In the year 2000, I was living in Bali, Indonesia.

It was in paradise, and I loved it. It was just the way I thought that I should

be living my life, you know?

Lots of girls coming in to the island every week.

Bali was like a tropical paradise, and it was awesome.

I was 39 years old and partying 24 -7.

I was performing for free in the clubs. When I'd go out, I would just do a lot

of magic. It was a great way to meet people.

especially women.

One night I saw this girl dancing, and she was a very sexy Japanese girl,

and I had to meet her.

I danced on over there with a couple of pieces of chewing gum, and

I just handed one out to her, and she grabbed it.

opened it up and started to chew it, and I grabbed mine and opened it up, and

there we were. It was the beginning.

And that was how I met Yuki.

I don't know if I was in love with her, but we had a really casual yet intimate

relationship, really good together.

After a month in Bali, she took off and went back home.

to tokyo and i figured i'd see her again one day but i wasn't sure

when and then one day i got a phone call

and it was yuki yuki

what what's is there a problem are you okay and she said yeah okay she said

i'm pregnant

And then she said that, it's your baby.

Really?

That caught me off guard. I was really surprised.

I asked her, what do you want to do? And she said, I'm going to have the baby.

Okay. I was really pumped on that. I was like, yeah, come on, let's do it.

got out of customs at tokyo airport and yuki was there the reality of the baby

coming really hit me then it was coming countdown to blast off

i met the parent

and

By that time, you know, I knew I was going to be in Japan living with Yuki.

So we needed to make it official, officiate it, you know. It's really a

to meet you, sir.

That was it. We were married.

Yuki was extremely happy, and I was happy too, you know.

I started to realize that, wow, now is a new chapter in my life.

Tokyo was definitely exciting.

I was broke, and I knew I needed to go out and try and make the bank, you know?

So I started to perform in the streets of Tokyo.

You got one dot on each side like that.

Shake it.

The response was great, but it wasn't enough. Tokyo is a very

expensive city.

I needed to step up.

And then I got a phone call from a buddy of mine named Parco.

Parco! What's up, buddy? How are you? He called me and told me he was in Japan,

in Tokyo.

He told me he had something to show me.

He had brought some hash.

He said he had about a kilo of hash.

He wanted to know if I wanted to buy the hash.

And right then, when he told me that, it was like

the answer to my prayers.

So my life as a hash dealer in Tokyo began.

While my wife was at home, I was out meeting my friends and selling hash and

going to their houses and smoking hash and selling more hash.

The money started to roll in. It was a big party.

From that one kilo that I sold, I made $40 ,000 profit.

It was great. I felt like a pig in Zen, you know, just rolling in it.

The money started to pour through my hands like water. I was spending it so

fast.

But we did have a lot of stuff for the baby already bought.

Cribs, you know, diapers were showing up. We had clothes.

But the $40 ,000 was dwindling very quickly.

And then Parco said to me, if you want to do this again, you can go to Nepal

get your own kilo.

You're going to make a lot of money.

Go on a trip to Nepal and come back to Japan and start to make money again off

of the kilo that I bought. That seemed like an adventure.

The golden rule, he told me, of smuggling hash.

Golden rule number one, never body pack it. Rule number two, he said. Never body

pack it. Golden rule number three.

Never body pack it.

Never body pack the hash.

Put it in small little pieces, swallow it whole.

But I wanted to do it.

So I said, yeah, I was going to do it.

Pretty stupid.

I went to see a fortune teller.

She used a bunch of sticks and she dropped them on to the table.

And she read the placement of the sticks.

Pick one.

It's a strange feeling. She was reading these sticks, and she told me that the

reading said that my adventure would be successful.

Good. She told me not to worry, and she told me I would make big fortune.

The plane landed in Kathmandu. I got off the plane, got into a taxi and

just told them to take me into town.

It was dirty, it was filthy, but it was beautiful at the same time.

There's people running around in the streets, people selling all the fruits

the meat, cutting up meat in the streets and selling it.

I asked the driver, If there was a really tall hotel that could give me a

view of the whole city.

I guess it was called the penthouse suite, Kathmandu style.

It was like the eagle's nest, you know, just perched up there and it was great.

I wanted to go out and get in on the street life and do some magic in the

streets. I don't necessarily do it for money.

And the crowd gathered quickly.

They were really interested in the magic. They wanted to see it, you know,

I just felt good entertaining those people.

At the conclusion of my magic show, a Nepali gentleman came up to me.

Hi, I'm Tansy.

Tansy was his name.

And he said he really loved my magic, and he invited me to a nearby tea shop.

He brought up hashish.

I can really get you a booze hash, man.

I'm not into that sort of thing.

But then he pulled out a piece at the table and he showed me. He said, no,

is really good.

What do you think?

Looks good.

And then he said, let's go smoke some.

And I was like, well, okay.

I knew that smoking hash was illegal, you know.

I didn't know what the penalties were, should I be caught.

I like that beard. I want to grow a beard like yours.

But I really, I didn't care.

I really didn't care, you know.

I was extremely stoned.

I opened up and I asked him, I said, I just asked him, could you get me a large

quantity of this?

And he said, yeah, it's easy.

Kilo. Kilo.

So Tenzig showed up at the hotel the next day with the kilo of hash.

It was two big bricks, and he said $250 for the kilo, U .S. dollars.

I couldn't believe it, you know. Here you go, buddy. The price was just too

cheap.

The kilo was massive looking, and I was... if I would be able to swallow it

I had to be serious and start, you know, preparing this to go back to Japan.

I brought gloves and X -Acto knife blades with me. I got saran wrap.

I knew, you know, this was it.

I rolled them, rounded on the ends, and folded the plastic in, rolled it again,

and then I just started to light the ends.

So there it was. It became a little encapsulated hash chunk.

And 12 hours or so before I got on the plane, I started to swallow them.

I got some olive oil and I poured it in a small bowl and I dipped the piece

in the olive oil and I swallowed it down.

It was like choking for a minute.

I could feel it like going all the way down my throat. And when it dropped into

my stomach, I could actually feel it go into the stomach. It was like, whoa.

I counted them all so I knew exactly how many pieces were going in.

So I knew exactly how many pieces should be coming out.

And I stayed up all night smoking hash and

swallowing pellets.

After about the...

First 500 grams, it started to get a little more uncomfortable in my stomach.

I was loading them in. I had them almost all in my stomach. I had almost the

whole kilo inside of me.

And I was thinking about getting on that plane.

I knew that, you know...

What it meant to get that money was that I was going to be able to take care of

my family, but reality was really, really starting to hit me.

I was feeling like this was doomsday.

Really nervous.

So I grabbed my bag I had packed up, ready to roll.

The hash was all loaded in, ready to go.

The owner of the hotel was down there.

Hi, how are you?

He put his finger in this little jar with sacred ash and he touched me on the

forehead.

And he said a mantra to have a safe trip back.

The journey was quick because Tenzing's a fast rider.

He was flying through that traffic on that motorbike, and I was just hanging

And all those butterflies that I had, definitely not there. I was feeling

excited again. I'm headed back. This is it. This is the next stage in the

journey, and it was just all positive signs.

Tenzing dropped me off outside the airport.

I went through, checked into customs.

Everything went smooth.

Everything went smooth.

The flight back was a breeze.

I actually slept.

And then I was like, wow, it was like I just teleported right there back home

to Tokyo.

Got off the plane.

I didn't feel nervous.

The immigration officer stamped my passport, said, welcome to Japan.

Thank you.

I knew I was in the home stretch, and I was just willing myself to just stay

calm, go through customs with a smile.

I set the bag down on the little table. It was just a strange feeling.

Like an actor before he goes on stage, you know? What if I forget my lines?

if I get caught here, you know, with the hash?

But I'm kind of thinking, you know what, lady? You're not even looking in the

right place.

What do I do?

I do juggling balls.

Juggling balls. Yeah.

And she said, well, that's wonderful.

Closed my bag, handed it to me and said, have a nice time in Japan.

And there it was.

Made it.

I went to the

bathroom and I just filled up the bathtub with hot water and laid him

So began the evacuation process.

I counted them so I knew how many went in, and I knew exactly how many came

I was taking care of business, you know, being responsible.

Within three weeks, I had sold all the hash and made a profit.

$50 ,000.

I was keeping it in a shoebox in her house, all Japanese yen.

I don't know, it was really cool.

Crunch time was coming, the baby was going to be coming out of there. That

was hatching soon, and I wanted to start a business in Bali, a legal business.

So I thought, well, you know, I'm going to go back and do another trip.

I'm going to do one more.

I paid a visit to my gypsy fortune teller again.

It's all going to work out for you.

I contacted Tenzig.

I asked him to bring me two kilos this time.

I thought maybe I could swallow a little bit more but after eating the first

kilo again it was just there was no way it was just way too much so

i decided to stash a kilo up on the roof of

the suite there was these water tanks and i took a few bricks and i just kind

covered it up

Checked out of the hotel.

The owner gave me the Sai Baba blessing again.

Tenzig picked me up on the motorcycle.

Took me all the way to the airport.

And they didn't even ask me any questions.

Stamped the passports and I was there on the plane back to Japan.

Money was starting to roll in again.

Something was bound to go wrong sooner or later, but it hadn't happened yet.

Three weeks later, Yuki went into labor, and our baby was

born.

And it was a son.

It bonded Yuki and I together, and I realized that I was really in love with

her.

It was like a perfect time. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

By now, we had about $60 ,000.

But it seemed like once the baby was born, we were spending even more money.

I wanted to have more than $100 ,000 to go to Bali with and invest in a

business.

I guess I could have stopped at this point in the game, but it was extremely

easy to make that money.

I went and saw my gypsy fortune teller girl. She predicted everything was going

to go smooth.

Thank you very much.

I still felt bulletproof.

On a plane ride over to Kathmandu, I met three travelers, two

British girls, and an American.

They loved the view. It was awesome up there. They said, this is amazing.

I told them, well, I'll be back in just a minute.

Climbed the ladder up on the roof of my suite and got the kilo out of its hiding

place and brought it back down.

So we rolled some big fat blitz and started to get stoned.

And they asked me if, you know, we could go do some trekking together. It was

going to be the last trip, so I thought, why not, you know?

So I packed my bag, and I put the hash into my bag as well to take it with me.

Looking back on it to travel around with a kilo of hash in my bag was pretty

stupid.

There was not so many people on the bus, so we rolled up a couple of splits.

It was like a four or five hour bus ride down out of Kathmandu.

And then I could tell we were coming out of the mountains, headed down.

And all of a sudden the bus came to a stop.

And I looked out.

And I could see there was a roadblock.

And they had like these wooden gates blocking the road with barbed wire

them. And there were soldiers out there with rifles.

And I'm thinking, uh -oh, if they come on this bus and search it and find that

kilo, I'm going to jail.

They started pulling out bags.

and searching, like, in the luggage compartments.

One of the soldiers came up on the bus.

He walked down the aisle, and he started asking the local people

for IDs.

And we were in the back of the bus, and I'm thinking, our turn is coming up.

He's going to come back here and question us.

And I knew I had that kilo in my bag.

I'm watching this soldier come up and get closer and closer.

And I'm thinking in my mind, oh, you know, you will not see that kilo.

Grabbed my bag, and I'm trying to remain calm on the surface, but I'm rifling

through that bag. I located the kilo, and I'm still keeping one eye on it. to

the soldiers and question those people. I pulled the kilo out and there it is

sitting in my lap.

The guy next to me is looking at it and I could tell he's pretty much crapping

on himself too.

You know, like, oh my God.

I was trying to look for a place to hide this kilo.

There wasn't really much space on the bus except underneath the seat.

So I looked in the seat behind me, and the space was there too, and I just

turned around and dashed it in the space underneath the seat behind me.

From then on, I watched as he got closer and closer.

He was just walking a little slow, looking.

I'm worried.

I'm really scared that he's going to find this hat.

And he stopped. He looked at the two girls.

He came up right next to me, thinking, please don't find that

key, though. Please do not find that key, though.

The soldier walked behind us, and I just kind of turned to watch him. He looked.

The spaces in the two empty aisles behind it.

I'm really, really getting paranoid.

I was really scared. I thought this was going to be it.

And he turned around and walked straight off the bus.

And I was thinking, that was too close.

That really, really was too close.

I was thinking, man, I could have been doing some time in a Nepalese jail, you

know.

I made it back to Tokyo and offloaded the hash.

And that shoebox filled up with some more yen.

And things were looking good.

I wound up with about almost $80 ,000.

With the $80 ,000, I could have lived comfortably, but yeah, I was getting

addicted to the thrill of smuggling.

I was kind of getting greedy.

I went back, as usual, to find my gypsy fortune teller girl, but she wasn't

there.

I was kind of bummed out that I couldn't find her.

When I arrived in Kathmandu, it was going to be a quick trip. I was going to

in and out of there.

I bought the kilo,

went up to my room, and that's when things started to go wrong.

I started to get really sick.

I had really bad diarrhea.

I started vomiting.

I was really, really in a bad way. I didn't feel like I was going to be able

actually eat that kilo and keep it inside of me.

I was really worried.

Another day had passed, and it seemed as if everything was conspiring against

me. I was running it over in my head.

You know, whether I should just go ahead and body pack it.

And then I'm thinking about Parco, especially that golden rule.

Never body pack it.

Never body pack it. And all the decisions I was making were pretty

lame.

I wanted the money. That thought of having that extra 50 grand was seducing

So I decided I was going to body pack it.

I was looking at my stuff, trying to figure out how am I going to bring it

And then I was looking at these juggling balls, and I was thinking, wow, I can

do something with that.

Started making a big ball of hash.

Set it in there and it fit perfect in there, you know.

It looked pretty good.

Juggled them around. They were perfect. I was like, wow.

Still had somewhere like over half a kilo left.

And I had this little zipper case. I was looking at that thinking, well, maybe I

can cut the lining open on the inside.

pull it up and stash some of the hash in there.

So I stuffed, I don't know, it was about 400 grams worth inside the zipper.

It was all right, but it looked a lot fatter.

I dragged myself down the

stairs and see the owner give me that blessing because I could have used all

extra luck I could get at that time.

But he wasn't there.

There was no magic ass on the head.

I didn't get my fortune from the gypsy girl.

I got sick.

Breaking Parco's rule.

No Sai Baba blessing from the owner.

That trip was doomed.

When I get to Tokyo Airport, I crawled off that plane, just really weak, still

loaded down with that hash. How are you? And as I moved on from passport control

to the customs, it was a nightmare.

There was people everywhere wearing, like, Mexican sombreros, carrying

flags from different countries.

And I'm like, what is going on here?

And then I'm thinking, oh yeah, it's World Cup soccer.

They were having the World Cup in Tokyo.

And the games were going on.

Man, I was just struck with terror.

Because there was five customs agents at every single line.

They were doing... Thorough searches through the bag of everyone, stopping

everyone and doing a mandatory body pat.

No exception.

I was just floored. Started to sweat.

Felt like I was shaking like a leaf. I was, you know, I was already sick and I

just felt like... that they knew that I had this hash.

I had to go through.

I set my bag down for them to search, and the one customs agent asked

me to raise my hand, and I did.

He started to frisk me on the shoulders and on the thighs, and as he's reaching

around all over me, I'm praying that he doesn't touch that.

little zipper bag in the back of my pants and sure enough

his hands came down and he felt it so i quickly grabbed it before he could and i

tried to unzip it and he just grabbed it out of my hands and

when he opened it he went straight in there and lifted up the seam where i had

cut

From where I was standing, I could see the hat poking out of it.

Yeah, it was over.

The ride was over.

It was the loneliest feeling.

I was just like, no one was there to help me.

Nothing I could say or do was going to get me out of this.

I was done.

There was a flurry of activity. They were pulling those blocks of hash out of

that little bag, setting them out. They took a little piece off of the hash and

placed it in a little vial, added a few chemicals. It changed color.

Who are you working with?

And it was a positive test for hash.

They asked me if I had any more on me. I said no. I knew I had those juggling

balls. And when they emptied the bag out, you know, everything was out there.

There was cards, balloons,

coins.

There's the juggling balls, you know.

So you're a magician.

He's like, you're a magician? I said, yeah.

Do some magic for me.

I want to see the magic.

You know, we want to see the magic. I'm like, I really didn't feel like doing

any magic then.

Pick a card.

Show it to him.

It was like I was in the Twilight Zone.

It felt like, you know, I'm going to prison, but here they want me to

them on the way, you know.

Did a couple of card tricks, did a couple of things with some coins,

they pulled out.

And then they came to the juggling balls.

And I was trying to remain calm, but I knew there was over a half a kilo inside

of them. What are these for?

And I just, like, was thinking, if only you knew what those were for.

I started to juggle the hash balls right in front of the customs agent's eyes.

I was just sweating so hard on the inside.

in the cardboard box with the rest of my possessions, and I knew that

they hadn't discovered them yet.

But as I was being led away, I knew that they could find those at any time.

There's a long hallway.

They led me through. I was still handcuffed.

They took off the handcuffs, and they placed me into a cell.

There was like four or five guys on the floor.

Lights wouldn't go completely out. They just dimmed them and, you know, everyone

had to lay down and go to sleep.

I received a visit from my wife.

I didn't know what to say to her. I felt really bad. I thought her life would be

better off if she, you know, went on with her life and just raised our son.

And so I told her that it would be better if she divorced me.

No.

No. But she told me that there was no way she was going to divorce me.

I'm not leaving you, Mark.

Okay?

She would do anything she could to keep us together.

And that she loved me.

But those hash balls were like haunting me.

If I told them and gave them those juggling balls.

Perhaps in their eyes it would look as if I was cooperating even more and that

might receive a leaner sentence.

And so the next day when I was being questioned some more, I said, if you get

those juggling balls and you'll open them, you'll find that there's hash

those juggling balls.

One guy was like, oh, really?

And they seemed very pleased.

I found out later that the sentencing is based on the quantity of drugs that

they found in my possession.

And had I not revealed those balls, I might have only been looking at three

years.

I was transferred to Fuchu Prison.

I saw these kids.

And that was like the last thing I saw.

It's a long hallway

with prison doors on each side.

And he opened the door with a key and told me to go inside.

That was the beginning of long stretches.

Hard time.

You are expected on command to step out of the cell door, turn around and face

the wall until another command is given where you will turn around and march to

a factory where you will work.

Most of the time my work was constructing paper shopping bags.

Each person was expected to take the bag off of the end pile and perform one

fold or glue one seam only and then pass it on to the next guy next

to him and it was his end pile.

And I was thinking, are you kidding me?

Marching.

You're marching everywhere.

Your arms were coming up to 90 degrees.

Itch me, itch me, which is one, two, one, two.

There we were, marching like robots.

You'll go crazy.

You just felt like a machine.

On, on, on.

After a few months more of this, I just had enough.

One of the guards came up with a megaphone and started barking in my

And I'm thinking, I've got to do something.

And I just snapped.

pushed the megaphone into his face.

And before I knew it, there were like guards pinning me to the

ground, twisted off the collar of my shirt, and choked off my hair right. And

eventually, he choked me to the point of unconsciousness.

When I regained consciousness,

They were carrying me off, and they threw me into a cell and left me there.

For my punishment, I

was told that I would have to sit every day in the middle of my punishment cell

on my knees.

with my hands placed on my lap, facing the door, and remain in

that position from 8 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon.

Pretty much drove me crazy. I think I went out of my mind a few times.

I mean, I just wanted to yell and scream and punch something.

But, you know, I couldn't.

You know, I was in that cell, locked up.

with nothing there but me and the four walls.

Your mind is an amazing thing. It will find a way to escape.

They could actually imprison my body in those four walls, but my mind was never

captive.

I'd be thinking about my son or my wife.

All the waves I surfed when I was, you know, from the first time I ever surfed

to all these different places I'd been traveling in the world. And I learned a

lot about myself and what I was, you know, what I was capable of dealing

And, you know, the limits that I thought I was

confined to, you know, I broke free of those.

Freedom is so sweet.

My wife and son came to the state.

My son was able to hug me and hold me, and I was able to hug and hold him.

Man, that was awesome.

That was a great day for me.

If not the fact that I got caught, I was punished in the prison. It was the fact

that I lost all the time with my son and my wife.

What's really important is, you know, the people you love.

Take care of them and stay with them because you never know, you know, when

that's going to end.

The brand -new series of Bang Up Abroad continues next Wednesday at 9 with

Escape from Argentina.

Stay tuned for Drugs, Inc. on heroin.