Journalist Patrick Winn Discusses His Book ‘Narcotopia’ [S7.E36]

Greg 00:00:03 And on this episode, we chat with author Patrick Winn about his new book, Narco Topia.

Ed 00:00:10 So if you want to learn more about the infamous and powerful drug cartels right next door in Myanmar, you'll love this episode of the Bangkok Podcast. With.

Greg 00:00:36 Sawat Dee Krap and welcome to the Bangkok Podcast. My name is Greg Jorgensen, a Canadian who came to Thailand in 2001 to take advantage of the cheap dental care. But it doesn't really matter because I still only go about once every three years.

Ed 00:00:48 True on two counts. And I met Knuth, an American who came to Thailand on a one year teaching contract 24 years ago, fell in love with trying to convince Thai taxi drivers that my bad. Thai is better than their bad English, so I never left.

Greg 00:01:05 It's always a bit incongruous, isn't it, when you're speaking Thai and they're speaking English and you're trying to meet somewhere in the middle?

Ed 00:01:11 Yeah, we both talk.

Greg 00:01:12 Both sound like if marbles in your mouth.

Ed 00:01:15 We want to give a big thanks to all of our patrons who support the show. Patrons get every episode a day early. Behind the scenes photos of our interviews, a heads up to send questions to upcoming guests and access to our discord server to chat with me, Greg, and other listeners around the world. But best of all, patrons also get an unscripted, uncensored bonus episode every week where we riff on current events and Bangkok topics. On this week's bonus show, we chatted about a friend of Greg's in New Zealand who brought up an interesting comparison between how Thais and foreigners see manual labor, and update on the Swiss guy who allegedly kicked the Thai doctor a while back, who was recently completely exonerated. Oops. And a discussion of a survey that found Thailand to have the highest rate of infidelity in the world. Way to go, Thailand! Yay! To learn how to become a patron and get all this good stuff. Plus full access to over 700 bonus and regular back episodes. Click the support button at the top of our website.

Greg 00:02:20 That's right. And as always, if you have a comment, a show idea, or just want to say hi.

Greg 00:02:24 Head to Bangkok podcast.com and click the little microphone button on the bottom right to leave us a voicemail that will play on the show. And also, we discussed this quickly on the bonus show, but everyone, check out the Facebook page of the Bangkok Podcast. Over the next little while here, I got a snazzy new pair of Ray-Ban meta sunglasses, which can live stream to Facebook and Instagram. So I might be doing some tests on a bike ride and throwing out live streamed videos of of my traipsing around Bangkok, so that might be fun.

Ed 00:02:50 Heck yeah, I love it.

Greg 00:02:51 Yeah. All right. On this episode, we welcome back a good friend of both Ed and I and someone well known in Asia's journalism and literary circles. A young fellow by the name of Patrick Winn. A longtime listeners might remember Patrick from episode 11 of season one back in 2010. Man, we were just kidding.

Ed 00:03:09 That's a long time ago.

Greg 00:03:10 It is a long time ago, as well as episode 24 of season three.

Greg 00:03:13 And now again here in season seven, Patrick has just come out with a new book called Narco Topia in search of the Asian Drug Cartel that survived the CIA, all about the powerful cartels in Myanmar that send hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit drugs to their networks throughout the world. Now, Thailand plays a unique role in this paradigm, with porous borders, a large middle class, and a huge influx of tourists from around the world, the drugs supplied by the Burmese cartels rise to meet the demand here in Thailand. So to tell us about how he researched his book, the geopolitical reality of how Cartels operate and what the Unstoppable supply means to Thailand, here is my interview with our buddy Patrick Wynn. All right. I am very happy to welcome back for the third time to the Bangkok Podcast, the returning champion, one of the nicest guys I know and one of the best authors around on Southeast Asia, our buddy Patrick Win. Patrick, welcome back to the podcast, man.

Patrick 00:04:16 Thrilled to be back for the three peat.

Greg 00:04:19 Yeah, it's not in person unfortunately. I always enjoy sitting across the table from you. it's very fun to chatter and gossip and catch up, but, we're online this time. Almost as good. Still a pleasure to talk to you. Anytime.

Patrick 00:04:30 Yeah, man. Let's let's dig in.

Greg 00:04:32 Well, we wanted to have you back because for, for whatever reason, just, serendipity or just the way things go, some of the people that we've been lucky enough to talk to over the past few months have all sort of orbited around the issue of Myanmar, Burma, and how it relates to Thailand. And that's what we're going to be talking about today, too. you are aware, well-known author, you have some really compelling ideas and books that you, that you that you have written. the latest one is called Narco Topia in Search of the Asian Drug Cartel that survived the CIA. And I have full, full disclosure. I have not read it because, as we discussed with your in-laws, who were also recent guests on the show, Paul and Jung Rat, I am a terribly slow reader, and it has no reflection whatsoever on the quality of the material I'm not reading, but by all accounts, this book is excellent, so tell us a little bit about it and how it came together.

Patrick 00:05:27 Yeah, it's about what I consider to be the most fascinating place on the planet, which is a place called War state. So inside the borders of Myanmar, there is a veritable country. What state is area wise? It's about it has its controls about as much soil as the Netherlands. and part of it is on the the border with China, Myanmar's border with China. And another big part of it is on the border of Thailand. So if you were to go due north from certain places in Thailand, in Chiang Mai Province and Chiang Rai Province, on the map, it would look like you were going into Myanmar. And I suppose technically, from a UN standpoint, that's the country you're going to, but more likely than not, you would run into soldiers. You would run into an entire government that is completely outside the control of of Myanmar's military government. It's a completely separate thing.

Greg 00:06:27 It's that's a that's a that's a fascinating idea, because, you know, the things we joke about in Canada and I'm sure in America too, you know, like when you cross into Quebec, like, oh, you know, there's a different and a whole different area, you know, or, you know, I'm from Alberta.

Greg 00:06:38 We go into British Columbia. It's like, well, you know, you're in B.C. now. You got to act like this with the granolas over here. But it's literally almost a different country within another country. Like you said, it's totally separate.

Patrick 00:06:49 Strong distinction. I don't know how things are going there now, but I think if you were to roll into Quebec from another part of Canada, they would not hold you at gunpoint and demand, you know, what the hell are you doing here?

Greg 00:07:02 probably true.

Patrick 00:07:03 Probably not. Right? Probably not. Maybe certain parts. yeah. With what state? In Myanmar. That's absolutely what would happen. I mean, you would be detained by the WA authorities. You would look up, you'd probably be at a military garrison, and you would look up and you'd see a flag. That is not the flag of Myanmar. It would be the war flag. and this is true even if you are a Burmese soldier. So if a Burmese platoon got lost and very stupidly wandered into WA State, they would be quickly grabbed and asked, what are you doing here? Now? That's highly unusual because again, according to the UN, according to the way things work in most countries, the central military can go wherever it wants.

Patrick 00:07:46 But what state is really this completely separate entity and it exists to preserve the homeland of this indigenous group known as the War and the War. People I've been fascinated with with war, state and war culture for more than ten years, I mean, ever since I heard about them. if you ask people that know about the war in Southeast Asia, you usually get a very negative reaction to put like a fine point on it, people are pretty racist towards this group. they are considered, more brutal than average. They're considered more mysterious than average. All of these really negative tropes. Part of this has to do with they their history as head hunters. And I mean that literally for centuries, running up until about the 1960s, war fortresses up in the mountains would display the skulls of rivals. And it worked as effectively, like a no trespassing sign. culture is very, isolationist. I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean that in the same way that you could go to the Ozarks or Chechnya or mountains in any part of the world, and people like to do their own thing.

Patrick 00:09:07 They don't like to be controlled by low landers. That's that's their deal. And they would post skulls on sticks. in part, I mean, there's I could go into all the reasons they did this, but in part to keep outsiders out of a certain area. And even like when the British, colonizers came in in the 1800s and they're like, all right, we're going to control Burma now. And that includes the war. they were scared off by this. There was a, a letter that a village sent to the British Empire, in the late 1800s. And it read, please return by the route you came. Ours is a wild country, and the people devour. Rats and squirrels roar. Our people and yours have nothing in common. So when I, when I. When I read that, I laughed. I actually don't think they eat squirrels. Roar. I've never seen any any evidence. But you can see the the point is like we are a smaller group than you. You may be more powerful, but we're going to scare the hell out of you.

Patrick 00:10:07 It's a very effective deterrence strategy.

Greg 00:10:10 That's that's some that's some badass psycho psyops, you know, psychological warfare.

Patrick 00:10:15 Hey! It worked. The British claimed that they conquered the area and they didn't, so they just put it. They included it. That's why it's in Burma now. They included it on the maps of Burma. I'm like, yep, this is all ours. but.

Greg 00:10:28 Don't don't double check it. But just trust us.

Patrick 00:10:30 Yeah. Don't don't look it up on Snopes or anything, but this.

Greg 00:10:33 Is,

Patrick 00:10:34 This they didn't actually control it. It remained, effectively, independently controlled by these, like, fortress like villages. And so if you were to go in there at that time, even in parts of the 1960s, certain areas, you would see these walled settlements, with a big heavy door. the, the, the skulls on sticks would be scattered around the settlement if somehow you made it inside, you would see these, like, thatched, houses. And they were actually quite big.

Patrick 00:11:10 I mean, you could have, like, a thousand homes inside this giant walled fortress and even even, like, from mountaintop to mountaintop. The war didn't necessarily get along. So sometimes those skulls would be from the rival. settlement may be a day's walk away. I mean, they just weren't cohesive as a people. You see this all over the world in mountains like Hatfield McCoy type stuff where, like, it's just hard to create a strong, cohesive society in a really, like, aggressive landscape like that, you know, where to go to the next village over. You have to go down a mountain and back up another one. So that's, that's historically the that's what the war were about. And, up until about the 60s, that was that was how they lived. So that feeds into this reputation that still exist. You'll you'll hear Thai soldiers along that border who I've talked to say like, oh, they're so brutal, like they're viewed as hyper aggressive and really, really good fighting mountain folk.

Greg 00:12:22 Oh, wow. Interesting. The, well, I just have to say, the only thing that comes to mind is when you said that that epic, rebuttal to the British was the the, letter that Persia sent to the Spartans a few years ago, a few centuries ago. And it said, you know, if if we come into your country, we'll burn your fields, rape your women and kill all the children or something like that. And the single word reply was if you know.

Patrick 00:12:47 But even in that message. Not subtle.

Greg 00:12:50 Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. So that's that's so fascinating. It's it's. Man, I got a million questions. But talk about how this book came together then. I mean, you're obviously that's a fascinating sort of a subculture might not be the right word, but that sounds like a great, base for for an investigative story or some, some, some deeper looks into how they operate. But how did you decide to do this book and how did it come together?

Patrick 00:13:16 so I was sort of talking about the war as they existed, pre 1960s today.

Patrick 00:13:23 as I insinuated, you know, they've basically run their own country inside of a country in Myanmar. and the other thing that the war really infamous for is, their homeland is a base for methamphetamine manufacturing. So all of the yaba pills that swim through Thailand, a lot of them do come from from war territory. And principally they're viewed by the US and the Thai government as a narcotics trafficking group. I argue, of course, that they you can be that and you can be a fairly sophisticated government that's probably here to stay. So I have wanted to get access to the senior leadership of the war for, I mean, more than a decade. And so over the years, if I knew anyone that might have an in, like if I was interviewing another armed group that has like, territory adjacent to the war, at the end of the interview, I would say, how can I can you put me in touch with the war leaders? Is there anything that you can do? and at least once I got back a response that was a very polite like, we are not receiving guests at this time.

Patrick 00:14:35 So, and then other times I got more of a curt, like, no, they don't want to talk to you. So in 2019, I was making yet another attempt and I went to a city called Lazio. Lazio is in Myanmar. It's about 50 miles, west of La Territory. And in Lazio. The war government has a quote unquote embassy. So again, they're not a recognized country, but they're such a country that they have an embassy in Myanmar. and there's a, you know, quote unquote ambassador that works there to, you know, liaise with the Myanmar government. So, I had an inkling that this person would talk to me and if I just showed up. And so when I showed up, I met the acquaintance of a guy who was a war, English speaking former war officer. how I found him was quite by luck. I reached out to a local travel agency in Lazio and I said, do you know anyone who speaks war and English? And they said, oh yeah, there's this guy, why don't you, why don't you get in touch with him? And that was it.

Patrick 00:15:55 So that's my first stroke of luck. Like, oh, wow. So now I land in Lazio and I'm riding around with this former officer who speaks English, which is very rare among the war. And, I tell him what I'm what I'm here to do. And he's like, yep, I know the the envoy, the ambassador. and, you know, I can go over there and help you put in your request to go visit lost and principally remember, Greg. The goal is to interview a leader. So that's that's what I really want to do. I want to know what it looks like from from the inside. and, you know, I'm not just trying to go on sort of like a North Korea style, tour where they show me the highlights I want to really talk to somebody about what it's like. so this guy, my translator, we really hit it off, and he invites me over for dinner. I'm at his house. I'm eating like, this wonderful fried fish and a a war dish called Mike, which is sort of like a risotto.

Patrick 00:16:59 It's quite good.

Patrick 00:17:02 And he's having me repeat, like, you know, what do you what do you actually want to do? Like, I'd love to talk to one of the leaders. You know, this is a difficult request because, two of the top leaders are wanted by the DEA for drug trafficking, so they're not inclined to want to speak to me. An American, a journalist, you say?

Greg 00:17:22 Yes. Bring them in.

Patrick 00:17:22 Yeah, right. I mean, it's sort of. I wouldn't compare these figures directly, but, like, it's like, oh, I'm just trying to have a chat with El Chapo, like, oh, well. Yeah, that's that's not easy.

Greg 00:17:33 He's out back by the pool. Just go right in.

Patrick 00:17:35 Right. And so the translator, I'm sitting at the dinner table with him and his wife kind of nodding along, and then he turns to his wife and speaks to her, in a language I don't understand. It was actually Burmese.

Patrick 00:17:52 They speak Burmese. Sometimes they speak while other times, and she's kind of like, gets this look on her face. And then she gets up from the table and goes into the back garden and starts making phone calls.

Patrick 00:18:06 Did not know where this was headed. Okay. Sorry. Oh, no. Who is she? I'm bringing up drug traffickers over dinner. Why? Why are phone calls being made? What's going.

Greg 00:18:16 On? Yeah, man. Geez.

Patrick 00:18:20 so when she comes back and sits down, they converse a bit, and then he turns to me and he's like, okay, Mr. Patrick, I have good news. I said, okay, what's the good news? He's like, we we are going to take you to meet a, a very important war leader. I said, okay. It's like, yeah, he lives just a five minute walk up the road. He's my father in law.

Greg 00:18:42 Oh, geez.

Patrick 00:18:44 Oh, convenient.

Greg 00:18:48 So this woman called her dad.

Patrick 00:18:50 She called her Dad. She called her dad. It's like there's a guy once this American guy that wants to talk to you. So we walk up the street a little bit, and there's this house surrounded by steel gates. I can see security cameras on the awnings. and a like a servant opens the gate and lets us in and tells us to sit down. at some point, tea is served, and we're kind of waiting for the the man of the house to come down. Right? already I can see sitting in the house that he's someone important because I look up and I see a picture of him in full war uniform on the wall, like in a place of pride on the wall. And this, like, golden frame. And it just really struck me that I had never seen a picture, such a grandiose picture of a of a war officer like usually there, discussed in through the view of the DEA. Like, these guys are all, jungle mafia guys or.

Greg 00:19:52 Rebels and.

Patrick 00:19:53 Yes. Yeah, drug traffickers and all that. Yeah. so he finally comes down. It's a man in his 70s, and he's kind of shuffles out and I realize this is a former top three leader of the war organization of war state. Wow.

Greg 00:20:13 who was he?

Patrick 00:20:14 His name is Saul Liu. And in the book I compare him to, like the Ben Franklin of Founding War State, they finally.

Greg 00:20:22 Wow.

Patrick 00:20:23 Scott got his big score, I got Oregon, they got organized in 1989 to create War State as we know it today. So the quote unquote country has been around for a couple of decades, and he was fundamental in getting it started, and he was their principal foreign liaison. So he came in and sat down and sort of conferred with the translator that I'd hired and kind of looked me over. He's like, so you're American? I said, yeah, kind of.

Greg 00:20:58 Sorry about that.

Patrick 00:20:59 Sorry. Literally the worst thing you can be sitting in his, I would think you would think would be the worst thing, but it actually wasn't.

Patrick 00:21:07 He, he actually seemed to comfort him to a degree. And he's like, all right, what do you want to know? And that began a conversation that went well into the night. I stuck around and talked to him many, many more times than I got the inside story through his eyes of how the state was created and the reason he felt comfortable talking to me in part was because as our conversations went on and on, he finally confided to me that for much of his time with the government, he was also a DEA informant.

Greg 00:21:48 Oh, Jesus.

Patrick 00:21:49 So I wasn't the first American that had asked him a lot of nosy questions. So. Wow, that's that's more or less the book. a lot of it is focused on the life of this, this particular man, and his work with the DEA, the DEA mission to undermine the war. And then at one point, this guy convinces the DEA it should actually, join hands with the war. It's a very bizarre and fascinating story. When the CIA gets involved.

Patrick 00:22:23 it gets even more messy.

Greg 00:22:25 Well, as we all know, the CIA has a stellar track record of interfering in other countries, governments and gray market economies and things like that. What could go wrong. And.

Patrick 00:22:34 Well, they have they have a, they have an incredible ability to not predict the outcome of their interventions. I think you see that over and over in my book where an idea that seems good at the time, let's undermine this group. Let's use this, these drug traffickers as intelligence operatives, how that has this spillover effect that nobody predicts.

Greg 00:23:01 Right, right. Cut to the closing credits of the original release of Rambo First Blood Part two, where they thank the gallant fighters of the mujahideen.

Patrick 00:23:08 That's part three, Greg.

Greg 00:23:10 Oh you're right. Oh, score! That's five points for you, man. Rambo. Rambo two takes place in in Vietnam and it was co-written by James Cameron. Rambo three was an underrated classic. Anyway, that is a crazy story. A good thing you didn't say you were a Canadian.

Greg 00:23:25 You would have thrown you out on his on your ass. what? Let's let's bring this back to, to Thailand a little bit because this is the Bangkok Podcast, of course. diplomatically, how does Thailand deal with this sub country on its border with the official country?

Patrick 00:23:43 Yeah.

Patrick 00:23:45 You know, it's fascinates me the degree to which publicly, at least the Thai government ignores this as a problem. So the, the Thai strategy is when it's talking about drug trafficking, it often says it uses phrases like, Putin ban or neighbors. It doesn't like to say, yeah, we just intercepted a motherlode of meth coming out of Myanmar. And it has all the hallmarks of being produced. In what state? They just resist saying that. They always say, oh, it's from our neighbors.

Greg 00:24:20 oh, okay.

Patrick 00:24:21 This is in part a an attempt to maintain diplomacy with Myanmar because they catch so much meth and here in Thailand that if every day they had a press conference like, yep, more meth from Myanmar and meet us back here tomorrow, there'll be more meth from Myanmar and on Tuesday, more meth from Myanmar.

Patrick 00:24:41 And so I think they just don't want to like, drive the screws that hard. okay. So that's publicly they don't say much. Interestingly, during the toxin administration, he wanted to go gung ho and actually mount raids into what state to destroy their meth labs, kind of like in the US. Now there's talk of let's bomb the cartels. I mean, it was it was like that. And so the toxin administration, I don't know about him personally, but the administration and the military at the time thought that the US would support that, with material and, and all types of support. And then the US said, maybe. Maybe later. I mean, the war on terror was heating up. It just wasn't something the US wanted to get involved in. As you probably know, like meth, the meth that comes out of Myanmar mostly, mostly stays in Southeast Asia because Southeast Asians are well-off enough or middle class enough, I should say, to afford a meth habit. Some of it goes to Australia quite a bit, actually, but it doesn't go all the way to Vancouver and it doesn't go all the way to New York City.

Patrick 00:25:57 Heroin produced here used to go to those places, but now meth is produced in Myanmar. Makes some you know, the meth economy is like 60, $70 billion a year. And it Southeast Asians, Asians in general are rich enough to support their own drug trade. So the reason I mention that is just because the US realized that that was where the trend lines were going, and if it mounts a commando style raid Into. Even if it's a meth lab, it's officially the sovereign soil of Myanmar. and then has to explain why it's like, well, they're making a lot of meth. Oh, my God, how many Americans are smoking it? None. So it's hard to justify.

Greg 00:26:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. That's amazing. that's an incredible amount of money. Let's talk. Let's talk drugs. And have you ever tried this yaba, this, meth coming out of them? Just like, you know, as an investigative journalist, I would have thought that maybe you want to.

Patrick 00:26:59 I haven't, you know, I might be the Only person that's Embarrassed to say he hasn't tried meth.

Greg 00:27:04 I'm the only Canadian I know who hasn't smoked weed, so. Oh, boy, I feel your shame.

Patrick 00:27:09 That's more embarrassing.

Patrick 00:27:11 No. I've been around a lot of people smoking it. I've been in rooms where, police officers have cut open bags of it, and it smells. I always say it smells exactly like the cream filling of an Oreo. Or like a vanilla frosting birthday cake. It smells very sickly sweet. and yeah, if you cut open a bag with, like, 10,000 pills in it, it smells like you're in Willy Wonka's factory or something. It's like. It's like Candy land.

Greg 00:27:42 that's that's an alternate universe, Dark Willy Wonka.

Patrick 00:27:45 You know? Yeah.

Greg 00:27:46 Little oompa loompas manning a meth lab. Oh, God.

Patrick 00:27:52 but no, I the answer is no. I'm sorry. Sorry, folks.

Greg 00:27:56 That's okay, that's okay.

Greg 00:27:57 Maybe there's there'll be a sequel to this book. what? How do they make it and why? Why did they settle on this drug? Why not, you know, hacking or why not heroin or why not coffee?

Patrick 00:28:09 Yeah. So originally the war people, their landscape, they were producing a lot of opium. And the reason they do that is because in Wall Street proper, which is this area, stuck to the Chinese border. The about the only substance that grows there that has any market value is opium. And, you know, it doesn't. It's really it's like the Rockies or something like the the it's not good for growing rice. It's not good for growing corn. I mean, they do grow it, but it's hard to find even a piece of land that's flat enough to, to, to grow food to eat. And certainly if they wanted an economy where they're growing like tomatoes and onions, they're so far from, other cities that all those vegetables would be rotten by the time they got to the market.

Patrick 00:29:01 So for the longest, longest time, they were growing opium and then more like, say, 35 years ago when Wall Street arose, there was a concerted effort to produce heroin from that opium. And so they became one of the primary heroin suppliers to the region in the world, Myanmar writ large, was responsible for at least half of the heroin coming to the US. And I'm going to assume that covers Canada, too. So and the WA were big, big players in that. So traditionally it was opium and then heroin. The meth started seeing the meth earliest, earliest in the mid 90s, but it really popped off in the early 2000, and it was a very strategic move to move away from opium and heroin, which had this awful reputation on the world stage and really had the DEA hot and bothered to meth because the for one thing, it's easier to produce, if you want to make a brick of heroin like a kilo of heroin, you need the equivalent of about ten kilos of opium, and someone's got to grow that.

Patrick 00:30:14 Yeah, and then you need this, like army of peasant laborers who are going to grow it. And, oh, if the CIA or the DEA want to know how much you're growing? They'll just spy on you from their satellites in space. And it's just it's no good meth you make inside a lab. The lab can be pretty small. It doesn't have to be huge. The chemicals are really just synthetic chemicals that are used mostly in China's, pharma production industry. So a lot of the medicine that people around the world take is made in China. They're going through many, many barrels of chemicals to make your headache pill or whatever. And for sinus pills, there's this chemical called pseudoephedrine. and they the war or criminal groups allied to the WA are able to siphon off many, many, many barrels of this stuff or other precursors, get it into war state which borders China and make just mountains of meth. And they make crystal meth, which is like the stuff you would see on Breaking Bad, and then they make Yabba, that pink vanilla smelling pill that you either swallow or smoke off a piece of foil.

Patrick 00:31:29 And the real answer to your question why meth? Really? It's because the market here wants it. they helped create the market. If you are driving a taxi or you're mopping floors, or you're building a skyscraper, or you have this very labor intensive job or very repetitive jobs sewing sneakers, harvesting pineapple meth can make that job more pleasurable. The repetition doesn't bother you as much. It makes it less less dull and boring. You can even pull a second shift. So a lot of people in Southeast Asia, they have these types of jobs and it can actually sustain them. Of course, if you take it, if you don't sleep for three days, you're not going to be a very good, Nike shoe stitcher.

Patrick 00:32:22 So eventually you can crash out, but, people take it to work, and then, of course, people take it to party on the weekends, too. And the yaba pill, it has meth in it, but it's not as potent as crystal meth. And I know this is going to be an unpopular thing to say because we're inundated with the message that meth you do it once and you become this, salivating demon.

Patrick 00:32:46 But right, a lot of people do it recreationally. and then you'll have a certain percentage of those people that fall into severe addiction and basically throw away their lives. But there are people out there doing meth twice a month. Not every day I see and I see. Yeah, yeah.

Greg 00:33:07 It's interesting. It's interesting the the socioeconomic driver of it, you know, like you said, the, the sort of lower earning people with these repetitive, difficult jobs. Use it. You know, I think from the West, it's largely drugs are largely seen as recreational, sort of like give your weekend a little bit of a bump kind of thing, but not as something to help you be a productive member of your village or your community. You know, it's quite the opposite.

Greg 00:33:31 Yeah.

Patrick 00:33:32 I mean, obviously if your spouse is doing meth to sustain longer hours at work, that's a cause to be worried, because eventually your body will acclimate to it and you'll have to do more and more.

Patrick 00:33:48 I would if I had a friend who's like, hey, I've been doing meth, I'd be like, really? Okay being 43.

Patrick 00:33:54 I don't have friends like that anymore. But if I did, but if someone's like, hey, I've been trying heroin or I've been getting into fentanyl, I would worry about them dying. Do you know? You see the difference?

Greg 00:34:05 Yeah, totally. Totally, totally. And it's something that I think about, too. And this whole thing and I have. I'm a square and nerdy as they come. Like I said, I've never even I've never even smoked a cigarette. I'm just a super geek. and but my son is is nearly ten, and he's going to be growing up, you know, in Bangkok. And I just don't have the visibility into these scenes, into these subcultures, into these, these, these things that, that I, that I would maybe like to or would better prepare me as he gets older. And of course, he's going to be out and he's going to be offered things and stuff like that. So I mean, how how available is are these pills and how much are they and are are they incredibly common or is it sort of in dark corners of bars kind of thing?

Patrick 00:34:45 It's pretty common.

Patrick 00:34:46 If I could say something to make you feel a little bit better. As far as getting into the drug scene, I would be more worried about a kid in Seattle or Vancouver than I would here, because the drug they're going to run into here invariably is going to be meth, maybe ketamine, and if they're among the wealthier strata, cocaine. But that's really kind of a niche thing for, rich Thai kids and foreigners. Mostly what you're going to see is meth. the volume of meth consumed in the region and in Thailand is one thing. It is literally impossible to measure because we don't have, hard stats on that. What the UN will tell you is that what one former specialist at the UN told me is that they believe, between 2 and 6 billion meth pills are produced per year in Myanmar. A lot of those are coming out of WA state. That's an old stat, actually. In recent years they've been catching 1 billion. So if they're catching 1 billion. And the old DEA adage is that, you know, governments usually catch 5 to 10% of what's being produced.

Patrick 00:36:00 So that would suggest the math is very sloppy that they're producing 10 billion. I don't know if that's true, but it's in the order of billions and people are using that. And I don't know about you, Greg, but like when I walked down the street in Bangkok, I'm sure I occasionally will see somebody that looks a little whacked out. It is Bangkok. I don't see the type of, visible, intense suffering that you've seen in certain North American cities where there's just a whole street of people addicted to fentanyl, nodded out. I again, controversial statement. I think if you're going to have a drug epidemic epidemic in your country, you could actually do worse than meth. And I, I, I cringe a little saying that because I know people are going to be like, are you kidding me?

Greg 00:36:52 And yeah, right, right. But what is this guy on meth?

Patrick 00:36:57 Breakfast tea actually. But the it I'm just I'm just saying so much is produced that means so much is consumed.

Patrick 00:37:05 They're producing it because the market demand is there. We have yet to hit the saturation point, so I, I don't know how much more they can produce that the market will absorb, but it's being absorbed in heavy, heavy numbers. And it's not. It's not that hard to find. I mean, once you know the number of a dealer, they will bring it to your house, on motorbike. wow. Yeah, it's it's very easy to get if you know people. And let's say you're Thai and you have Thai high school friends, you'll know the person to call the guy or girl that knows the dealer's number, and you're you're off and running. A lot of people will try it and not like it. And so they might only do it once a year or never again. That's seldom talked about. It's, you know, it's speed, right. Makes you feel you talk too much, you become annoying and you can't go to sleep.

Greg 00:38:04 A lot of people I know don't even need drugs to be like that. Exactly.

Greg 00:38:07 I'm just reading a story here from Al-Jazeera, which, from about six months ago. That said, Thai police seized more than 15 million meth pills and other illegal substances worth 300 million baht in what authorities said was one of the largest drug hauls so far this year. And there's a massive pile of pink pills in plastic bags. yeah. So it's it's incredible the amount of stuff they're just pumping out and pumping across the border.

Patrick 00:38:31 I'll add this. so I mentioned before the the key ingredient you need to make crystal meth is pseudoephedrine. Something that we've seen, in criminal groups that are active in, in what state now is the ability to produce precursors to the precursors. So there is a there's a chemical, the name of which I've forgotten that you can use to make pseudoephedrine and pseudoephedrine. If anybody who's ever bought Sudafed at a store in, say, the US might notice they keep it behind the counter, or if you try to buy five boxes, they'll be like, what? No you can't.

Patrick 00:39:11 Can't buy that because it has pseudoephedrine in it. It's a regulated chemical. this other chemical is not as heavily regulated. It has more benign uses, but you can use it to make the pseudo. And then you make the pseudo to make the meth. That helps explain the volume. Because if you can, if you can acquire a chemical very easily on, on the world market and then essentially turn that into cash aka meth, you're just going to keep doing it and doing it and doing it, and you don't care how much the Thai police sees. Oh, so, oh, they're going to seize 5% of your total product offering, right?

Greg 00:39:51 Right.

Patrick 00:39:51 I can live with that.

Greg 00:39:52 Right? That's just the cost of doing business.

Patrick 00:39:54 Yeah.

Greg 00:39:55 Wow. Well, you know what I'm going to do, man? I'm on the Amazon site right now. I just, clicked on the Kindle button. By now. I'm not sure if you're going to get a pop up immediately in your email or how that system works or anything like that.

Greg 00:40:07 Probably not. But anyway, I bought it. It's being sent to my Kindle as we speak. I'm really looking forward to reading it. It'll probably take me about a year, but I'll get to it.

Patrick 00:40:15 Now, can I just say this? I was surprised, as anyone, to find out that Amazon named it one of the top 20 books released so far in 2024. amazing. That includes Lsat prep guides, coloring books.

Greg 00:40:31 Out of all those books.

Patrick 00:40:34 I'm in the top 20. I hate to brag on myself, but I did. I did have to like, okay, Salman Rushdie released a book in the last six months. So to John Grisham.

Greg 00:40:45 There's been no new Harry Potter books recently.

Patrick 00:40:47 That would have knocked me out. But no, I think they ranked my number 12. So I've been really, pleased with the reception that it's received. what I hope to do, just as a concluding thought here is the wow people, those who most people have never heard of them, those who have heard of them inevitably have a negative attitude towards them.

Patrick 00:41:11 I wanted to show the nuance here. So my first book, Hello Shadowlands, I talked to a lot of, mid-level low level drug traffickers and drug users, and I tried to humanize them. The point is not that, doing drugs is cool. The point is, these are people who have their own unique motives, and I'd like to explore them here. I leveled up and I went to, the most sought after Asian, drug producing organization. And I wanted to know their story. And as I got into it, I realized that their motives actually made a lot of sense. I'm not saying they're right or wrong. I understand why they're producing drugs. It's to sustain their own veritable nation state. And so this is kind of a career trend for me. I will look at groups that are, Traditionally look down upon and try to at least understand their motivation. So I hope that it helps people get a nuanced view of not just drug trafficking, but of this indigenous group who I talked to a lot of war people for this book.

Patrick 00:42:20 Some of them remain very close friends of mine and people I really adore. And, that's it. Yeah, I hope, I hope people like it.

Greg 00:42:29 Well, I'm looking forward to it, man. It's it's it's gotten a lot of really good, feedback, a lot of good star ratings all over the internet as I'm looking around here. So, it's fascinating work, man. And kudos to you for for that incredible story. I mean, I'm sitting in the middle of of what must have been a very unfamiliar situation, and then finding yourself suddenly talking to the top, one of the top guys must have been must have been a trip. So, that's that's the journalist. No sniffing out those leads. And and good on you for doing that. And that's great. Crazy story.

Patrick 00:42:57 Thanks, Craig. I'm going to go try to think of something to do with my life that will merit a fourth appearance on On Bangkok podcast. It's going to be tough. I gotta just.

Greg 00:43:07 Just keep being you, man.

Greg 00:43:08 Just keep being you.

Patrick 00:43:09 I don't think that's gonna cut it.

Greg 00:43:13 All right. Thanks, man. Everyone go check out the book. Narco topia and your previous book two. Hello, Shadowlands. I did read that one, and I enjoyed that one a lot. So yeah, check it out everyone, and thanks, man. We will talk to you soon, hopefully in person across a table laden with food and beer.

Patrick 00:43:27 I love it, I love it, love it, love it. All right. Cool. Peace. Thanks, man.

Ed 00:43:40 Dude, this is such a cool topic. You know, this this world of Burma's drug cartels is so unknown. compared to, like, Mexican drug cartels, Colombia looks like in the West, just in pop culture were all over, like Pablo Escobar and drug cartel like. I feel like the average person could, you know, it's like the Mafia. It's like where we know about it. But. But it's like, for some reason, like, Myanmar is just a it's just a black hole.

Greg 00:44:08 Yeah. You know, it reminds me of a movie I saw years ago that I really quite liked, but it was a famous bomb. It was called Sahara with Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn. I thought it was a fun adventure movie. but they were in Africa and they were dealing with some warlord, and he said something that for some reason stuck with me and he they said like, oh, like the world's going to be so mad about what you're doing. And this guy simply said, no one cares about Africa. And I feel kind of the same way with Burma. Like, there's so much horrible stuff going on over there. And there's, there's there's so much sort of geopolitical tension coming out of that region. But no one is talking outside of outside of Thailand and outside of this region.

Ed 00:44:46 No, you're right, you're right. And I mean, you and I have talked about how how we wish we knew more and we're trying to up our game. We've had a number of, experts on Burma on the show in the last year.

Greg 00:44:56 So we're getting in the last like three months. And we should just say, I know, like, this is not planned. It's just so happens that all of the people who are available to chat to us lately have.

Ed 00:45:07 Been, no, let's screw that. Let's pretend it was planned. Let's tell people, this is this is our been our Burmese series all along. We just never announced it. This is like you're right.

Greg 00:45:15 Disregard that. Disregard that. This is part of a larger well thought out strategy by. That's right. So.

Ed 00:45:23 No, I love it. And it's, you know, we talked about this before about Patrick's earlier book. It's, you know, like, you know, you and I know him in person. He's a very smart, funny guy. Yeah, he's he just seems, you know, whatever normal mainstream dude. But then he's he's fairly intrepid, you know, he, like, I'm not saying he's, he's not out there on, like, the frontlines of wars, like, not quite like that.

Ed 00:45:46 But he does seem to go on these crazy adventures that you, you know, meeting him, he doesn't seem like necessarily that kind of guy who's going to be, like, meeting these crazy characters in, you know, in Burma and. Right. Just You know what I mean right now.

Greg 00:46:01 I mean, I mean, you know, Patrick, if you're listening, I mean, this is all love, but, you know, he looks he looks like a great ten science teacher. He's very clean cut guys. Very neat and very funny and cool and friendly. And, he's also very handsome. I actually don't like him that much. He's just, like, the perfect guy. No, but, you know, you read the book and you hear his stories, and he's up in the mountains and he's talking to us, right? Yeah. Drug lords. And he's going into these areas that you shouldn't maybe not go into. It's a crazy.

Ed 00:46:27 Like, you know, a guy like Joe Cummings who looks like like a hippie, like picture like you could see Joe Cummings doing that kind of crazy shit, right? You know?

Greg 00:46:34 Right.

Greg 00:46:35 Yeah. But, no, Patrick does some great stuff, and I, you know, he's been here a long time. I remember seeing, you know, during the 2010 Red Shirt riots when people were shooting people on the streets. He was running around doing interviews with people hiding behind rows of tires and pylons and stuff like that. Like he's. Yeah, he's got some balls and,

Ed 00:46:52 He's pretty intrepid and he's, he's just a great storyteller. I mean, obviously he's got his books, which, you know what really matters. But the way I got to know him was through our old storytelling event. Books that we used to do. I heard him tell, like, I don't know, 3 or 4 stories for that. And, he's a great storyteller.

Greg 00:47:11 Yeah, and a great author, too. And this book is called Narco Topia. It's available everywhere. And his previous book, hello, Shadowlands, which he was on also to talk about a few years ago. Also a great read.

Greg 00:47:22 So yeah, many thanks, Patrick, for coming on the show. Always fun to sit down and chat. You're doing some great stuff, so everyone out there make sure to pick up the book. you'll get some really, really cool insights into an area like we said, that maybe needs more, more light shone on it for sure.

Ed 00:47:36 Yeah.

Greg 00:47:38 All right, let's get into some love, loathe or live with where one of us picks a particular aspect of living in Bangkok, which we discussed to decide if it's something we love about living here, loathe about living here, or have come to accept as something that we just have to learn to live with no matter how we feel about it. And this weekend, I'm going to throw something your way.

Ed 00:47:54 All right, I'm ready man, as always.

Greg 00:47:57 So I'm curious about how you think about this. And I just sort of was confronted with this the other day and it sort of something rubbed me the wrong way. And, I was listening to someone talk to a guy, and he referred to himself as hi-so, and I'll front load this one and say that I loathe this. I really, really hate when people do this. Rubs me the wrong way. What do you think?

Ed 00:48:24 I, I think I'm going to agree. I think you and I, you and I have similar backgrounds. There's something I forget how it's kind of an old joke about, the US and maybe Canada, where there's where there's a big middle class. When, when when there's a big middle class, you actually think that there's no classes. Like, it's like you just kind of. You do. I mean, in a way, it's a good thing you just have this kind of egalitarian mindset. And I think I did I make this joke on the podcast, I can't remember. I remember when a buddy of mine realized a buddy of mine in high school realized that a friend of ours owned horses, and we were like, is she rich?

Greg 00:49:06 Oh, like it's interesting.

Ed 00:49:08 Yeah, we were trying to, like, process because we just thought all of us are the same.

Ed 00:49:12 And of course, like, neither. Neither me or my buddy's family, like, had had enough money to own horses. Right. And then we we heard that she owned horse and we were like, I remember trying to process like, wait, is she like, in another class, like. Or is she not what we are? You know.

Greg 00:49:28 That's that's funny.

Ed 00:49:29 It's like like I think if you. This is not true everywhere in the US. But I think if you grew up in the Midwest, if you, if you're middle class. I was just not aware of class, I was I mean, again, I know I'm not bragging or I don't know, I'm just being honest. Like, I totally was unaware of class. I was unaware I was unaware of poor people and and wealthy people except in the movies. So obviously I know that they exist. But walking around my neighborhood and my school, everyone looked the same.

Greg 00:50:01 That's interesting because I grew up. When I grew up, we were fairly we were fairly poor.

Greg 00:50:05 We were very sort of lower middle class, you know, but still there's sort of a there's a social dynamic there that I also knew friends who had horses and giant ranches. Granted, I lived in the hick prairies, but so it was a bit more common. But still, even though they were wealthier than us, they were still no better than us. We were eating right.

Ed 00:50:25 Yeah. Agreed.

Greg 00:50:26 Yeah, yeah, but but I think in Thailand the term hi-so for those who might not know it, it's short. Short for high society. I think that sort of carries with it and implied bitterness. Like I belong to the upper strata and I'm better than you.

Ed 00:50:41 No, there's definitely more, class consciousness here. There's definitely more. I think social stratification and I think that, quote unquote high soul people. I think their lives actually really are different. And and just among my Thai friends who I think are Thai middle class, when they talk about when they talk about high.

Ed 00:51:06 So Thais, they, they really talk about them like, oh, they're high. So like as in a totally different set of rules applies to them. You know, it's like it's like the, you know, there's just basically Thai people and then there's the high. So and it's just they're just they're living a completely different life.

Greg 00:51:25 I got pulled over by the police and I was so drunk. Well he's high so. So he's not going to go to jail. Yeah.

Ed 00:51:29 But I mean, yeah, anyone who who called the attention of that or labeled themselves high. So that would just rub my Ohio sensibilities the wrong way.

Greg 00:51:38 Yeah I agree.

Ed 00:51:39 Yeah. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. Loathe here. That's that's un un egalitarian.

Greg 00:51:45 Loathe on this one from a couple of low-so fools.

Ed 00:51:48 That's right. That's exactly right.

Greg 00:51:51 So middle sides. it's great.

Ed 00:51:54 A final thanks to our patrons who support the show. Patrons get a ton of cool perks and the warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that they're helping and are never ending.

Ed 00:52:01 Quest for cool content. Find out more by clicking support on our website and connect with us online. Where Bangkok podcasts on social media Bangkok podcast.com on the web or simply Bangkok Podcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from our listeners and always reply to our messages.

Greg 00:52:19 That's right, you can listen to each episode on YouTube, send us a voicemail through our website, will feature on the show. Hit me up on threads at BCC. Greg, thank you for listening everyone, and we'll see you back here next week for sure.