South Wales man's Thai kidnap ordeal

May 31 2007

by Abby Alford, South Wales Echo


A MAN’S dream of an idyllic retirement in the sun has been shattered after he was kidnapped, dumped in the jungle and stung by a scorpion.

Today, speaking from his hospital bed in Cardiff, former Barry businessman Gareth [UPASSENDE ORD]e spoke of his heartbreak at being left penniless and alone in Thailand, believing he was going to die.

He hopes his nightmare experience will serve as a cautionary tale to those who leave Wales to start a new life abroad.

“I literally thought I was going to die,” said Gareth, who turns 56 next month.

“After I was bitten I felt so awful I thought I had about a week left. That’s what spurred me on to find my way out of the jungle and back home to South Wales.”




Gareth, who is being treated for the scorpion sting by doctors on the infectious diseases ward at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, said his dream soured when his 28-year-old Thai wife left the family home in a remote village with her eldest son who lived as a woman, known in Thailand as a lady boy, to find work.

He said:

His wife’s male relatives forcibly evicted him from the bungalow he had built with the last of his money.

They kidnapped him and took him to the jungle.

They left him alone in a tin shack with nothing but the clothes he had on.

Gareth, who once owned a plush apartment in Barry’s prestigious Waterfront development and ran his own double-glazing firm, said: “This shack was in the middle of nowhere.

“I slept on the floor and was forced to drink dirty brown water from a stream that ran through the jungle near the hut. The only thing to eat were mangoes that grew on a tree about a mile away.

“There was nothing to do, except wash my clothes, which I did in the stream, and nobody to talk to. I didn’t try to escape because I didn’t think there was any way out.

“I saw a lot of snakes, spiders and scorpions, but I never thought I’d be stung by one.

“I got up one day and went to put my shorts on.

“They had been lying on the floor because I had nowhere to hang them.

“I felt a sharp pain. Something had stung me on the thumb.

“Then I saw a black scorpion about three to four inches long run along the ground.

“I managed to kill it with my shoe and tried to suck the poison out of my thumb but I was too late and the poison had gone through my body.

“I had a blister come out on my thumb and foot and I came out in a rash. I was in dreadful pain.

“I literally thought I was going to die. I had already lost half my body weight and I felt so bad.”

Gareth, who has two sons, Daniel, 14, and Harry, 10, from his first marriage, went to the Pattaya beach resort with friends for a three-week holiday two-and-a-half years ago.

After falling in love and marrying a 25-year-old Thai woman he met in a bar, divorced Gareth returned to South Wales to sell his business and home so he could return to Thailand and build a new life.

“I built a two-bed bungalow just outside of Pattaya for us and I never thought I would come back to the UK. I had high hopes for a fresh start and a new life,” he said.

“Initially, I was retired. But then I opened a couple of bars in Pattaya – one of which failed and one of which I sold and managed to break even on.”

After the marriage broke down, Gareth began a relationship with a 28-year-old Thai woman who had worked for him as a cashier in one of his bars.

They married and she persuaded him to move to her home village in a remote area outside Pattaya, where he built a new home for himself, his wife and her three children to live in.

He also started another business, a general store, with the last of his money.

“I spent everything I had left on the bungalow and shop,” he said.

“But the shop failed and she left the village with her eldest son, leaving me with her two girls, aged 13 and nine.

“I really don’t know where she went, but she told me she was going to find work as a masseuse.”

That was in January this year and, after four months in the jungle, Gareth said he suffered the scorpion bite on May 17.

Fearing the worst, he staggered for miles until he came across a road, which he followed to a village.

There, a woman who could not speak any English put him in touch with her lady boy son in Bangkok who rang some of Gareth’s friends, who then reached his sister Pam Roberts at her Southampton home.

“It was horrible getting that phone call,” said the 66-year-old, who is also originally from Barry.

“I was given a mobile number at which I could reach Gareth and when I got through he was so ill he could barely speak.

“All he could say was ‘Pam, Pam, home, home’.

“I just wanted to get him home and my husband got straight on to the British Embassy in Bangkok, who were brilliant.”

Pam wired money to Thailand to enable Gareth to buy a plane ticket and, with the assistance of embassy staff, Gareth flew into Heathrow from Bangkok last Wednesday.

Today, a Foreign Office spokeswoman confirmed Gareth had been given “consular assistance” and was advised to get medical help.

Pam said: “I didn’t recognise him when he was wheeled out into arrivals at Heathrow. He looked so ill.

“The embassy staff had advised us to take him straight to a hospital, but Gareth wanted to come back to South Wales so badly we drove straight down the M4 to the A&E department at the University Hospital of Wales.”

Gareth, who is now undergoing tests and has been put on antibiotics, said: “I have absolutely nothing except two pairs of trousers and about three T-shirts.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be in here, but when I do eventually leave I’ll have nowhere to live and will have to rebuild my life.”

Gareth said he has instructed a lawyer in Thailand through a friend who will be informing police about his ordeal.