Bali's notorious prison Kerobokan or Hotel K has prisoners of different nationalities. Only few manage to check out of this hellhole, where drugs, rape and instances of corruption are an everyday affair. Ex-Aussie journalist Kathryn Bonella spent several months in Indonesia to lay bare their stories

Melbourne resident Kathryn Bonella chanced upon Hotel K when she was producing a show for CBS News on Schapelle Corby, a 27-year-old Australian who was caught with 4.2 kg of marijuana at Bali's Denpasar Airport in 2004. Corby was sentenced to 20 years in Hotel K, Indonesia's most notorious prison that houses druglords, rapists, and murderers from around the world.

Bonella produced the show, but decided to quit television soon after. By the end of 2005, she moved to Bali to co-author Corby's autobiography (No More Tomorrows, 2006), visiting her twice a day over the following 11 months. Then, in January 2008, Bonella returned to Bali, this time to write about the prison.

What was the impetus to write about Hotel K?
I've always had a passion for great human stories, and Schapelle's story and those of other westerners locked inside Hotel K, were worth investing years of research and interviewing to turn them into a book. The stories I found were incredible, crazy, weird, berserk, sometimes funny and often heart wrenching.


Imam Samudra used a laptop in his Hotel K cell to not only
write his autobiography but also to recruit suicide bombers for
the second Bali bombing in 2005

It was during the months of interviewing Schapelle that I saw the wild, crazy, violent and sex-crazed world inside Hotel K. Western and local inmates regularly came up to Schapelle and me for a chat, stoned, drunk or just wanting to stave off the interminable boredom that invades the psyche of every prisoner.

I was fascinated by how this sketchy little society operates, how those on death row or serving 20 years cope, how they make this place home because they have to, how they fill the tedious long hours.