ON THE HEROIN TRAIL

May 1978, written by Garry Marchant

My decade as the Vancouver magazine travel columnist changed my life, turning my long-time love of travel into a full-time job. I ventured from the icy wastes of the Antarctic to the sultry beaches of Polynesia and from the Galapagos to Tibet. I rode the Concorde from New York to London and savoured the luxury of a suite on the legendary liner QE2 on the way back.

I also wrote features, including an exposé of Filipino faith healers, an account of my year as editor of the Brazil Herald in Rio de Janeiro, and a story on the heroin trail from Thailand to Vancouver.

For that story I went to northern Thailand, where I saw hill tribes harvesting the opium, making incisions on the poppy buds, then scraping off the sap. In Bangkok, I learned how the labs turned the opium into heroin and how it was smuggled out. I also visited a prison in Bangkok to interview Canadian drug dealers, including Ricky from Montreal.

Back home, I spent a night on the streets with the Vancouver Police drug squad.

Sometime after the story appeared, I got a letter from Ricky. He was being released from prison and intended to stay with me in Vancouver for a while before continuing on to Montreal. I fretted about this for months, but Ricky never turned up. On my next visit to Bangkok, I contacted an RCMP officer at the Canadian embassy. He told me that Ricky was stopped at the airport with a load of heroin and was back in prison.

Travel writing was never so nerve-racking. — Garry Marchant, columnist, 1977 to 1989