Mugshots taken on check-in and striped pyjamas issued to people wanting to spend a night behind bars

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Surely, it’s a tourist’s worst nightmare.

A holiday to the pristine beaches of southeast Asia turns ugly after a boozy night, and you wake up bleary-eyed in a dingy prison.

Not according to one hotelier, who believes there is a market for Thailand’s prison experience.

Sittichai Chaivoraprug, 55, built a hostel on the outskirts of the capital Bangkok that has nine tiny, dark rooms and cement walls with bunk beds for those seeking an authentic night in jail.

The sliding doors at Sook Station are made with thick bars, although two rooms have a solitary confinement-style metal door with peep holes. A minuscule barred-window looks out to the street. Only the air-conditioning and wifi break the illusion.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Behind bars: a bunk room at the Sook Station. Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

“If we can make this experience here, then people don’t have to be charged with a crime to experience prison life,” says Sittichai, who set up the hostel six months ago with his wife.

Guests can buy striped pyjamas on check-in and pose at a wall with a height chart where they can have their mugshots taken.



Saying his biggest inspiration was the 1994 prison drama The Shawshank Redemption, starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, Sittichai was warned by friends that the hostel could be a flop.

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Several customers have been horrified by what many visitors say is a genuine imitation of detention.



“Some guests have come based on recommendations from their friends. But once they checked in to the hostel, they immediately asked to check out,” says Sittichai.



The hostel belies the true nature of detention in Thailand, where many facilities have a small hole in the floor for excrement and inmates sleep on the floor in overcrowded cells. One jail in the capital, dubbed the Bangkok Hilton, is famed for violence among inmates.

Foreigners overstaying their visas, including children, and asylum seekers have also found themselves locked up in Bangkok’s squalid immigration detention centre, where a Pakistani man died in May after spending a year behind bars. Human Rights Watch says cells in the facility resemble cages.

Yet at Sook Station, business has been steady, Sittichai says, mostly from word of mouth. About half the guests, who pay between 790 to 1,630 baht a night (£18 to £38), are foreigners.



“When I built the hostel, I knew people would either love it or hate it.”