Ten days ago he was spending his 34th birthday in a tiny windowless cell, where the fluorescent lights were never turned off.

Now Philip Blackwood is a free man, sitting in his family living room in Tawa, laughing through his beard while telling how a Burmese lynch mob came to hang him from the nearest tree.

"But if you don't laugh, you cry, right?" he says.

KEVIN STENT/ FAIRFAX NZ Philip Blackwood back in Wellington with fiancee Noemi Almo and daughter Sasha, 18 months.

The 34-year-old has been to hell and back, since the day in December 2014 when he posted an image on Facebook of Buddha wearing headphones, to promote cheap drinks at the bar he managed in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar.

READ MORE:

* Myanmar pardons 7000 prisoners, but not New Zealander

* Kiwi in Myanmar prison Philip Blackwood lost 20kg, parents say

* Kiwi Phil Blackwood 'forced to sleep on pallet' in Myanmar prison after insulting Buddhism

Within 24 hours, a fundamentalist Buddhist lynch mob was baying for his blood. It was the only time he felt fortunate to be safely in jail.

FACEBOOK The Buddha image that landed Philip Blackwood in a Burmese jail.

The former Tawa College and Victoria University student was accused of religious crimes, and ended up spending 13 months in the notoriously inhumane Insein Prison, in Yangon.

As the iron doors closed behind him, the guards told him told not to leave his block: there were people inside who wanted him dead for what he'd done.

"For people to take your freedom away from you, and then put you in a position where your life's in danger...It's hard to understand," he said on Monday.

FAIRFAXNZ Blackwood at his trial in Yangon. "I realised how serious it was when I looked into the judge's eyes," he says.

"The first two months I accepted I couldn't go into the other areas, until I realised I had the physical size and was quite intimidating."

His troubles started after he and fiancee Almo moved back to Myanmar in September 2014, a month after their daughter Sasha was born.

He took a job as a bar manager. It was his first time working for Burmese bosses, and it wasn't going well.

"I almost resigned the Monday before I got arrested," he admits with a laugh.

He laughs a lot now, and enjoys taking time to talk. Time is something he's used to.

"I've always had an analytical mind, always thinking what is the most efficient way to do something. But in prison that flips on its head.

"You want to do everything as slow as possible, take your time ... I never had a working clock [in jail], I couldn't understand the ones who did."

He clearly remembers putting up the offending image after consulting his boss: it was 9pm on December 9.

"I was not exactly comfortable with the post, if I could be honest. Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?"

Less than 24 hours later, the police were at his office. Blackwood went to the station, was transferred to Insein Prison, and remained there – apart from court appearances – for the next 13 months.

His trial was more about "how guilty" he was, rather than whether he was guilty or not, he said. "I realised how serious it was when I looked into the judge's eyes."

In jail, one day blended into another, he says, marked only by small victories. Being able to change into shorts from the jeans he was arrested in; a mosquito net arriving; his parents bringing him Marmite, and a signed Hurricanes jersey from home; and the visits from Almo and his baby daughter, who was fast growing up.

The days ticked on. He read a lot, exercised a lot, running around the yard in the 45-degree heat, in jandals. The routine brought him solace, he said.

He witnessed some terrible things in the prison, known for its massacre of 36 prisoners in 2008.

He can't, or won't, talk about what he saw, for fear of putting other people in danger. To this day, he believes the authorities are monitoring his personal Facebook page.

Instead he talks about his own pain: missing his family, missing his daughter growing up.

"Sure, it was an unpleasant place to be...but being away from family was the most difficult thing.

"The thing is, I always try to look for the positives...the fact that Sasha was the age she was meant that she wouldn't remember that I missed those milestones...so it's just me sucking it up and dealing with that, and just knowing I had to make it up to her when I got out."

He was in his cell reading a week and a half ago when he got the news that he had been given a presidential pardon. His friends were calling for him: "Phil, Phil, your name's on the list!"

But he still has a criminal conviction that will hinder any future travel. He's never allowed back to Myanmar, which "suits me fine".

What's next is still being decided, but Blackwood is eternally optimistic. "I feel like a kid in a candy shop with a blindfold on – there's a lot of opportunities and I really don't know what to choose."

SOLACE IN ROUTINE

6.30am: Cell door opens. Marmite on toast for breakfast. Wash plate and wash self with bucket and water. Read or exercise.

12pm: Back in cell. Read.

2pm: Exercise in yard and then wash yourself.

5pm: Dinner: one egg, rice and broth.

5.30pm: Back in cell. Read again.

ON STAYING POSITIVE

"The guys in my block were very kind, actually. Singaporean drug traffickers and murderers, some of them."

"We used to joke about there being a secret Sadism Department in the prison. When we got our rice there would be stones in it. We would imagine someone in the Sadism Department just spooning it on."