Pornchai Moontri and the Things We Carry

Freedom from stone walls and iron bars brings no freedom from a prison of the mind. Pornchai Moontri now faces a tempest within and I still walk with him from afar.

September 9, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

In the photo above, the military governor of the District of Phu Wiang, Thailand came to welcome Pornchai Moontri home as he prepares to recover and move into the home his mother, Wannee, had been building at the time of her death in April, 2000.

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The Wall Street Journal has been marketing a new bestseller called “The Birthday Book.” It features the Journal’s front pages from the day a gift recipient was born and every birthday hence up to the present time. On September 10, the day after this post is published, our friend, Pornchai “Max” Moontri, will turn 53 years of age. I was 53 when he and I first met in prison and landed in the same cell twenty years ago.

In 2009, three years after his arrival here after many years in solitary confinement in another prison, this blog began. Through an abundance of grace our lives became intertwined. It was Pornchai — who now prefers to be called “Max” for our Patron Saint — who proposed the name for this blog. Neither of us even knew then what a blog was. They did not exist when we last lived in the land of the free.

In 2007, Max learned with great trepidation that he would be deported to Thailand at the end of his long sentence. He had no one there, and he feared the darkness. I promised him that with this blog from our prison we could build a bridge to Thailand. Max wanted very much to believe that, but he scoffed. He does not scoff any longer.

In September 2020, this looming deportation into freedom happened, but life remains for Max a daily crucible of trials all connected to the trials that came before. Reading about The Wall Street Journal “Birthday Book,” I decided to take a deep dive into the time and place in which Pornchai first entered this world in the village of Phu Wiang (pronounced Poo Vee-ang) in the far northeast of Thailand in 1973. He is now in the process of relocating there, to the village of his birth. This move is out of desperation, actually, but I will get back to that hoping that perhaps someone may feel moved to help me help him.

Our readers may recall that Pornchai was born in Phu Wiang, Thailand in 1973, but in 1975, at the age of two, he and his four-year-old brother Priwan were abandoned there by their mother, Wannee Laporn, who was then barely 19 years old. I at first found it difficult not to form a harsh and spontaneous judgment of Wannee for such an abandonment. That changed when I understood the setting and context into which Wannee gave them life and then left them in such a vulnerable state.

In 1973, after thirteen months of military rule, Thailand’s government collapsed. After having been one of the world’s leading rice-exporting nations — the staple food of the world’s poor — food production in Thailand, especially in the rural north, became severely challenged. As a matter of self-preservation, Thailand’s interim government adopted a law banning non-Thais from being employed in Thailand. This had serious repercussions for the economy and the distribution of food access as throngs of refugees fled into Thailand from the war raging in Vietnam.

When Priwan was two years old, and while Wannee was still carrying Pornchai, she and they were abandoned by her husband. He was a Muay Thai martial arts fighter who earned a scant living traveling village to village for bouts. When he did not return, Wannee was left even more impoverished and unable to care for her sons. There was no social safety net. Then, in 1975 when Pornchai was two years old, the Fall of Saigon ended the war in Vietnam and brought thousands upon thousands of refugees fleeing into Thailand from Vietnam. Many refugees died.

Among the refugees fleeing from the victorious Viet Cong then was a 15-year-old boy who became one of the well-known Vietnamese “Boat People.” He would later also become an important figure in our lives as Father John Hung Le, SVD, a missionary priest of the Society of the Divine Word in Thailand. While following my writing at Beyond These Stone Walls, Father John became a good friend to me and to Max. He gave Max shelter upon his deportation from the United States in September 2020.

Back to the dilemma of Wannee, she was impoverished and alone with two starving children in 1975. She decided in despair to leave them to seek work elsewhere to support her sons from afar. She hoped her extended family would care for them. Wannee, in a fragile state herself, labored on a Bangkok road crew carrying huge buckets of cement on a pole for the equivalent of 50 cents per day. Back in Phu Wiang, Pornchai was hospitalized for malnutrition. Throughout his young life, food scarcity and access were a critical and common theme. It was not an auspicious beginning in life.

I much later realized in hindsight that in that same period, I was living comfortably as a college student, well fed, and with few worries beyond my grades. I have since done penance for my past misguided judgment of Wannee.

After the Fall of Saigon

In Vietnam in 1975, city after city and province after province fell into Communist hands. It was not so much a conquering on their part as it was another abandonment. Two years after a 1973 cease fire agreement, Thailand stood entirely alone as the sole democracy among a gathering of communist Southeast Asian nations. Thailand’s long-standing alliance with the United States deteriorated rapidly as a result of communist advances in Vietnam and Cambodia. It was a very scary time for a young woman alone with two small children. Wannee left with a desperate hope that her extended family would shelter them.

In late spring of 1975, the U.S. began to abandon its Thai bases as it withdrew all U.S. troops from Vietnam. Both the U.S. military presence and economic assistance were drastically reduced. Student demonstrators rampaged in Bangkok as South Vietnam unconditionally surrendered to the Viet Cong. In Saigon, a policeman put his pistol to his head and fired. Waves of despair were evident everywhere as waves of U.S. marines and Navy personnel crowded onto the Embassy rooftops awaiting helicopters for a final evacuation of 6,400 troops to a 40-vessel armada anchored just off the coast. I wrote of one of these Navy personnel who refused to leave in “For Fr. John Tabor, the Path to Priesthood Was War.”

But also among those entering Thailand from Vietnam was someone Wannee and then later her sons would have the misfortune of ever coming to know. Richard Alan Bailey was a civilian helicopter pilot in Vietnam profiting from the last days of the war. He became a frequent visitor to Thailand exploiting various opportunities one of which was his quest for the servitude of a needy Thai wife. Somewhere, somehow, he encountered Wannee in 1978 and married her in Bangkok in 1980.

Wannee’s inability to return to her two sons in the far north of Thailand was not a personal choice, but it was to be the death of her. I wrote of Richard Alan Bailey and his dark, ominous and ongoing presence in this story in “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.” When Wannee threatened to go to authorities to report Bailey’s abuse of Pornchai and Priwan she was murdered.

The Heavy Baggage of a Stolen Life

We will link again to the above post and its sequel at the end of this one. The content they present would not be the usual for a WSJ “Birthday Book.” Not everyone has the lyrics of happy thoughts with which they can compose a Birthday Book.

Pornchai arrived in my cell in 2006, a broken, angry, and hostile young man. But as most readers know by now, that was all masking something else. The next four years were a daily battle of wills. On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, four years after his forced transfer from Maine’s “Supermax” prison, Pornchai converted to Catholicism and embraced Divine Mercy. In 2007, as mentioned earlier, we learned of his pending future deportation to Thailand, but he coped knowing that he no longer faced it alone.

As trust grew between us — and between Pornchai and Jesus Christ — Max told me of all the dark corners of his life that he carried with him. I convinced him that none of this evil was of his making nor was it his to keep. It took time to build Max up for this, but in 2018, with the help of Clare Farr, an attorney in Australia, we brought Richard Alan Bailey to justice. He was found guilty of 40 felony charges of gross sexual abuse in the State of Maine.

Then the lights came on in Maine. I filed petitions revealing the connections between Pornchai’s original offense and the terror that had been inflicted upon him between the ages of 12 and 15 under Richard Bailey’s “care.” Maine officials then reduced some of Pornchai’s sentence, which in short order handed him over to ICE custody on September 10, 2020, to await deportation. After nearly 16 years as my roommate, that was the last time I saw Pornchai Moontri. We stood in the predawn dark at the gates of our prison, with us on the inside and ICE agents on the outside. Max turned to me and said, “Thank you for my freedom. Thank you for my future.” After the gates closed, I went to my cell and wept.

The contacts we had built on the outside suddenly seemed vastly important to us. I had no way to call Max in ICE detention in a Louisiana ICE facility where he was held, and he had no way to call me. But our mutual friend, the late Claire Dion expressed to me her concern that if Pornchai cannot speak to me, “he will not make it.” So she devised a plan using two cell phones, her own and her husband’s. Max would call into one at a specified time and I would call into the other at the same time. It was not perfect, but it was a necessity and it got Max through all the discouragement and despair that comes with ICE detention.

Six months later, after a long grueling stay in an overcrowded ICE facility in Louisiana during a pandemic, we got word that on the next day Max would board a flight to Thailand with two ICE agents. On board the long flight, heading for a long layover in South Korea and before going on to Bangkok, the two ICE agents where nudging each other while looking at their phones. I learned later that they were reading posts I wrote about Pornchai’s life. Then they put away their phones and removed his shackles. They treated him with exemplary kindness. Pornchai suddenly felt free.

Now, six years later from the opposite side of the world, I still walk with Max. I still chip away at the heavy burdens he carries. Thanks to the kindness of our readers and their concern for us, Max and I can still speak daily by telephone, which has proven to be a necessity.

Finding work in Thailand was a great but discouraging task. I have been supporting Max with basic necessities since his arrival there. For a few years he lived on a property in Pak Chong in the middle of the country where he landscaped and helped manage the owner’s properties, but for no pay. He earned room and board only. Then about a year ago, he became homeless for a time living in a small rented room in Pattaya, which I paid for. Pattaya was known as the seamier side of Thailand. He attended Mass there at Saint Nicholas Church. Though Thailand is about 98 percent Theravada Buddhist, Max managed to find at least a small Catholic chapel everywhere he went.

The war in Iran has had a global impact on fuel prices. Our BTSW Editor, Dilia E. Rodriguez, found and purchased a pre-owned hybrid vehicle in Thailand for Max. He learned to drive there, which is fortunate because the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. This changed his day-to-day existence considerably. This past summer, Max obtained work as a translator for the Asian Oasis resort near Chiang Mai, Thailand serving a mostly European clientele. He did well there, and was an asset, but the long hours and loneliness worked against him. Meanwhile, Max’s main support in Thailand, Father John Hung Le, SVD, has been stranded in Myanmar and Vietnam because his visa was not renewed in Thailand. Missionary priests throughout the world are facing this same problem. His very important refugee assistance project also lost most of its funding due to cuts in USAID. Our politics have wide ranging repercussions around the world. I continue to be in contact with Father John.

Prospects for employment for Max were still dismal. He competes with thousands of family wage earners for a very limited number of jobs. So I felt his only real opportunity going forward was to start a small business. He wanted to remain in Phu Wiang, which is far removed from the noise and haste of Bangkok. One of our readers who asked not to be identified sent me a gift of $3,500. I remember the old adage: “If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.” I used the money to purchase three acres of good farmland near Phu Wiang for Max to begin farming. He is most interested in a poultry farm. I have been researching this and he is going to be enrolled in a semester of learning about how to begin. He is going to need help to get started. I just read that the world’s first poultry farm existed 8,000 years ago very near to what is now Phu Wiang, Thailand.

At the same time, Max is moving into the house his mother was having built for him. It is the house featured at the very top of this post. Max is painfully aware that his mother’s desire to finish this house cost her her life on the Island of Guam as she was liberating herself from Richard Alan Bailey in 2000. The outside of the house, which has been dormant for 26 years, is quite nice. The inside is nowhere near finished.

Max has now come full circle returning to the place of his birth, where he will start life over again. He is volunteering to help take care of a small Catholic chapel there, Saint Joseph Church, named for the Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed.

Max and I thank you for being here with us at this turning of the tide.

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HOW TO HELP US: For nearly 20 years I have been committed to assisting Pornchai Moontri in navigating the trials and losses of his life, none of which were of his own making. I have done all in my power to promote an honest and thorough investigation into the unresolved, “cold-case” homicide of Pornchai’s mother, Wannee.

For six years since his arrival in Thailand Max has been struggling in a nation in economic and political chaos. Promising developments are currently underway. Max will now be living in the house his mother set out to build 26 years ago. He has the skills and will soon have the tools to finish it. He also has a solid plan to start a new agricultural business in Northern Thailand so he will not be dependent on the state of the local economy. This will be dependent upon my support, and I hope that can transition into “our” support.

Our BTSW Editor, Dilia E. Rodriguez, has established an account for my expenses in the support of this blog at Navy Federal Credit Union. Dilia also has the ability for direct funds transfers to assist both Pornchai Moontri in his new endeavor and Father John Hung Le, SVD, and his Refugee Assistance Project, which aids 2,000 Vietnamese families in Thailand with basic food support.

If you wish to assist me, and you do so by check, make it out to Dilia E. Rodriguez and send it with your instructions to

Beyond These Stone Walls
PO Box 81
Fayetteville, NY 13066-0081

As I write this, I just received a hopeful message from Father John, who is awaiting a missionary visa to return to Thailand. It will take three to four months. The cost of the visa will be 15,000 Thai Baht, which translates to $500 USD. I have already provided it with the help from some readers.

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Thank you for reading and sharing this post. For a fuller understanding of this story, please see the following:

An AI Analysis of Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free

Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Dragged Into Thanksgiving Kicking and Screaming

Even when inflation deepens our need, even when politics rage around us, even when unjustly in prison at Thanksgiving for 30 years, there is cause for gratitude.

Thanksgiving by Fr. Gordon MacRae

One year ago, I wrote a post entitled, “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.” It was about a selfless decision of Father Tim Moyle and the people of St. Anne Parish in rural Mattawa, Ontario. They set aside their own parish needs during Advent 2021 to raise funds to assist Father John Hung Le, a friend and Society of the Divine Word Missionary and the sole provider for the Vietnamese Refugees of Thailand. He serves some of the poorest of the world’s poor.

Father Tim and his parish got the idea for the project from reading Beyond These Stone Walls. The Advent project was a wonderful success, not only for the refugees, but also for the parish and for us, and in more ways than we yet even know.

Several months later, I wrote about the end result of this great endeavor in a post entitled, “February Tales and a Corporal Work of Mercy in Thailand.” Each event in this story carved out a path to other events which, on their surface, seemed not to be connected at all, but underneath we found profound meaning. In that post, I recalled a book that I read over a half century ago. It set in motion many paths which still make connections today. The book was The Once and Future King. Here is an excerpt from what I wrote of it in 2021:

I was sixteen years old for most of my senior year in high school growing up on the North Shore of Boston in 1969. I was a full year younger than most of my class. There are many events that stand out about that year, but one that I remember most was an adventure in British literature that I found in The Once and Future King, the classic novel of the Arthurian legend by T.H. White first published in 1939.

In my inner city public high school, The Once and Future King was required senior year reading. Most of my older peers groaned at its 640 pages, but I devoured it. The famed novel is the story of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, the Knights of the Round Table, and the quest for the Holy Grail — all based on the medieval Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory in the 16th Century. By the time I was half way through it at 16, I had completely forgotten that I was forced to read it and obliged to resent it.

I found a worn and tattered copy some 50 years later in a prison law library where I am the legal clerk. I took it back to my cell for a weekend to see if it held up against the test of time. It did so admirably, and I devoured it for the second time in my life. I was astonished by how well I remembered the plot and every character. I was reunited with my favorites, the Scottish knights and brothers Sirs Gawain, Agravaine, Gareth and Gaheris. A few days after I began to read it anew, I came upon one of the popular Marvel X-Men movies and noted with surprise that the character, Magneto, was reading The Once and Future King in his prison cell.

The backdrop of my first reading of the book at age 16 in 1969 was the chaos of my teenage life in a troubled inner city high school. Protests and riots against the Vietnam war were daily fare. I was just then beginning to take seriously the Catholic heritage to which I previously gave only Christmas and Easter acknowledgment, and I was tasked with restoring my newly recovered faith in the heat of division following the Second Vatican Council.

The Once and Future King was set in a time when the Church and the agrarian society of our roots lived in rhythmic harmony. The Church’s liturgical year is itself a character always in the background of the story. Too many of its signs and wonders have since been sadly set aside. I don’t think we are better off for that experiment and I remember wondering at age 16 whether we might one day regret it. That day is today.

It was on the Feast of Candlemas that Arthur drew the sword from the stone to become King Arthur. We don’t call it Candlemas any longer, but the day has a fascinating history. The Mass of Blessing of Candles takes place on the 2nd of February. Today we call it the Presentation of the Lord recalling the Purification of Mary forty days after Christmas as she brought the newborn Christ to Simeon in the Gospel (Luke 2: 22-35). It was the fulfillment of a ritual law set down in the Book of Leviticus (12:1-8). The purification was strictly a faithful fulfillment of the law and had no connection to moral failures or guilt.

“And his father and mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, ‘Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.’”

— Luke 2:33-35

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A Tale of Thanksgiving

“Sometimes, life seems to be unfair.” That was what Merlyn said to Young Arthur in The Once and Future King. This quote was the introduction to a story within the story that I read long ago. For over half a century, the details of the story were always with me, engraved verbatim in my memory, but for the life of me, I could not recall exactly where and when I first read it. I stumbled upon it a half century later when I was writing the post described above. It was in The Once and Future King. It’s a story about Divine Providence, and it’s a perfect allegory for Thanksgiving.

The brief story within the story impacted me deeply at age 16, perhaps mostly because I thought then that sometimes life really is unfair. That fact has been reaffirmed for me countless times since. Here is the story just as Merlyn told it to young Arthur who, prior to extracting the Sword in the Stone, was known simply and humbly as “the Wart”:

“Sometimes,” Merlyn said, “life does seem to be unfair. Do you know the story of Elijah and the Rabbi Jachanan?” “No,” said the Wart.” He sat down resignedly upon the most comfortable part of the floor, perceiving that he was in for something like the parable of the looking glass.

“This Rabbi,” said Merlyn, “went on a journey with the Prophet Elijah. They walked all day and at nightfall they came to the humble cottage of a poor man whose only treasure was a cow. The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straightened circumstances.

“Elijah and the Rabbi were entertained with plenty of cow’s milk, sustained by homemade bread and butter, and they were put to sleep in the best bed while their kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire. But in the morning, the poor man’s cow was dead.

“As they walked later, the Rabbi was unable to keep silent any longer. He begged the Prophet Elijah to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings.

“In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,” said the Prophet, “it was decreed that his wife was to die that night but in reward for his goodness, God took his cow instead. I repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was concealed at the place where it was crumbling. If the miser had repaired the wall himself, he would have discovered the treasure. So say not therefore to the Lord, ‘What doest Thou?’ but instead say in your heart, ‘Must not the Lord of all the Earth do right?’”

— T.H. White, The Once and Future King, pp 88-89

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Sometimes things are just not as they seem. Profound meaning and purpose can be found even in the greatest disappointments and suffering. God gives us the grace to bear these for a Divine End known only to Him, but sometimes also revealed in time to us. Divine Providence is exemplified with power and grace in a post that has become our Thanksgiving classic, and I hope it gives you perspective in whatever you suffer in life. I will post it here tomorrow.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Please visit our SPECIAL EVENTS Page for news on how to help us. Thank you for reading and sharing this post. I have recently received several letters from newer readers who thank me for adding links to related posts at the end of newer ones. The BTSW Public Library is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for perusal of dozens of older posts.

I especially recommend the following categories:

Sacred Scripture

Behold Your Mother

Inside the Vatican

Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, A Year in Freedom

Pornchai Moontri marks one year since his return to Thailand after 36 years away, and one year in freedom after 29 years in prison. Divine Mercy has won this day!

February 23, 2022 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Sawasdee Kup, my friends. The photo that you see below is my first moment in freedom in Thailand after a 36-year absence and 29 years in prison since age 18. As many of you know, the last 16 of those years were in the company of Fr. Gordon MacRae. Without him, none of the rest of this post would ever have taken place.

In the photo, that’s me on the left. It was the 24th day of February in 2021. I think I was the only person in Thailand to wear a pair of western jeans that day. It was all I had, and it was a very hot 40-degrees Celsius which is about 104-degrees Fahrenheit and extremely humid. The three people with me are (L to R): Khun Chalathip, a supporter and benefactor of the Divine Word Missionary work in Thailand; Yela Smit, co-founder of Divine Mercy Thailand and the person who worked with Fr. Gordon to prepare for my return; and Fr. John Hung Le, SVD who you already know well. Father G is not in the picture, of course, but he was still very much present.

There are many others who made this picture possible. Because of Beyond These Stone Walls, an international effort formed to move a mountain. This included Yela Smit and Father John Le in Thailand, my legal advocate Clare Farr in Australia, Viktor Weyand in Michigan, Dilia E. Rodríguez in New York, Fr. George David Byers in North Carolina, Charlene Duline in Indiana, Bill Wendell in Ohio, Claire Dion, Carol Slade, Judith Freda, and Samantha McLaughlin in Maine, and Mr. Narongchai at the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington. All made a mighty effort to bring me home. Many of you contributed to my support in the great challenge of starting life over. I do not have adequate words to thank you all.

After the above photo was taken, I had my first meal in a Thai restaurant, and then we went shopping for clothes. Father John took me to the biggest, busiest shopping mall in Bangkok where I had to fight off a panic attack. It was a very long time since I was in the presence of so many people, and in a city as huge as Bangkok. It felt overwhelming.

Father G and I had talked a lot about what my first moments of freedom might be like, but living them was another matter. So many competing feelings rushed through my mind: excitement, terror, gratitude, terror, happiness, terror. It is not easy to describe how freedom feels after spending 60-percent of my life in a U.S. prison. Did I mention terror?

Samsung to the Rescue

The photo above was my first “selfie.” It was taken when I figured out how to use the camera on a smart phone. There is a little rosary and cross hanging from the mirror. That was made for me out of foil candy wrappers by a 19-year-old Honduran young man who I helped during five awful months in ICE detention. From the moment I arrived in Thailand, everything I did, saw, or touched that day and the days to follow was completely new to me. I feared that I will never be able to fit in. During these 14 days of quarantine in a hotel room alone for the first time in 29 years, Father G called me every day. For the rest of my life I will always remember that first phone call. It was the morning after my arrival.

We spoke about my first anxious night in that room. It was small, but still about three times bigger than the 60-squarefeet where I lived with Father G. I could not see anyone during my two weeks in quarantine, but our friend, Yela, left a Samsung Galaxy smart phone in the hotel for me. I looked at it like it was left behind by space aliens. It took me a while to figure it out, but I somehow managed to find Beyond These Stone Walls.

I wish you could have felt my heart thumping with excitement. This blog that had been so much a part of our lives, reaching out from a tiny prison cell to the whole world, was now right in front of me. I realized with deep emotion that I am now seeing it while Father G never has. It struck me that almost everyone I will meet in Thailand in coming days will already know about me. Then I found Father G’s Documentary Interview and listened for the next two hours as he talked while I fell asleep. “Just like old times,” I thought, but don’t tell him I said that.

One year ago, on February 24, 2021, Father G wrote about that first night in Thailand and my embarrassing encounter with a 21st Century toilet. It was “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” I remember thinking that this Samsung smart phone that now connects me to the world is a miracle, and that BTSW was an even greater miracle. I felt for the first time that I am not among strangers. I am home, and Father G came with me.

Pictures of Freedom

Father G and I still speak by telephone each day. He calls me with his GTL tablet from the same prison cell where we both lived. Sometimes it is for just ten minutes and sometimes longer. Every time I tell him about what is going on in my life now, he says the same thing: “Send me photos! We need photos.” Now I can see the reason for that. He suggested that the best way to tell the story of my first year in freedom is with photographs and links to what he and I have both written. So here goes!

Free at Last Thanks to God and You

I wrote this post just a few weeks after my arrival. I was living then in the Divine Word Community House with Fr. John Le and some members of his Order in Nontha Buri. Father G and Father John spoke often. It is with deep gratitude that I thank both of them. No one knows how difficult it is to re-enter society after almost thirty years in isolation. On the day I arrived at Father John’s home, he and Yela had a photo taken with me in the presence of the One most responsible for bringing me there. So that photo is posted above.

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Just a week later, Father Gordon wrote this amazing post after talking with me. It turned out that the headquarters for Father John’s Community in Thailand were located in the Province of Nong Bua Lamphu in the Northeast of Thailand, about a nine hour drive from Bangkok. That was the place of my birth and the place from where I was taken at age eleven. Just a few kilometers from a special home and clinic operated by Father John’s Order for Thai children, the Aunt and cousins I lived with as a child were still there. It was a most painful but also joyful reunion.

I spent my first night there in the unfinished home my mother was building before she was killed on the Island of Guam in 2000. All her things were still there. The next morning, I visited and prayed at her tomb for the first time. I was so thankful that Father John was with me. Though most of Thailand practices Buddhism, and so did I as a child, I am now a Catholic, and I asked Father John to bless my mother’s tomb. I will be going there again in April for Chakri, the annual Buddhist Water Festival when family members clean and honor the tombs of their loved ones.

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

Father Gordon has told me many times that this was his favorite post of my first year in freedom. He told my story combined with the story of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael from the Book of Tobit. There is a mysterious dog in the Tobit story, and during this same journey my dog, Hill, adopted me. This was a very special post. Hill and I have had similar lives in which we both got battered around a bit. He started following me as soon as I first arrived in the village of Phu Wiang (Poo-vee-ANG) just as a dog followed Tobias in the company of Raphael in the Book of Tobit. Whenever I return there, Hill comes running and howling as I give him a special treat. Then he never leaves my side.

Beyond These Stone Walls in Thailand

Father G helped me to write this post which describes my long and difficult adjustment. In the photo above, Father John and Khun Chalathip, who took on the task of helping me to learn Thai again, brought me to a day of prayer at an Oblate retreat in Bangkok. Much of this post was written while I was there. Back at the New Hampshire State Prison, the Lieutenant of the unit where I lived saw it and had it posted on the wall outside his office. He asked the 300 prisoners there to all read it and he included it in a prison newsletter. Father G says that they especially liked this last paragraph and wanted other prisoners to read it:

“Sometimes I get impatient with myself. I wish I could be further along in learning Thai language, history and culture, the metric system, driving on the left side of the road, and not having to “report in” every time I go anywhere or do anything. After 29 years “inside” I am now out of prison but I still have to get prison out of me. The name, Thailand, after all, means ‘Land of the Free’.”

Pornchai Moontri: Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand

Every Thai citizen is presented with a Thai National ID at the age of 16. But I was not in Thailand then and never received it. So returning at age 48 with my citizenship not yet fully established was a burden for me. There have been times in my life when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I made multiple trips up to the village of my birth to visit with my family and my dog, Hill. Each time, I applied for my Thai ID and each time I was told that it is still pending.

In late October, much to my relief and Father G’s as well, I was summoned to Phu Wiang. I told Father G that I was buying a new dress shirt for the ID photo. Surely they could not turn me away with this beautiful new yellow shirt. Father G scoffed, but I had faith. (Now that’s a twist!) But this time I was successful and I wanted all of you to see my Thai ID. So Father G had my ID number blocked out and posted it.

This was my birthday reunion with my cousin and his family. He was eight years old and I was eleven when we lived as brothers. Now he is an officer in the Royal Thai Navy. While being with him and his family at the Gulf of Thailand, the struggles of the past just evaporated for a time.

A Year in Photos

One of the things that I looked forward to was swimming. I had not been immersed in water for thirty years. I lived with my cousins as a child, but 36 years had passed before I saw them again. On my first visit with them, they took me to a lake. I was not sure I even still knew how to swim so they put some little flotation devices on me. I did not even know how to get into the water the first time. When Father G saw the picture of me floating he wrote, “This is what freedom looks like.”

Visiting with my Aunt and cousins during the rice harvest was humbling for me. I am no stranger to hard work, but they feared I would be too unaccustomed to the relentless Thai heat so they gave me the easy job of collecting bundles. It was a great blessing to be with them during this most important time.

When Father G wrote about our Advent project with Father Tim Moyle and Saint Anne’s Parish in Mattawa, Ontario, and Father John Le here in Thailand, I got to experience first hand what it means to take part in a Corporal Work of Mercy. Visiting the Vietnamese refugee families with Father John and helping to distribute food is an unforgettable experience for which I am most thankful. I greatly admire Father John’s ministry in Thailand, which Father G has described at our Special Events page.

Here in Thailand, far beyond those stone walls, my heart aches that Father G is still behind them. I thank you for continuing to visit him in prison by reading these posts. I will always be indebted to you all for your acceptance of me, your kindnesses toward me, and the support of your prayers. I know that I would not have experienced this year in freedom without you. Father G will always be a part of my life and so will this wonderful blog.

May God bless you. With love to you all from me and Father G and from Hill too!

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri with his dog Hill. The tattoo on his arm is from a portrait of his Mother etched on his arm by an artistic prisoner after Pornchai learned of her death. It was his only means to memorialize and mourn her.