Australian Will Cabantog’s grim existence inside Balinese Kerobokan prison revealed
For Will Cabantog, one night of drug-fuelled fun in Bali left him facing a stint inside Kerobokan prison. Now, the former Melbourne party boy is revealing what life’s really like inside the infamous Hotel K.
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Will Cabantog knotted his T-shirts together into a long rope. When he ran out of T-shirts he used whatever scraps he could find on the cell floor. He tied each knot tighter as he prepared for his own death inside Bali’s infamous Kerobokan prison.
Cabantog and fellow Melbourne nightclub promoter David Van Iersel, 38, were arrested with 1.12 grams of cocaine during police raids at the Lost City nightclub in Bali hotspot Canggu on July 19.
The 38-year-old Van Iersel was released in April after serving five months in Hotel K and is living in Perth. Cabantog, 36, still has a month to serve of a year-long sentence.
Depressed, starving and sleep-deprived, he remembers the dark day he knotted a noose for his neck.
After fourth and final jail headcount at 8pm, Cabantog went into a bathroom and stepped off a stand of gallon bottles he had stashed there.
His makeshift noose snapped as he dropped. He was alive, a physical and emotional wreck, but it was also his turning point.
“I fell and hit the bathroom tiles. It was late at night, no one was around and I was absolutely in tears.
“But I didn’t want to be remembered for coming to Bali and doing a line of coke and getting caught and thrown in a Bali jail and taking my life.
“When you are stripped of everything and don’t have much left. It’s all about the legacy you want to leave,” Cabantog told Page 13 through lawyers and friends.
The former Melbourne party boy said he didn’t want his hanging to be his legacy.
“I have nieces and nephews. I have a wonderful mother, who is sick. My sister, my dad, my siblings. I realised I wanted to change the narrative and make them proud.”
It was the Bali 9’s Matthew Norman who then took Cabantog under his wing and helped him change this deadly narrative.
It is 15 years since Norman received a life sentence for drug trafficking after being caught smuggling heroin into Bali.
Ten years later Bali 9 ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed by firing squad.
Norman will never leave Hotel K where he has become a spiritual leader and guiding light for many of the prisoners who have lost their way.
Cabantog now spends his day following a strict regime of meditation, working out, teaching English to local prisoners and reading self-help books. He has read more than 40 books by self-help authors such as Eckhart Tolle, Mark Manson and Alan Watts and is studying for an online certificate in mental health.
He wants to use his own traumatic experiences in dealing with family suicide and depression to help others when he comes home to Melbourne next month.
“I get a lot of inspiration from Matt Norman,” Cabantog says.
“We really related on mental health. He is like a saviour and angel in here. Matt coached me on how life is going to be and the best way to utilise your time.
“You can’t let the days pass. You have to be constructive with your time.”
Time inside Hotel K is not spent watching Foxtel and having three meals a day.
Everything inside Hotel K comes at a price.
Being able to sleep away from the maximum security prisoners, who reportedly include gang members, rapists and murderers, means renting your own cell for $250 AUD a month.
Another $150 is added for cell protection and cleaning. Add $50 for clean water and then you can start thinking about food.
“I was sleeping on the floor at first,” Cabantog said.
“I didn’t have a mat or clean water. It got to the point where the locals were burning plastic on plastic so that we could have a hot cup of coffee to share between six people.
“Even now when times are desperate I have to consider whether to rent a cell, or whether to sacrifice the little things that I do have to get food.”
“Paying for a private cell is my safety and security,” Cabantog says.
“Without that you are sleeping with everyone, it’s a maximum and minimum prison all rolled into one. I’m not a local and speak only a little bit of Bahasa.”
Cabantog’s former high life at nightclubs and splashing cash made him an Instagram celebrity.
Prison time has changed him.
“If there is a conflict here I stay out of it. The head of the block will usually handle those disputes. People get reprimanded, if you steal or owe people money.
“There are certain rules to follow, for lack of a better word its’ prison justice.
“If you keep your nose clean, your head held high and don’t owe anyone money, you pretty much get left alone.
“But if you don’t have the resources to survive, it’s a different story.”
Cabantog doesn’t blame his dark days in Hotel K on his jailers, “I was the one who put myself in this situation.”
The prison complex designed to hold 300 prisoners now houses more than 1400.
When COVID-19 hit the holiday island there were grave fears it would sweep through the overpopulated prison.
But Cabantog says his jailer have stepped up, with all prisoners given mandatory health checks, hand sanitisers and the cell blocks regularly fumigated.
His parents, now in their 70s, emigrated to Melbourne’s western suburbs from the Philippines, looking for a better life for their four children. Now he wants to make them proud.
Headlines painting Cabantog as a larger-than-life showboater were part of an image he presented on social media for work, he says, not his true self.
“I know there are people out there who have their opinions about me. I accept that,” he says. “But most jarring is being judged as an irresponsible bule (Bali slang for foreigner) out on the take.”
Cabantog says he loves and respects the country and its culture. In the year he spent living on the island before he was jailed he says he volunteered in Indonesian orphanages. Now, he says, he is determined to follow his mantra of making each day better than the last.
“I completely understand that it is absolutely illegal to do drugs in this country and I slipped and made a mistake and paid for it dearly.”
Working on his long-term online mental health awareness initiative #speaklesslistenmore, Cabantog is determined to make a difference.
“I owe it to my family to be in the best peak fitness when I get back mentally and physically.
“I’d like to use my story of struggle to inspire, educate and support others with mental illness.”
“His lonely last nights in Hotel K are spent writing a book about his experiences.
“I’m done being angry. I’m done playing the victim. I’m done not taking responsibility of my actions. I know there is light at the end of this dark tunnel.
“But when I get home, I just want to hug my mum.”
The former party boy’s road to Bali has become his road to Damascus.
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Originally published as Australian Will Cabantog’s grim existence inside Balinese Kerobokan prison revealed