Strange tale of poverty and drugs ended in airport siege

Believe it or not, asylum seeker's claims of adventure are impossible to verify

He says he grew up orphaned with two older brothers in the infamous Golden Triangle and knew no other life than farming opium poppies.

His village of 200 people is in northern Thailand but he claims it cannot be found on most maps. The villagers subsist on growing and selling opium poppies.

'When you die, you die. It's that kind of place,' said Todd Salimuchai, a diminutive and soft-spoken man. 'I didn't know there are such things as human rights.'

He speaks in broken English, which he learned when he was a young child from American GIs during the Vietnam war and refined while in jail in Hong Kong.

Aside from the prison terms and some dates registered with the Immigration Department, most of Mr Salimuchai's claims and statements made in his interview with the South China Morning Post cannot be independently verified.

Every year for as long as he can remember, he says a drug lord from Hong Kong arrived with a large amount of cash to buy the illegal crops to be reprocessed into heroin.