As told to Callum Macdonald
Shortly after returning to Bangkok two British teenagers, Patricia Cahill, 18, and Karyn Smyth, 17, were arrested for trafficking in 26 kilos of heroin. It was the largest haul of heroin ever found in personal luggage at Bangkok airport and a story which was to run for years.
The Guardian described them as ‘innocent limp wrested waifs’ and published a series of articles in an ‘investigation’, claiming the girls were part of a Customs and Excise and British government cover-up, aided by Thai police corruption. Most of Fleet Street followed the same line.
Andrew Drummond, informed otherwise, actually stuck to the line, against considerable opposition, that the girls knew they what they were doing.
When the young women were pardoned by the King of Thailand, and the admitted as such, he was vindicated.
Fleet Street did an about turn and Andrew Drummond’s stories in the Evening Standard were recognised by his peers as having put the story in its true perspective.
True lies - Exposing the myths behind a massive heroin bust
TOURIST FROM HELL
Shortly afterwards came another major crime story. A British serial killer John Scripps had butchered a Canadian mother and son, Sheila Damude,43 and Daren 21, in Phuket and then flown onto Singapore where he had also butchered a South African.
The only motive was the cash and credit cards they had on them.
He was arrested by Singapore police under a different name. Illiterate Scripps, who had learned butchery at Albany Prison, England, cut up their bodies and put them in bin-liners for disposal.
Andrew Drummond flew to Singapore with Scripps’ sister and interviewed Scripps in Taneh Merah prison (to the annoyance of Singaporean authorities)
Scripps confessed to the murder of the South African only giving a scarcely plausible reason that the South African Gerald Low had made a homosexual pass at him in the hotel room.
Andrew was then commissioned to follow Scripps trail back to the United States, Mexico and Belize. 
Three other people known to have had contact with Scripps (right) disappeared without trace, Timothy MacDowall, a British financial advisor, William Shalik, an accounant, and a San Francisco gay prostitute Tom Wenger.
Scripps (pictured right on holiday in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand) was the first Briton to be hanged in Singapore.
Andrew Drummond went to Mt Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, when a British Army team got lost in the treacherous Low’s Gully; to Irian Jaya when some British students were kidnapped, and switched to ‘The Times’ in time for a libel trial in Singapore when Premier Hoh Chok Tong was suing opposition M.P. J B Jeyaretnam represented by the legendary Q.C. George Carman. The Times headline at the time reflected how authoritarian the island state then was.
“Nobody fishes in the lake any more. Not even the fish open their mouths.”
For The Times Andrew Drummond, returned again to Mt. Kinabalu when an English girl went missing on the mountain, and to Sarawak to see the results of the government victory against the indigenous dayaks over their fight for the rain forest.
But from the mid-nineties to this day Thailand was hit by a series of murders, all of a fairly sensational nature.
Reporting out of Thailand his assignmens have taken him to Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia.
When God’s Army, an army nominally led by two young boys Johnny and Luther Htoo, were accused of being behind a hostage siege at Ratchaburi hospital in Thailand Andrew Drummond walked across the Burma border again to meet up with the child soldiers.
(Right Andrew Drummond with Johnny Htoo of ‘God’s Army’)
BACKPACKER MURDERS
In December 1995 British backpacker Joanne Masheder was murdered while visiting the caves of a local Buddhist temple.
Her murderer was a young Buddhist novice who killed her for just the few dollars she had in her rucksack.
The monk Yodsak Suaphoo had befriended Joanne (right) in the grounds ot a a local temple and than beat her and threw her body into a cave. In 1996 Yodsak was sentenced to death, reduced to life. He died in prison while serving his sentence.
In 2001 came the rape and murder of British back-packer Kirsty Jones in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. Death of a Backpacker.
Kirsty from Brecon, a University student had booked into the Aree Guest House in the Northern Thai capital.
To this day nobody has been arrested for this offence although Thai police have a complete DNA profile of her killer.
This was followed in 2004 by the brutal murders of British backpackers Vanessa Arscott, 23, and Adam Lloyd, 24, (right)by a Thai policeman, again by the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi.
Police Sgt Somchai fled to Burma for a month. Local people were terrified to testify against him. But in the end he was convicted and jailed for life.
Then in 2006 came the murder and rape of Katherine Horton, 23, on the Thai holiday island of Koh Samui. Murder comes to a holiday idyll.
Katherine was walking on the beach at night talking to her mother on the mobile phone when she was set upon by two fisherman who had swam ashore with rape in mind. They had been drinking alcohol and watching pornographic videos. Within two weeks they had been found, tried and sentenced to death.The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Andrew Drummond has also carried out many assignments for major newspapers and magazines throughout the English speaking world. 
He frequently broadcasts on BBC. SKY TV, RTE and around the world for Global Radio News.
He lives in a house called ‘Nessie’s Nook’ on a lake in Bangkok a short drive from the new international airport.