They told their families that they were going to Hawaii, but they wanted a taste of freedom before Darlene heads to college in the fall. He and Darlene have a little fling, and he even goes after Alice, without much success. He travels around Asia, working for a software company, and he invites Alice and Darlene to follow him to Hong Kong on a later flight. At the airport, the girls are stopped at the gate, and the authorities find a large amount of heroin in Alice's backpack. Now they must go to a Thai prison, where they have little chance of getting out.
Drug smuggling is a very serious offense, and they lose their first trial.
When the girls first arrive in Bangkok, he uses the location to draw some great contrasts between the slums and the palaces. Luckily, he doesn't take an exploitational approach to the prison, but he doesn't fully capture the harshness, either. The story move along fairly quickly, and there is some tension built around the fates of the girls. The film is about ten minutes overlong, but it doesn't become boring. I did eventually care about what happened to them, but there was hardly any emotional investment otherwise.