Regarding the series of beefs the 100,000 street protestors occupying Bangkok are voicing today, perhaps the most difficult for westerners to grasp is the rice pledging fiasco. Here are the salient issues simplified, from a WoWasis perspective. Traditionally, Thailand has been a major world exporter of rice. Wanting to raise the price by lowering the […]
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WoWasis Bangkok jazz review: the Sunday jam session at CheckInn99 off Sukhumvit
Quite a few jazz musicians live in Bangkok, both Thai and expat. Without a doubt, Bangkok’s best jazz bargain is when many of them jam together every Sunday afternoon from 2-6 at Bangkok’s notable speakeasy, CheckInn99. You need three things to have a great jazz venue: good musicians, earthy ambiance, and inexpensive drinks. CheckInn99 has […]
Read the rest of this entry »Touring Bangkok’s Klong Toey slums: an experience you can’t afford to miss
Book the Explore! Klong Toey Slums of Bangkok tour here. Bangkok is a city of 13 million people, and a significant part of her labor pool lives in the slum neighborhood of Klong Toey. In the West, we tend to see the word “slum” in pejorative terms, but here, its encoded into the Thai language […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis tours Unknown Bangkok and the Thonburi Klongs
If you’re like us, you just get those days where you want to see a half day of great stuff, get on the water a bit, then spend the rest of the afternoon having a beer and beating the heat. We just finished taking a tour in Bangkok that gave us just that. The Unknown […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits Bangkok’s Calypso Cabaret ladyboy show
Bangkok’s famous Calypso Cabaret has just passed its 25th anniversary, and is now located at the Asiatique complex on the Chao Phraya river, having moved from its longtime theatre located in the Asia Hotel at BTS Ratchatewi. The new neighborhood is decidedly more commercial, as is the show, which is suited for all ages. There […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: John Cadet’s ‘Occidental Adam, Oriental Eve’
If you’re fortunate enough to find one of John M. Cadet’s old books in a used bookstore, you’re in for a treat. His fiction, mostly centered in Thailand, is clearly about another time, although not necessarily a less innocent one. Occidental Adam, Oriental Eve (1981) is, like Venusberg Revisited (which WoWasis reviewed a while back), […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bangkok to be shut down Monday: another coup coming?
Although the major media appears reluctant to discuss it, Thailand may be in store for yet another government coup d’etat within days. All the signs seem to be leading to it, and it’s understandable that the media would be reluctant to fan the flames of revolt. Nevertheless, the situation could be ripe as events march […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘I-Boat Captain,’ by Zenji Orita with Joseph Harrington
We first became aware of Japanese submariner Zenji Orita in author Joseph D. Harrington’s book Yankee Samurai: the Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory (1979), which sent us scurrying to find Orita’s book I-Boat Captain: How Japanese Submarines Almost Defeated the U.S. Navy in the Pacific (1976). The book is alternately chilling and […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Ron McMillan’s ‘Bangkok Cowboy’
Today’s review is guest-written by Iain Millar. I first met Ron McMillan in the bar at Aberdeen airport too many years ago when we were both en route to an assignment in further-north waters. Within minutes the pints were pulled, the pool balls were racked up and the tales were being spun. And if that […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Stephen Leather’s ‘Hungry Ghost’ from Hong Kong
Stephen Leather never ceases to tantalize us. It’s not just the vicious murderers or the fetching murderesses, either. Hungry Ghost (ISBN 978-0-340-96072-1), originally published in 1992 and re-released in 2008, is replete with all the cerebral stuff we’ve grown to expect from the author. His “no stones unturned” approach is something we figure he picked […]
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