Judging by news stories and interviews with a number of individuals conducted by WoWasis researchers, the practice of Thai street ladies meeting a man on the street, accompanying him to his hotel room, drugging him, then robbing him while unconscious, is rampant. In each case, the process is identical. While in the man’s room, the […]
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The Good Manner: How do I find an apartment in Bangkok for a 3 month stay?
The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang This week’s dilemma: How do I find an apartment in Bangkok for a 3 month stay? Hello Pa Farang, We live in Australia and wish to base ourselves in Bangkok for our winter. How can we rent a one room apartment, close to rail/skytrain transport. […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee on the difficulty of moving your Thai girlfriend out of your home
No one wants to be James Bond! I have lived in Bangkok quite some time now, and the biggest shock in my expat life so far is that nearly every guy who moves to Paradise tires very quickly of the single life and moves a lass in to his living quarters and lives the same […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Yamato Dynasty’ by Sterling & Peggy Seagrave
Here at WoWasis, we’ve never read a Sterling Seagrave book that we could easily put down. We were glued to our chair, reading The Yamato Dynasty: the Secret History of Japan’s Imperial Family (1999, ISBN 0-7679-0496-6) by Seagrave and his wife Peggy Seagrave, when our back gave out, and we were now really glued to […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Iris Chang’s ‘The Rape of Nanking’
When we at WoWasis attended Iris Chang’s funeral in 2004, it became apparent to us, after the heartfelt tributes of her friends and family, that she was Japan’s final Nanking victim. For a number of years, Chang lived and breathed the Nanking massacre as she was writing her book. After it was published, the ghosts, […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Boye De Mente’s ‘Some Prefer Geisha’
This wonderful book, written by Boye De Mente as a tribute to the geisha was printed in Japan, but occasionally can be found in used bookstores. The full title is Some Prefer Geisha: the Lively Art of Mistress-Keeping in Japan (1966) and it boasts some lively brush and ink illustrations by Tadahito Nadamoto interspersed throughout […]
Read the rest of this entry »The Good Manner: Racial discrimination in Bangkok go-go bars?
The Good Manner: Love & Relationship Advice from WoWasis’ Pa Farang This week’s dilemma: Am I the victim of racial discrimination in Bangkok go-go bars? Dear Pa Farang, Three of us got 86’d from a go-go bar. Our crime? One of our group had just bought a drink for a dancer who sat beside him, […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Christopher Seymour’s ‘Yakuza Diary’
One of the joys of visiting used bookstores is finding past gems, like Christopher Seymour’s Yakuza Diary: Doing Time in the Japanese Underworld (1996, 0-87113-604-X). Seymour, in riding around with and interviewing various Yakuza, seems to be, by the end of the book, clearly a fan of the Yakuza subculture. There are loads of great […]
Read the rest of this entry »Building scams in Thailand: Why is my concrete structure falling apart?
We here at WoWasis first discovered a remarkable example of mass building fraud when we began looking to buy older condominiums in Bangkok. We probably looked at ten structures in the Sukhumvit Soi 1- Soi Asoke area. All condo structures had one thing in common: they were all literally falling apart. The most grievous structural […]
Read the rest of this entry »Miserable shopping experience for WoWasis in Taipei airport
The bookstore at the departure lounge in Taipei airport was staffed by three people, a girl at the cash register, a guy stacking magazines, and another guy just walking around. Your WoWasis correspondents noticed a high-design writing pen behind a locked glass door, selling for USD $150, and we wanted to see it, so asked […]
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