The author of this book on the prostitution “rescue industry” caught our eye here on a WoWasis blog post earlier this year, when we reported this comment in her own blog, quoted from a Thai women’s organization: We have now reached a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry being […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'By Country' Category
Man jailed in Thailand for turning dead foetuses into Goomarn Thong icons
Here at WoWasis, we’ve always been fascinated by the statues and images found on the ‘hing,’ or altar, found in many Thai houses and businesses. Goomarn Thong is one of these, representing a dead baby. On May 28, the Bangkok Post reported that a man has been jailed for gold-leafing six dead foetuses, transforming them […]
Read the rest of this entry »The tuk-tuk driver took me on a wild goose chase in Bangkok
The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang This week’s dilemma: The tuk-tuk driver took me on a wild goose chase Dear Pa Farang, I agreed to pay a tuk-tuk driver 50 baht to go to a temple. Instead, he drove us around to two different gem shops.you to gem shops, and finally […]
Read the rest of this entry »Shakespeare film banned in Thailand
In April, Thailand’s culture ministry banned a film based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. citing “content that causes divisiveness among the people of the nation”. On July 5, 2012, Bangkok’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) is hosting a discussion pertaining to that event. Censorship is always an issue in Thailand, and the discussion will no doubt be pointed, and […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Ho Chi Minh: A Life’ by William J. Duiker
Author William J. Duiker worked in Saigon’s U.S. embassy during the Vietnam war years, and has penned an exhaustive review of the life of Ho Chi Minh in Ho Chi Minh: A Life (2001, ISBN 978-0786887019). The text is 577 pages long, and what really emerges is essentially the story of a conciliator who played […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis Book review: Timothy Hallinan’s ‘The Fear Artist’
In his latest book, The Fear Artist (2012, ISBN 978-1-61695-112-2), veteran Bangkok Fiction writer Timothy Hallinan sure knows how to make a reader feel that he or she is in Bangkok: The soi itself is almost as featureless as the stucco wall: a thin seam of asphalt too narrow for two cars, framed by a […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee on jealousy and relationships
I just had 2 friends from England visit Bangkok and there were some magical moments during their stay that will certainly become local legend. One particular evening stands out in my mind as it is a perfect illustration of how different one’s priorities become after living in Paradise as long as I have. There is […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Trigger Men’ snipercraft by Hans Halberstadt
On May 13, 2010, WoWasis reported: “Major General Khattiya Sawasdipol, a rogue military officer familiarly known as Seh Daeng, had been shot in the head near the main protest area at Siam Square, as a result of sniper fire, and is reported to be in critical condition.” Seh Daeng was the de facto military leader […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Monuments of Civilization: Ancient Cambodia’
The large-format (13”x10”) Monuments of Civilization: Ancient Cambodia (1978, ISBN 0-448-02026-2) by Donatella Mazzeo and Chiara Silvi Antonini was actually first published in 1972, and remains a magnificent book, detailing the pre-Angkorean, Classic Angkorean, and Late Angkorean periods. The photographs are lavish, the text informative, and the diagrams readable, in this 192 page, 100 photograph […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Nihal DeSilva’s ‘The Giniralla Conspiracy,’ Sri Lanka
The Giniralla Conspiracy (2005, ISBN 978-955-1266-02-8), was Sri Lankan novelist Nihal DeSilva’s third and final completed book hHe was killed by a landmine while in his mid-50s, making for a short, but stellar literary career). Like his two previous books, The Far-Spent Day, and the Gratiaen Prize-winning The Road from Elephant Pass, it is based […]
Read the rest of this entry »
