Polannaruwa is one of the three ancient cities that we here at WoWasis feel everyone visiting Sri Lanka should see. The star attraction is the multicolored, stratified, monumental reclining Buddha, but there’s enough everywhere else to make it a one-day stop. And it can be one hot, sweaty day, too. So we here at WoWasis […]
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WoWasis visits My Spa: a therapeutic, non-sexual massage in the heart of Bangkok
Though you might not believe it, judging by Bangkok’s reputation as the soapy massage capital of the world, therapeutic, non-sexual massages do exist, and we found a great one in the heart of Bangkok, one minute from the Asok BTS Skytrain station. My Spa, located on the 3rd floor of the Times Square shopping complex, […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bangkok street stall thugs endangering pedestrians and shop owners alike
One of the most common complaints we at WoWasis hear from people living near the intersection of Sukhumvit Soi 3 is the illegal proliferation of stalls selling the usual tourist “junk,” running from So 3 to roughly Soi 15. The stalls are on both sides of the sidewalk, making the sidewalk virtually unusable for foot […]
Read the rest of this entry »5 rules to hiring a car & driver in Asia: avoid these mistakes and you’ll have a great time
(Also read our post on avoiding scams in Sri Lanka) As much as we love to drive ourselves in Asia, occasionally we here at WoWasis find it necessary to hire a car and driver. Sri Lanka was one such country that pretty much required it. Our GPS unit was virtually useless, as the roads aren’t […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bangkok’s abandoned rails get new life for food cart transport
Here at WoWasis, one of our most popular posts is about Cambodia’s bamboo train, which makes use of abandoned rails and cars made from army tank wheels. As we found out this week, Bangkok’s not far behind in determining new uses for abandoned railroad tracks. It’s been years since any train rolled down the tracks […]
Read the rest of this entry »Get a great Bangkok Wat Pho massage without going to Wat Pho
Massages at Bangkok’s Wat Pho are famous, but many Thais and westerners elect instead to go to the One Pho Original Thai Massage around the corner, where the prices are a bit better, all masseuses are Wat Pho trained, and the lines are shorter. In addition, it’s closer to the Thai Tien pier. And it’s […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Chinese prostitutes in 19th century San Francisco by Benson Tong
As Benson Tong attests in his book Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (1994, ISBN 0-8061-3284-1), the Chinese prostitution dynamic in California has been thriving quite a while. As WoWasis reported in April, 2011, Asian Apartment Massage Parlors (AAMPs) proliferate today through the San Francisco Bay Area and the west coast of North America. […]
Read the rest of this entry »New Drug scam in Malaysia endangers tourists?
The Good Manner: Advice on Asia from WoWasis’ Pa Farang Today’s question: Drug scam in Malaysia? Dear Pa Farang, A friend and I had a strange thing happen to us on a recent trip to Patong. While walking down a major thoroughfare, we were approached by two men who flashed badges at us, told us […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Mao Tse-Tung on Guerilla Warfare
Here at WoWasis, we’d guess that the collective United States military never got around to reading Mao Tse-Tung’s 73 page Yu Chi Chan, an expert treatise on the art of guerilla war, before it got hopelessly bogged down in the quagmire called Vietnam. Translated brilliantly by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.) as Mao […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka: William McGowan’s ‘Only Man Is Vile’
Sri Lanka has stabilized, to the extent that the country is now charging for tourist visas, instead of for years practically begging people to come. Here at WoWasis, we’re going there next month to investigate. So what were the Civil War years, from 1983-2009 really all about. As journalist William McGowan so cogently describes in […]
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