Need to go when you’re on the go? Then Bangkok Municipal Administration’s fleet of 31 toilet trucks can help. These aging green mobile giants sport four toilets and six urinals, and are used as public conveniences during protest activities and public events. Each truck contains 2,000 litres of water, enough for 500 flushes. Detritus is […]
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WoWasis Book review: Timothy Hallinan’s ‘Queen of Patpong’
How does one really judge the entertainment value of a book? Timothy Hallinan’s book in the Bangkok Fiction genre, The Queen of Patpong (2010, ISBN 978-0-06-167226-2), caused us here at WoWasis to ask, and here’s why. We finished this 312 page book, the latest update in the ongoing saga of travel writer Poke Rafferty and […]
Read the rest of this entry »Thai Prisons: Inside the belly of the beast via the ‘Thai Prison Life’ website
Bangkok’s Samut Prakan Prison One of the more fascinating museums in Bangkok is the Mahachai Prison Corrections Museum, but of course, prisons are only fascinating to those that aren’t living in them. We recently ran into a remarkable website run by Richard Barrow, who has befriended many prisoners in Thai prisons, most notably Panrit “Gor” […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Longstreets’ ‘Yoshiwara: City of the Senses’ of Tokyo
Yoshiwara was a district in Tokyo famous for adult entertainment options. Formalized in the 17th century, it thrived as a sex center until 1958, when prostitution was officially banned in Tokyo. Published in 1970, Stephen and Ethel Longstreet’s Yoshiwara: City of the Senses (no ISBN) is a history of the district, its culture, practices, and […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Sarawak’ photos by Hedda Morrison
Hedda Morrison, who died in 1991, was the wife of Sarawak district officer Alastair Morrison. During her 20-year stay in Sarawak, she was able to accompany her husband on official journeys through the country, detailing, through writing and photographs, the lives of tribespeople. Her book Sarawak (1957) is an indispensible record of northern Borneo before […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Kaowai & Robinson’s ‘In Grandmother’s House’
Visitors spending any time looking into the culture of Thailand will run into thousands of folk traditions and beliefs, and Thais are always impressed when a foreigner wishes to know more about them. Understanding these concepts is empirical, as one thing inevitably leads to another. We at WoWasis are still learning. And that’s why we […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: North Korean Gulag… The Aquariums of Pyongyang
For anyone wishing to know more about what goes on behind the scenes in North Korea, Kang Chol-hwan’s The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag (2000, ISBN 0-465-01102-0) is a must- read. Kang’s expat North Korean family became wealthy in Japan and had a good life. At the urging of his […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis introduces Krasue, Thailand’s most feared ghost
Thailand is a country obsessed with ghosts, known as phii. Here at WoWasis, we’ve learned never to joke about them, because joking about them is considered to bring on bad luck to the speaker as well as all listeners. And never joke about a ghost before your girlfriend enters the shower, especially at night: everyone […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism’
For centuries, Western art lovers have been fascinated by Japanese woodcuts of landscapes made by noted Ukiyo-e “floating world” artists such as Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, and of scenes from daily life by master artists Kitagawa Utamaro and Suzuki Harunobu. These woodcuts have directly inspired the work of Westerns artists, but perhaps never more […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee on American wives and sponsoring Thai women
Recently I have started to think that perhaps I need to work on my people skills. Now, I have to say that I have never been the most diplomatic guy, and one of the things that I love about living in Thailand is the total lack of political correctness that is so pervasive in the […]
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