One of the goodest bad guys in the annals of fiction would have to be Nguyen Ngoc Minh, the protagonist of author Stephen Leather’s The Chinaman (1992, ISBN 978-0340-58025-7). And right, he’s not Chinese, but rather a former Vietnamese military man that ended up in England, running a Chinese food take-out business. Life was good […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Crime Scams & Espionage' Category
WoWasis book review: ‘The Tunnel Rats,’ Vietnam terror by Stephen Leather
Vietnam’s Cu Chi tunnels were a particularly nasty element in the Vietnam war. Built by the Viet Cong, they went for miles underground, and there were nasty things living in there, aside from Viet Cong soldiers, including rats, massive spiders, and stinging mites that lived in the tree roots. Novelist Stephen Leather has managed to […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Stephen Leather’s ‘Live Fire’
If you’re a Brit and love adventure fiction, you’ve probably read Stephen Leather. If you’re a Yank, you probably haven’t. Fact is, Leather sells tons of books in the UK. He’s written more than thirty novels, sold nearly three million books in all, and did get some U.S. traction with his eBook The Basement, which […]
Read the rest of this entry »Thai crime scams: international crooks find a home in Thailand, authorities classify them by ethnicity and crime type
Thailand’s easy atmosphere has made it a home base for millions of tourists, but, according to Thai police, it’s also a haven for groups of international criminals. Amazingly, the police have mapped various ethnicities to certain types of crimes, according to an article appearing in the January 14, 2013 issue of the Bangkok Post. Here […]
Read the rest of this entry »Easy to die in Thailand if you’re not a VIP… man denied an ambulance is proof
In Bangkok, all of a sudden you have a stroke and an ambulance is called. You’re a photographer there to cover a news story. Everyone in the medical profession knows that it’s critical to get you to the hospital within an hour, before you begin to lose brain function that will soon be unrecoverable. You’re […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson’ by Joshua Kurlantzick
Here at WoWasis, we believe that there are at least two schools of thought on how best to live the expatriate experience in Asia. One we call “ping-ponging,” bouncing back and forth between one’s mother country and Asia. Regarding Thailand, one advocate who lives part-time in the U.S. states, “I go to Thailand, and after […]
Read the rest of this entry »Sharia follies continue in Indonesia’s Sumatra with proposed banning of face-forward female motorcycle riders
Ignorance remains bliss in Indonesia’s Aceh province in Sumatra as the city of Lhokseumawe has proposed a Sharia law that would ban female motorcycle passengers from riding face-forward. Deeming the position “improper,” according to the mayor, women now must ride side-saddle. Sumatra recently banned tight trousers on women, as reported in an article appearing in the […]
Read the rest of this entry »Banisanta: a sex workers’ hell in Bangladesh
Just south of the southern Bangladeshi city of Mongla is a tiny town on the Pushur River, consisting of a number of houses and shops made of mud, straw, wood and tin. It’s called Banisanta, and it’s home to dozens of professional current and retired sex workers, mama-sans, barkeeps, shopkeepers, and their children. Its evolution […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Dwarf,’ a Korean novel by Cho Se-hui
Originally written in 1978, Korean writer Cho Se-hui’s novel The Dwarf (2006, ISBN-10 0-8248-3101-2) isn’t an east grasp for westerners. The story represents characters in black and white, and the tale, of workers vs. management, is didactic. Two things helped us here at WoWasis through this otherwise well-crafted novel, translator Bruce Fulton’s afterword, and the […]
Read the rest of this entry »Historic Wat Preah Vihear mines to be cleared as Thai-Cambodian controversy continues
In a story reported in the Bangkok Post of December 21, 2012, Thailand and Cambodia have begun thawing relations related to skirmishes surrounding the historical Wat Preah Vihear temple. Although sitting in Cambodian territory, the temple has been claimed by both countries. At a meeting of the Thai-Cambodian Joint Working Group (JWG) held in Bangkok […]
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