The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang This week’s dilemma: Should I pay a dowry for my Thai wife? Note from Pa Farang: This week, I have received two letters that deal with two sides of the same coin. They appear consecutively, as they are thematically intertwined. Dear Pa Farang, My lovely […]
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WoWasis book review: Martin Booth’s ‘The Dragon Syndicates’
If, like those of us here at WoWasis, you’re a veteran traveler in SE Asia, you’ve done business with the Triads, the underworld syndicates that have their hands in businesses ranging from noodle shops, to food carts, to politics. That goes for some Western cities too, including London, New York, and cities in the San […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee’s tips on living modestly while the Thai baht rises in value
The world economy seems to be slowing down and the U.S. is especially weak. The U.S. dollar has recently weakened significantly against the Thai baht. This has had a major impact on many people including those of us living in Paradise. Most of my money is invested in the U.S., and many of my mates […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Gold Warriors’ by Sterling & Peggy Seagrave
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave continue to amaze your WoWasis review staff. We’re veteran SE Asia travelers, and like many travelers revisiting the region, have more and more questions about the political and cultural factors that drive decisions and events in these countries. In the past couple of years, we’ve been hearing anecdotal stories from associates […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Joan Sinclair’s ‘Pink Box: Inside Japan’s Sex Clubs’
What struck us here at WoWasis about Joan Sinclair’s photo-essay book weren’t solely the photographs, but the glossary, referencing 177 terms used in Japan to describe the world of fuzoku, or commercial sex. That’s how we discovered mantaku, female anatomy ink prints, transferred from the lady’s posterior to paper, and sold to the customer as […]
Read the rest of this entry »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 »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 »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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