The sharper edge to traveling in Asia

Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Building scam in Bangkok: court orders 25 story hotel to be demolished

Our favorite building scam story in Bangkok has taken a new twist, as the Supreme Administrative Court has ordered that the 25-story Aetas Hotel on Soi Ruamrudee be either completely demolished or brought down to a legal height of 7 or 8 stories. And it’s all supposed to happen within 60 days. As first reported […]

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Death of an investigative journalist: Was Canadian Dave Walker slain over a non-governmental organization scam?

It’s been nine months now since noted Canadian journalist and author Dave Walker’s body was found on the grounds of Cambodia’s Angkor Watt ample complex. His murderer s — one assumes that more than one did the killing and carted away the body — have yet to be identified, nor has a motive been determined. […]

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Travel warning Thailand: Bangkok police accelerate random visitor urine tests, searches, interrogations on western tourists and expats

In what appears to be a rapidly increasing policy of harassing western visitors and residents in Bangkok, such individuals are now regularly being stopped by Bangkok police, where they are interrogated, searched, and made to contribute urine samples. This policy has become infamous in the tourist areas controlled by the Thong Lor and Lupini district […]

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WoWasis Galapagos book review: ‘Floreana: a Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos’

Like author Johanna Angermeyer, writer Margret Wittmer spent decades learning the intricacies and challenges of learning to live in the Galapagos islands. Unlike Angermeyer, though, Wittmer’s infrastructure was non-existent to the point that she and her small family had to create everything from scratch. As detailed in Floreana: A Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos (2013, […]

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WoWasis book review: ‘Killing Pablo Escobar: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw’

It’s been more two decades since Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror over the nation of Colombia ended, but travelers still encounter vestiges of the carnage. In Bogotá’s Museo Histórico Policia, for example, a whole section is dedicated to the hunt for and death of Escobar. You’ll see a roof tile stained with his blood, his […]

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WoWasis book review: ‘The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Drug Trade’ by Alfred W. McCoy

The first edition of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Drug Trade was written in 1972 and was updated in 1991 and 2013. It has an amazing longevity, and has been cited numerous times in other works. As a plethora of researchers have discovered, the book, although nearly 50 years old […]

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WoWasis book review: Juan Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina

The ascendance, decline, and re-emergence of Juan Perón into the political life of Argentina remains one of the more compelling stories of twentieth century South American politics, and Robert D. Crassweller’s Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina (1987, ISBN 0-393-30543-0) tells it in remarkable detail. Part of the power of this book is that Crassweller […]

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WoWasis book review: ‘Evita First Lady: A Biography of Eva Perón’

Two iconographic Latina women have remained conversation topics in North America, decades after their deaths. Evita Perón is the one without the mustache. When you visit the Museo Evita, on Buenos Aires’ Calle Latinfur, you get several informative movie clips, an exhibition of her clothing and jewelry, a death mask, and as a finale, a […]

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WoWasis book review: Asian Godfathers, powerful, influential, dangerous business barons in Asia

For those of us who frequently travel to and do business in Asia, it becomes increasingly important to understand who the major players in the business world are, and how they have traditionally operated. Two books we here at WoWasis have reported on before are Martin Booth’s The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the […]

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WoWasis book review: Eternal Harvest, unexploded ordnance dangers in today’s Laos

The numbers are staggering. As Karen Coates, author of Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (2013, ISBN-13 978-1-934159-49-1) states, “To this day, Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth. All told, the U.S. military and its allies dumped more than 6 billion pounds of bombs across the land—more […]

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