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It is folly to talk of Asia as if it was a unified entity. It is home to more than half the world’s population and comprises some 53 countries.

However, the continent today does suffer from a “certain commonality of problems”, according to Colin Mason author of A Short History of Asia. Underdevelopment, poverty, disease, cronyism, corruption and shoddy governments, are all too common daily realities for many of the region’s inhabitants.

It’s hard to deny Thailand’s intrinsic charm has made it one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. The kingdom’s magnetism pulls in more than 10 million visitors each year, with white westerners, aka farangs, making up a third of this figure with an average of around 10,000 arriving each day.

Along with the flow of tourists, businesspeople, and expats, comes the predictable assortment of guidebooks, cross-cultural advice, and phrase books, to help unwitting newbies navigate the complex physical and cultural environments. read more…

A disturbed teenager slaughtering rabbits and torturing wasps; A futuristic religious leader decapitating his nemesis, keeping the head alive as he uses it daily as a punch bag; A serial killer intent on murdering those who represent the excesses of Thatcher’s Britain.

Just a few examples of the dark, warped, and often perversely funny themes that run through the works of Iain Banks. read more…

In Thailand’s seaside town of Hua Hin, there are several great places to visit if you don’t want to sit on the beach all day. Greg Lowe gives a tour of Hua Hin’s other attractions.

With a legacy dating back to the reign of King Rama III, Hua Hin started off as a seaside village inn the 1830s. In 1911, its name was changed to Hua Hin, and the resort fast gained popularity with the building of the train station in the 1920s. Now it’s a popular beach escape from Bangkok, only two hours drive along the coast, which is developing fast but retains much of its charm. read more…

To say that disgraced politician cum author, Lord Jeffrey Archer, is a controversial character is an understatement.

He has been imprisoned for perjury and perverting the court of justice; breached parole conditions; stolen coats in Canada; been accused of insider trading and ripping off charities; and was implicated in Simon Mann’s planned coup in Equatorial Guinea. The list goes on. read more…

Originally published in The Nation, December, 2005

Pattaya is notorious as a sleaze and sand sort of place, but the city is starting to move upmarket and there are several interesting sights around the city. Greg Lowe goes in search of the other side of Pattaya.

‘Cultural’ and ‘Pattaya’ are words not normally used in the same sentence. The latter more often than not conjures up images of fat farang, dodgy women and a host of sleazy seaside bars.

Pattaya’s reputation as a seedy centre has grown ever since it became a stop off point for lust driven GI’s on their way to and from the Vietnam War. Such an image is understandably hard to shift, so it may come as a surprise that if you care to look beyond the neon haze of Bangkok’s nearest seaside resort town there are a number of enriching activities to partake in. read more…

South African author and playwright Athol Fugard’s recently-published novel Tsotsi, is a compelling and brutal tale that follows the life of the story’s eponymous protagonist.

Set in Sophiatown — a black township in Johannesburg that was razed in the 1950s to make way for homes for the whites — Fugard uses the oppression of the apartheid regime that segregated the lives of the country’s black and white populations, as a backdrop for the novel’s main setting: deep-rooted racism, the abject poverty of the black community, brooding violence. read more…

U-THANT’S GRANDSON SPEAKS: The family’s ardent love for Burma lives on
Despite being born in New York in the 1960s, Thant Myint-U’s memories are of a childhood steeped inBurmese culture. Life in his maternal grandfather U-Thant’s house in Riverdale, just outside of Manhattan, was a stark contrast to the icy, snowy winters and bright lights surrounding him. It was a home where people wore longyis, spoke Burmese and ate tea-leaf curry.

The distinct feeling of being an outsider was never far away for Thant as he grew up in the US and studied at the Riverdale Country Day School.

“I only spoke Burmese until I went to school, and didn’t speak English until I was five,” he said. “I was very conscious of being Burmese.” [Read more →]

If there’s one quality that defines Shirley Hazzard’s People in Glass Houses, it’s subtlety. This collection of eight short stories is a masterpiece of observation which clearly demonstrates the author’s perceptive wit.

Set in the 1950s, amidst the corridors and offices of the newly-created monolithic and meandering bureaucracy of “the Organization”– read the United Nations – an American-based concern intent on ‘inflicting improvement’ the world over, readers are introduced to an immalleable world hemmed in by regulations, memoranda and mediocrity. A place where once vibrant personalities are smothered and strangulated by red tape, and the general life-sapping realities of paper-pushing and the exacting demands of pointless tasks reign paramount. read more…

It’s Friday afternoon, and after a particularly busy week, with only a few things to wrap up, I try and scratch off the last important thing on my list of things to do – interview author/journalist Tom Hodgkinson.

First I try his London office a number of times, only to get the following answer-phone message: “This is the office of the Idler [the magazine of which Hodgkinson is the founder/editor], there’s no one in right now, we’re not in very often, so if you leave a message it might take a while for us to get back to you…” read more…