thailand

James Lantana -- more correctly Somsak Lantana -- is my Thai neighbour who was a chef back home, came to New Zealand about 12 years ago, worked in kitchens all around Auckland. It is one of the great delights of my life to invite James and his Japanese wife Nana over for dinner -- because James always insists on not only cooking, but also...
> recipes/1645/james-authentically-thai-chicken/

The day after I returned home from Thailand I went to a well-known menswear store on Queen St to buy a tie, not something I can recall having done before. But if a man has had a handsome black silk suit made by one of the thousands of high-quality tailors in Bangkok for a mere $260, a gentleman needs a tie. When the friendly assistant in the...
> travelstories/1907/bangkok-thailand-to-shop-or-not-that-is-the-question/

When Pol Pot’s murderous thugs drove people out of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh and into the countryside in the mid 70s, it was the beginning of the end. Figures vary but some say around two million people -- a quarter of the population -- were killed or died as the Khmer Rouge reconfigured the country based on an agrarian society...
> world-music/2310/dengue-fever-interviewed-2008-taking-it-all-back-to-cambodia/

"The English invent the most stupid of sports," says John. He should know, he's English and we've been talking about cricket. We're sitting at the poolside bar in the sumptuous Anantara Resort and Spa near the coastal town of Hua Hin, three hours south of Bangkok. The reason for his outburst is the game we have spent this September...
> travelstories/260/elephant-polo-on-thailand-days-of-the-raj-remembered-2006/

Three hours drive south of Bangkok -- on a typically terrifying journey of close encounters and near-misses along the highway -- is the town of Hua Hin, little more than a shop-lined wide spot in the road for some tourists, and ignored completely by most others. But while the islands of south-east Thailand are becoming a clutter of beach...
> travelstories/261/hua-hin-thailand-luxury-with-a-private-pool/

God knows what I was thinking when I went to Ullungdo. It certainly wasn't for the well-advertised local attractions which are, in no particular order, dried squid, dried seaweed and -- its special delicacy -- pumpkin candy. Ullungdo is a spectacular lump of rock a few hours off the east coast of the bickering Koreas. It rarely makes it...
> travelstories/267/ullungdo-south-korea-the-lure-of-the-lair/

Pale fingers of mist weave through the tree tops of the jungle. At just past dawn it is almost silent, only the faint call of birds and the distant putter of a long-tail boat on the Mekong River beyond the hill. I step onto the terrace of my hotel room into the balmy air. Already you can feel that the rains will come later today. I sniff in...
> travelstories/2917/golden-triangle-thailand-where-the-girls-are/

Samoa is hardly short of a church. To the casual eye it seems as if each village has its own Catholic, Mormon, Methodist, Assembly of God and whatever else building, many of them are quite breathtaking. And new ones are being built all the time. But high above Apia in Vaoala is the Shrine of the Three Hearts, an enormous, airy and very...
> travelstories/3687/samoa-the-biblical-land/

Increasingly the globe becomes a village -- and the local radio station is broadcasting oldies and archival stuff. Consider the recent excavating of music from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sixties South Africa, Dengue Fever's take on Cambodian psychedelic pop, the Shanghai lounge divas project . . . You sometimes get the sense that in every...
> world-music/3862/various-artists-the-sound-of-siam-soundway/

These days world music compilations are pretty thick on the ground -- largely because they have been thrown there by disillusioned buyers who thought they might be getting a decent collection but discovered some lazily cobbled-together Thailand-lite or Indo-groove tracks which commit that most grave of sins: they are boring. The high...
> world-music/517/huong-thanh-and-nguyen-le-fragile-beauty-reviewed-2008/

Greg would have been hard to miss in most places, but on the small beach at the southern end of Ko Samet -- a tiny teardrop-shaped island off to the east of Bangkok -- he was impossible to overlook. It wasn't just that he was, shall we say, a large man. Or that he was conspicuously gay. And it wasn't even that he carried the pampered Miss...
> travelstories/526/ko-samet-thailand-lonely-days/

What is that wise old saying: be careful what you wish for, you might just get it? Raymond got a wish come true, but I suspect it was mine. I met him at the luxurious Anantara Resort and Spa in Thailand's Golden Triangle where my room with a private terrace overlooking the steamy jungle cost around $1200 a night. After I had relaxed in...
> travelstories/534/golden-triangle-thailand-paradise-without-the-soundtrack/

The night was noisy, the drinks were free and free-flowing, and this small corner of balmy Thailand seemed like it had been sent down from heaven -- with an endless buffet of European, Chinese, Thai and Japanese dinners. The party at Hua Hin had started just before sunset, the dancers and fashion show came on shortly afterwards, and beneath...
> travelstories/545/hua-hin-thailand-heavy-metal-in-hua-hin/

Good news came by e-mail: Raymond is in touch again. The last time I saw him was a year ago when he was managing a luxury hotel in Thailand's Golden Triangle. He was a young and handsome Swiss guy who had the world's best job: making sure the lodge ran smoothly, tasting imported wines, being nice to nice wealthy people, eating beautiful food,...
> travelstories/573/thailand-and-vietnam-things-have-changed/