Behind the Red Mist — Fiction from Vietnam
I first encountered Ho Anh Thai’s fiction at it’s fantastical best in the wonderful Whereabouts volume of Vietnam: A Traveller’s …
Category Archives: Asia
Laotian Women Dig for US ‘Bombies’ — Still
A friend who has been following my recent trip to Southeast Asia, including a report from the COPE facility in Vientiane, Laos …
Why Did They Kill? — An Anthropologist Looks at the Cambodian Genocide
Among the modern horrors of mass killings of non combatants, from the Holocaust on [or for many scholars from the …
Laos and the Legacies of War
When the mind turns to South East Asia and war, Vietnam and Cambodia come quickly to mind. For most, Laos might …
A Monkish Day, Luang Prabang, Laos
We woke at 5 a.m. yesterday morning to join others in Luang Prabang offering alms of sticky rice to the …
Working the Mekong, Laos
We took a two hour motorized long-boat ride up the Mekong this morning. The first destination was an enormous cave …
Luang Prabang, Laos
Out of the ghastly big city of Bangkok to the sweet, old river-town of Louang Phrabang where the ‘low’ Lao …
Myanmar — Working Its Way from the Darkness
Burma, possibly becoming Myanmar. Rangoon, returned to being Yangon. Bagan, a countryside of ten thousand temples trying to imagine and …
The Human Condition: What Is A Man to Do? Japan in Defeat
Masaki Kobayashi’s war time epic, The Human Condition, at 9 hours and 45 minutes, in black and white, with subtitles …
Literary Festival in Rangoon
I would think that many, especially the young, would be dizzy with excitement in the ‘new’ Burma/Myanmar. After decades of …
Dueling the Devil on a Ranard-Ek in Thailand
The tale of a possessed guitar player dueling with the devil to reclaim his soul is well known among American blues fans. …
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, Vietnam
Bao Ninh’s convention shattering novel of war, The Sorrow of War, (1991/1994) opens at war’s end. Kien is in the …