Sep
1
2019
A serious attack involves fever, sweating, vomiting, muscle spasms, driving thirst, thumping pain behind the eyes and in the joints. Weeks pass, tossing and turning in hellish delirium. And right now, a deadly wave of dengue fever is sweeping across Asia, killing hundreds and leaving tens of thousands sick, overwhelming health services and creating panic …read more
Oct
27
2013
Could it get any more poetic? Sitting on an open verandah, drinking a bottle of Yunnan’s Windflower Sun and Moon lager, gazing across a garden of deepening shadows to the distant Jade Dragon Snow Mountain range: only a Chinese Coleridge could do this scene justice.
Nov
11
2012
The mainland’s internet universe is a closed book to nearly all Westerners – few know even the most rudimentary basics of spoken Putonghua, let alone have a grasp of the written language. Yet an explosion of interest in mainland microblogging sites, known as weibos (” weibo” loosely translates as “micro-blog”), has lured even resolutely monolingual …read more
Oct
28
2012
Shifting and giggling, the tourists and locals wait to pose with a mural painted on a dilapidated Penang street wall. An image of two laughing children on a three dimensional bicycle, the mural is a striking and thought-provoking contrast of forms. It is art that begs for interaction and it has proved incredibly popular in …read more
Oct
24
2012
Staying overnight in an ancient garage might not be everybody’s idea of fun. But this isn’t the standard suburban garage found in most countries in the world, stuffed higgledy-piggledy with tins of paint, bits of bicycle, bottles of oil and screwdrivers.
Mar
28
2011
The acting chairwoman of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) movement, better known as the ‘red shirts’, Thida smiles as she begins to address the anti-government protesters.
Oct
31
2010
Five years ago, Aye Min Soe abandoned his work as an engineer to pick up a camera, dodge the Burmese military and risk arrest and another prison term.