Bangkok Goes Nobel

Warning: This post is not your average Bangkok topic. It’s about Bangkok’s Nobel laureates. Nobel Prize laureates who will hold talks and dialogs in Bangkok. Bangkok goes Nobel. Quite a challenge for our beloved, not too intellectual capital of freedoms and pleasures.

This post is about some serious brain challenge: About an upcoming series of highest quality talks in Bangkok you won’t find anywhere else in the world: Talks and debates with Nobel Prize laureates, organized by the International Peace Foundation.

We all know how people’s discipline and minds may slow down after living for a few years in Thailand. Living in Thailand one has to force oneself to stay on the productive side of life, for not to fall victim to the Thai sirens, the sumptuous food and the easy life that are tempting around every corner and thought. Time to repolish those brain cells. Because:

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October 29, 2007 | Filed Under Culture & Arts, Society, Truly Bangkok | Leave a Comment

Gosh Bangkok, You’re Pricey!

If you trust Thailand’s official inflation rates, you live in one of the world’s cheapest places with one of the world’s most stable prices. Cheap east, so to say.

Truth though is, prices in Thailand creep up constantly and quietly. It remains a mystery to me how the hell Thailand’s inflation rates are calculated.

Take this: Thailand’s core inflation measure excludes raw food and energy prices. So based on what they determine reliable inflation data!?

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October 26, 2007 | Filed Under Being Farang, Travel & Tourism | 3 Comments

Novelist Burdett: Mission Soi Cowboy

Don’t tell you don’t know Sonchai Jitpleecheep.

That cop with a Thai prostitute mother and an American soldier father who is a devout Buddhist and always left standing.

That Sonchai, a half-Thai, half-American copper living in surreal Bangkok, city of glamor, brothels and temples, where Sonchai is at his best behind bar counters, in members-only clubs or private saunas.

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October 25, 2007 | Filed Under Being Farang, Culture & Arts, Nightlife, Society, The Thai Mind, Truly Bangkok | 2 Comments

Pornpim, Our Bangkok Danseuse

It was a most remarkable performance recently at Bangkok’s Festival of Dance and Music:

The performance of the Zurich Ballet’s reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. With a leading danseuse from Bangkok on the stage.

BangkokDan had been flabbergasted. After Saturday’s show (with his wife) he went there again on Sunday (with his son).

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October 23, 2007 | Filed Under Culture & Arts | Leave a Comment

Hua Hin’s Bangkokization

The royal sea resort town of Hua Hin is irrecoverably changing.

The Royals, Khunyings and Phuyais still give the formerly very sleepy town its unique charme. Hua Hin - Bangkok’s veranda of detente - is still the Bangkokians’ favored place to get their doses of fresh air and space.

But that past long Chulalongkorn Day weekend again was another sign of what Hua Hin sadly is steering into.

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October 23, 2007 | Filed Under Travel & Tourism | 3 Comments

That Damn Old Bangkok Cliché

Why is it that Bangkok still has that reputation of being a paradise for abusers and a city of whores where nobody has to work hard to make a living.

With that Canadian Interpol ped caught in Thailand the world again pointed the fingers against Thailand, implicitly calling the Kingdom all sorts of bad names.

Like: See, it’s in Thailand it happened again! - where most expats are mostly high or hung over.

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October 22, 2007 | Filed Under Being Farang, Travel & Tourism | 1 Comment

Bangkok’s Political Pundits

Ever lost in translations?

Ever struggled, when another major political scandal rocked Bangkok, to fully understand what was going on?

Does this sound familiar: All you understand turns out to be the contrary of what is actually going on?

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October 15, 2007 | Filed Under Being Farang, Politics, Society | 3 Comments

Bangkok’s Probably Best Burgers

A burger is not necessarily a burger.

This is the lesson you’re about to make when paying a visit to MOS Burger - Japanese Fine Burger & Coffee.

And you ever doubted the Japanese were perfectionists?

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October 13, 2007 | Filed Under Food & Wine | 4 Comments

A Visit To Bangkok’s Death Row

It’s not your average excursion in Bangkok, I must confess. A visit to Bangkok’s death row. But do you have a spare few hours once in a while? Are you sometimes bored? Endlessly pondering about life’s whethers and ifs?

There is a lot of meaning out there in the world. Sometimes life’s meanings are so obvious, you do not see the wood for the trees. Sometimes meanings have to literally be conquered. By overcoming your own inner self: By doing something for somebody else you thought you could never do.

Which is the case when you pay a visit to an inmate at Bangkok’s high-security Central Prison Bang Kwang, site of Thailand’s death row.

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October 12, 2007 | Filed Under Being Farang, Just Do It! | 2 Comments