The first things that hits you about Vientiane is that for the first time in five weeks you have hit a city; mobile phones are everywhere, advertising hoarding are suddenly present, there are things called cars, traffic lights, one way systems, aggre

Night falls over the Mekong

The night before at around 7.00pm , the fans had suddenly wh-whick-whick-whickered into a slowing silence, the electricity had gone down again. It didn't return for three days.This is not unusual in the rainy season in Luang Prabang. Apparently it is

Whodunnit? An Elephant mystery - a true story!It was a dark night in Bangkok, Thailand. Somsak Klangkaew, 55, had left his friends and gone into the elephant compound where some 20 elephants had been tethered together overnight. They were part of a t

The Butler report concerning intelligence about Iraq was released last week and reached a truly astounding conclusion.Everybody made mistakes but nobody is to blame. How quintessentially British.But cast your eyes across the Atlantic and you realise

Attorney General John Ashcroft recently defended the USA Patriot Act, claiming that it had prevented terrorist attacks in the US.The act enables federal agencies to monitor peoples private activities, and to arrest them if they deem any activity susp

Thailand is soon to host an Aids awareness convention and the preparations are not exactly low-key.Every visitor that lands at BangKok airport is to be given a condom on arrival, in a handout that is thought to total some 350,000 condoms.In a move th

In Thailand and Laos there can be no greater disparity between the image of a Thai or Laos woman walking down the road and her Farang (meaning West European, usually white) equivalent.Indochina women are feminine, slim but not thin and walk and dress

Many people have short memories or probably didn't know that Bremer, the US appointed administrator in Iraq, was famous for wearing green army boots with a suit. The following humourous skit is quite prophetic, and Bremer receiving the presidents s

The following article contains excerpts from the government produced official guidebook for Laos. While most of the guidebook is comprehensible, other sections are, well let's just say

There was a beautiful and fragrant violet that lived placidly among her friends, the other flowers, in a solitary garden. One morning, as her crown was embellished with beads of dew, she lifted her head and looked about; she saw a tall and handsome r

Why me? Why the fuck is this all pouring into me, what am I supposed to do with it? Where should it all go,where does it fit? Am I so chained to logic and reason that I expect this to rhyme and make sense or meter?Am I just a damned conduit, why can

This is a blessed place where people lazily sit, gather and flop as the heat of the day demands, one man sleeping while five others dance their conversations, all chuckling and smiling easily beneath the night that is barely cooler than the day, for

And it rained, oh how it rained.Like a monsoon on Zanzibar it bucketed down on the unwary Sydney denizens.Oh! They dashed and they scattered their way splashing through the deluge, but all was hopeless, all would be soaked. Some gathered under saggin