‘Why the hell are you staying all the way out there?’ the taxi driver demanded in a thick Indian-Malay accent. We just looked at each other and shrugged. We didn’t have an answer. After a bus ride that took almost three hours longer than it should have, with rain pouring in through a broken…
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If the sweltering chaos and debauchery of Bangkok is hell and the blissful shores of the southern islands are heaven, then the parched mountainous haze of Pai is surely purgatory. When we arrived it was forty degrees. In the landscape around the town strategically lit fires swirled like tribal scars, seared into the brown skin…
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You can’t really prepare for Bangkok in all its contradictions. Like all big cities, the extremely rich and extremely poor share the same streets, but in Bangkok they literally brush shoulders. Every stretch of pavement is fair game; giant shopping malls cater to the label-obsessed super rich and right outside children sit on the street…
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The one in red shorts looked like she didn’t want to be there. Her hair was cropped short like Demi Moore in Ghost, a cut I realised later was standard issue for female Muay Thai fighters. And those cheekbones. So shapely they glinted in the spotlight like knives. I cringed at the thought of someone…
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My interest in a Buddhism lasted all of a week. Mesmerised by the beauty of the temples and intrigued by its popularity, I picked up a copy of the revised Pratimoska. This is the complete list of dos and don’ts for monks and reading it shattered any illusion I had that, as far as organised…
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In Bangkok, the sacred and the profane collide like nowhere else on earth. Buddhist monks stand on the Sky Train next to prostitutes; a mother nurses her child in the street in front of her stall selling a startling array of sex toys; a man hustles on the street corner offering tourists a chance to see…
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