Tag: Thailand

Save the Elephants: Elephant Nature Park, Chiang Mai

It’s normal, I think, to put the most difficult and disturbing realities of life on earth to the back of your mind. None of us could function if we constantly acknowledged the truth of just how messed up this planet really is. If it wasn’t for that safe little smokescreen of wilful ignorance that envelops…
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On Koh Jum Island

From the vantage point of a white plastic picnic chair, the legs of which are half buried in the sand, in the middle of the only beach on Koh Jum Island, I can see…nothing, no one, not a soul. Unless you believe crabs have souls in which case I can see hundreds. Once or twice…
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From Chiang Mai to Pai

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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The One In Red

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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Bangkok – the Sacred and the Profane

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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