A Bangkok taxi ride is more than just a trip from A to B – it’s also a journey through the byways of Thai belief. Most taxi drivers here festoon their cabs with a hotchpotch of talismans, sacred icons, fresh flowers and pop culture bits and bobs. Sometimes its mere decoration, but usually it’s an… [more]

Capital punishment: the harshest penalty the laws of the land can deliver. Just desserts dished up by the karma police – or simply state-sponsored murder? Whatever your moral stance, if you were condemned in Thailand before the advent of lethal injection in 2003, your stance would be: strapped to a crucifix, hands bound in a… [more]

If the little things – your everyday ephemera – are what make a culture, Thailand is in trouble. That’s the overarching gist of this dinky little coffee table book, the opening pages of which find the author lamenting a fake plastic age in which synthetic foreign crap has usurped homegrown Thai forms. It’s not as… [more]

Though its role was peripheral, and it never wanted to get involved, having declared a position of neutrality early on, Thailand didn’t emerge unscathed from World War II. Not only did it have to cede some of its sovereignty to the Japanese, after the country’s warships landed at southern beaches here on 8 December 1941,… [more]

Writer Tom Vater and photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat spent a year researching the history and practices behind sak yant, Thailand’s centuries-old sacred tattoo tradition, and the result was Sacred Skin: a 200-page book packed with over 170 colour photos and insightful text. Thaewchatturat’s stark studio shots compellingly capture these arcane scrawls of Khmer script, geometric forms… [more]

Is this illustrated kid’s book about a purple panda who visits Thailand a cynical attempt to cash-in on the Kingdom’s panda-mania? Hard to say. If it is though, it’s a far more engaging cash-in than the Panda Channel, an oh-so-soporific Thai cable TV station broadcasting the captive life of Lin Ping, the first panda cub… [more]

The West has The Priory and the Betty Ford Center. Thailand has Wat Thamkrabok: a temple in Saraburi province where a regimented diet of Buddhism and vomit-inducing herbal potions are used to combat addiction. It’s a last chance saloon for Thais and foreigners (rockstar Pete Doherty numbers among its few failures) that dishes out its… [more]

If you’ve been admiring Bangkok’s sidewalk kitchens from afar, but not had the confidence to approach one, pick up a copy of this handy little guide. In it self-titled Bangkok glutton and journalist Chawadee Nualkhair whittles down the capital’s tens of thousands of food stalls down to, erm, fifty. Though that’s an absurd undertaking on… [more]

Story By Max Crosbie-Jones | Photos by Dan White Last year was a big year for sak yan, Thailand’s centuries-old tattoo tradition. There was a Bangkok photo exhibition, a mini-controversy, when the government suggested a ban on foreigners getting them, and the release of the first English language book on the subject, Sacred Skin. Now,… [more]

These poignant and plainly written memoirs recount the formative years of Teddy Spha Palasthira, the “only Thai in the world,” he tells us in the opening pages, “named after an English copper.” Son to a prominent diplomat and his attractive wife, Teddy’s childhood is a well-to-do albeit dislocated one spent drifting from posting to posting,… [more]

Though it hails from the dusty halls of academia, this superb book will delight anybody interested in modern Bangkok’s DNA. In it a gifted researcher traces the sociocultural issues of 1920s Bangkok (absolutism, proto-feminist issues like polygamy and prostitution, social equality) using the newspapers of the day as his main source. Of the many things… [more]

Among the bloated compendium of books on Thailand, only a few could be called essential. This breezeblock of a coffeetable book is one of them: an unflinching look back at headline Bangkok Post news from the last 64 years (i.e. His Majesty’s reign) primed with rare photographs and illustrations. It’s an often sobering read, especially… [more]

As it says on the tin, this release examines the traditional objects that define what it means to be Thai. Divided into three categories – decorative arts, religious paraphernalia and rural crafts – the lovingly curated book contains lush photography alongside introductions to the objects. These include thang, the ornate day beds that today feature… [more]

From water pollution to overfishing and wholesale deforestation, Thailand’s environmental degradation is welldocumented – and tourism’s role indisputable. So how can we, the visitor, do our bit? A sound start would be to buy a copy of this green call to arms: an attractive, A1-sized book flush with case-studies highlighting ecotourism initiatives, both governmental and… [more]