“Sleep tight, dad. We won’t forget.” In Thailand’s Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, where 6,982 Allied prisoners of war are buried, one need look upon only a handful of graves – and the epitaphs left by loved ones – to recoil at the cost of war. I’m standing now over the grave of Sergeant S.T. Jephcote, who […]
A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere
I’ll always be grateful to a hotel receptionist named Chau, who one day in 2007 offered to get me out of Hoi An and into the homes of people in the surrounding countryside. On Chau’s day off, from the back of her motorbike, I watched the landscape whiz by as she drove us several miles […]
Mysterious Graffiti, and Death as a Lens through which We See
One side-effect of the George W. Bush presidency was that the walls of bathroom stalls in backpacker hangouts in cities such as Bangkok and San Jose were overflowing with handwritten opinions and jokes. The political graffiti his eight years in office produced was immense. The one-liners and paragraphs were seldom insightful, but never did I […]
10 Photos: Thailand’s Famous (and Infamous) Full Moon Party
If you’ve ever backpacked in Southeast Asia or have undertaken casual research into the global party scene, you’re familiar with Thailand’s Full Moon Party. Whenever that lunar ball is all lit up in the heavens, alcohol and travelers wash ashore on Ko Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. My first experience at the […]