Tom Vater

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February 1st, 2012 | Category: Cambodia | Leave a comment

Published in November’s issue of Geographical Magazine, magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, was Bangkok based photographer’s Luke Duggleby’s feature  on the reviving of Cambodia’s pepper industry after it was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. I traveled to Kampot with Luke to write the story.

One of Cambodia’s best known exports prior to the Khmer Rouge revolution was pepper, grown for the most part around Kampot, an idyllic French-era seaside town on the kingdom’s south eastern coast.

Chou Ta-Kuan, the Chinese envoy who visited Cambodia in the 13th century made mention of pepper in his book The Customs of Cambodia as part of a list of remarkable Cambodian products. He recommended pepper to be consumed when it’s fresh and blue-green in color. Major production started in the late 19th century and was soon exported all over the world. In France, Kampot Pepper soon became a household name. By 1900, production had reached 8,000 tons a year. In 1960, there were more than a million pepper poles in Kampot Province.

The Khmer Rouge put an end to this, but some surviving farmers returned to their fields in the 1980s, following Vietnamese liberation, and some have begun to grow pepper again. Because most small-scale farmers live more or less from hand to mouth, the pepper vine, which needs to mature for three years before it starts producing any harvestable pepper corns, has been slow to return. And yet, the plant is a good long-term investment. It reaches full maturity after six years and can be harvested for as long as fifteen years. Several hundred farmers are now working with NGOs and foreign investors to rebuild the industry.

In Kampot Province, pepper is grown just once a year and harvested between September and April, depending on the type of pepper. The region produces fresh green pepper, black pepper, white pepper and red pepper. Sometimes it’s possible to purchase bird pepper, which, as the name suggests, has been digested and expelled by birds. Bird pepper is said to have aphrodisiac powers.

February 1st, 2012 | Tags: agriculture, Cambodia, Cambodian, economy, feature story, Geographical Magazine, industry, Kampot, Kampot Pepper, Luke Duggleby, pepper, product, Royal Geographical Society, spice, Tom Vater, UK | Category: Cambodia | Leave a comment

In the words of Chinese traveler Chou Ta Kuan who lived in Angkor for a year in the 13th century: “When the king goes out, troops lead the escort; then come flags, banners and music. Palace women, numbering from three to five hundred, wearing clothes decorated with flowers, with flowers in their hair, hold candles in their hands, and form a troupe. Even in broad daylight, the candles are lit. Then come other palace women, carrying lances and shields; then the king’s private guards; then carts drawn by goats and horses, all in gold. After that ministers and princes mounted on elephants, and in front of them one can see, from afar, their innumerable red umbrellas. After them come the wives and concubines of the king, in palanquins, carriages, on horseback and on elephants. They have more than one hundred parasols, flecked with gold. Behind them comes the sovereign, standing on an elephant, holding his sacred sword in his hand. The elephant’s tusks are encased in gold.”

I am back in Siem Reap, amongst the Angkor temples, just 5 hours by taxi from my front door in Bangkok….and a quick walk through hordes of hustlers and past fading casinos at the Thai-Cambodian border… last leg of my research for the forthcoming Moon Angkor Wat.

My 2010 Moon guide to Cambodia is really quite different from title like Lonely Planet, dispensing with corporate writing styles, based on a decade of personal experiences in Cambodia and including a close look at the country’s turbulent politics and social problems.

Moon Angkor Wat will be out later this year.

January 31st, 2012 | Tags: Cambodia, Chou Ta Kuan, guide book, Moon, Moon Angkor Wat, Moon Guide, quote, Research, Siem Reap, Tom Vater, writer | Category: Cambodia | Leave a comment

Yesterday, Achan Neng Onnut, a Sak Yant tattoo master who supported the research of my new book Sacred Skin, the first English language publication on Thailand’s sacred tattoos, celebrated Wai Khru Day. During the course of the day, hundreds of his devotees visited his home in Bangkok to pay their respects to the master and his work.

Achan Neng Onnut has his own website which features some images of the making of a documentary on Sak Yant and Sacred Skin for German and French television and the German broadsheet Die Zeit.

Watch the short documentary (in German) from Die Zeit, featuring Achan Neng Onnut and celebrated photographer James Nachtwey here.

Co-author and photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat and myself will be giving a series of talks on Sacred Skin in Bangkok in March and April. Dates and venues to be announced.

January 29th, 2012 | Tags: Achan Neng Onnut, Aroon Thaewchatturat, Asia, Bangkok, book, Hans Kemp, James Nachtwey, photography, review, Sacred Skin, Sacred Tattoos, Sak Yant, South East Asia, tattoo, Thailand, Tom Vater, Visionary World, Wai Khru, writer | Category: Thailand | Leave a comment

A Bangkok Post review of my new book Sacred Skin - Thailand’s Spirit Tattoos, co-authored with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, has just been reposted on the Awesome Tattoos blog.

The review includes an interview with Aroon.

Photo taken at Bangkok International Airport.

January 22nd, 2012 | Tags: Aroon Thaewchatturat, Asia, Awesome Tattoos, Bangkok, book, Hans Kemp, photography, review, Sacred Skin, Sacred Tattoos, Sak Yant, South East Asia, tattoo, Thailand, Tom Vater, Visionary World, writer | Category: Thailand | Leave a comment

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January 17th, 2012 | Tags: ARD, Aung San Suu Kyi, Beitrag, Burma, Deutschland, Freedom Film Festival;, Kurzfilm, Marc Eberle, Myanmar, Tom Vater, Zaganar | Category: Burma | Leave a comment

Floating somewhere between the Hooghly River and Massive Attack, Tritha is a music ensemble from Kolkata.

The band played a couple of shows at The Space in Bangkok last month  and performed an exalted mix of Indian ragas and folk-ways shuffled around sensuously, with a dash of trip hop thrown in.  Shades of Bjork and Air (they cover one of their songs -  the only slump in an otherwise amazing set) meshed exceptionally well with more traditional Indian sounds.

Thritha is all down to the two mesmerizing singers - Tritha Sinha and Ritika Singh - highly accomplished and very feisty performers. A healthy dash of feminism, a loud cry for equality for India’s women and some entertaining reflections on personal freedom in modern India  made for an involving and gently confrontational show. The world clearly needs more Indian woman power!

The much vaunted appearance of Tritha makes me wonder whether the West Bengali capital, after a recent change in local government, is finally on some kind of cultural rebound. Kolkata always had the reputation of producing India’s most intellectually stimulating art - from the poetry of Tagore to its output of intellectual films - in contrast to brash and commercial Mumbai - but the city had lost some of its artistic touch in recent years. Let’s hope Tritha are a sign of renaissance.

Check out this wonderfully surreal video PaGli, the story of a mad woman on the streets of Kolkata.

Also great is this live clip of Kali’s Forest.

January 16th, 2012 | Tags: Bangkok, India, India feminism, Indian band, Indian contemporary music, Indian music, kali's Forest, Kolkata, PaGli, Ritika Singh, Thailand, The Space, Tom Vater, Trip Hop, Tritha, Tritha Sinha, West Bengal | Category: India, Thailand | Comments (2)

Achan Neng Onnut, one of several tattoo masters featured in my recent book Sacred Skin, the first English language publication on Thailand’s spirit tattoos, Sak Yant, has posted a number of images of the shoot for two documentaries on the book.

Check out the images here.

Director Marc Eberle shot an 8 minute docu on Sacred Skin for arte TV in Germany and France while Meike Fries and Andreas Nebeling shot a 5 minute short film about photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat for German broadsheet Die Zeit.

Watch the Die Zeit docu here.

Both short films featured interviews with the authors, with Achan Neng Onnut and with celebrated conflict photographer James Nachtwey.

January 15th, 2012 | Tags: Achan Neng Onnut, Aroon Thaewchatturat, arte TV, Asia, Bangkok, book, Die Zeit, documentary, Hans Kemp, James Nachtwey, Marc Eberle, Metropolis, photography, Sacred Skin, Sacred Tattoos, Sak Yant, South East Asia, tattoo, Thailand, Tom Vater, Visionary World, writer | Category: Thailand | Leave a comment

Lard Yao Peter travels and tattoos. With long steel needles.

Peter learned his trade in Lard Yao Prison, also known as Klong Prem or the Bangkok Hilton, Thailand’s notoriously infamous jail, where he spent some time in the 1990s.

Spiegel TV has produced an interesting documentary on this extraordinary German. Obviously, the film is in German but should still prove fascinating for anyone interested in the contemporary tattoo scene and especially in Thailand’s sacred tattoos, Sak Yant.

German broadsheet Die Zeit recently produced a short film on my book Sacred Skin. The 5 minute documentary by Meike Fries and Andreas Nebeling features interviews with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, tattoo master Achan Neng Onnut and photographer James Nachtwey.

Achan Neng Onnut has just posted a number of images from the film shoot on his website.

The image at the top of this page was lifted from Lard Yao Peter’s website.

January 15th, 2012 | Tags: Achan Neng Onnut, Andreas Nebeling, Aroon Thaewchatturat, Asia, Bangkok, Bangkok Hilton, book, Die Zeit, Germany, Hans Kemp, heilige Tättowierungen, James Nachtwey, Klong Prem Prison, Lard Yao Peter, Marc Eberle, Meike Fries, photography, Sacred Skin, Sacred Tattoos, Sak Yant, South East Asia, Spiegel TV, tattoo, Thailand, Tom Vater, Visionary World | Category: Germany, Thailand | Leave a comment