Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic crime fiction and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
I was saddened to hear that Sousath Phetrasy, the owner of the Mali Guest House in Phonsavan in Northern Laos, died, in his late 50s, on 25. September 2009. A brilliant and troubled man, Phetrasy was an unlikely veteran of the CIA’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s and 70s, the agency’s largest campaign, [...]
In 2007, Aroon Thaewchatturat’s photo book, Palace Hotels of Rajasthan, was published by Reise Know How Verlag in Germany. Tom Vater wrote the text. The book covers a wide range of heritage hotels with royal connections around Rajasthan, from modest but attractive mansions to gigantic palaces, from pure, sumptuous Raj nostalgia to bottomless kitsch. The [...]
Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.
I love libraries, bookshops, even a pile of books to look through will do. And I like hotels with a decent library. Most hotels I stay in, whether up-scale, flea-pit or somewhere in between, don’t have libraries. A couple months ago, I was staying at the Z Hotel in Puri, Orissa, India, one of my [...]
Marc Eberle’s The Most Secret Place on Earth (The CIA Covert War in Laos), co-written by Tom Vater, has been reviewed by Tue Steen Müller at Filmkommentaren.dk. … with the subtitle: The CIA´s covert war in Laos… is a brilliant piece of journalistic research combined with a very effective documentary tv language in the best [...]
Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.
Marc Eberle’s The Most Secret Place on Earth (The CIA Covert War in Laos), co-written by Tom Vater, has been nominated for the prestigious North German film prize.
Tom Vater’s up-coming travel guide to Cambodia, a Moon Handbook, will be published in February 2010. For this first edition title, Tom spent almost six months traveling to every corner of the South East Asian kingdom, covering all major and many minor sites – from Angkor Wat to remote temple ruins lost in the jungle, [...]
Marc Eberle’s The Most Secret Place on Earth (The CIA Covert War in Laos), co-written by Tom Vater, has been nominated for the Gold Panda Awards, held at the Sichuan TV Festival in November 2009.
Bestselling travel writer Paul Theroux was in Bangkok this week to deliver the key note speech for the 2009 Southeast Asian Writers Award at a royally attended gala dinner. On Saturday, October 11th, I bumped into Mr. Theroux in Kinokunya at Siam Paragon, one of the city’s larger book stores. Mr. Theroux was there to [...]