Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic crime fiction and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
2011 proved to be a mad, mad year for me and I’d like to thank all the people who supported me over the past twelve months. Living it all was almost too much. Here’s to the great times this year. The publication of Sacred Skin, the first book on Thailand’s sacred tattoos, was a major [...]
Sacred Skin has been reviewed by Scott Rothstein at the Art Found Out Blog. “… Sacred Skin is an equal collaboration between author Tom Vater and photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat. The seductive and intimate images are as important to this book as the text. While Vater writes about Sak Yant, Thaewchatturat’s portraits show the complexity of [...]
Finally, the DVD for The Most Secret Place on Earth is out, about a year after the film surfaced on YouTube! There are some great extra, never before seen interviews with the film’s main characters but unfortunately the footage is all in German, as are the subtitles. Given that the film has garnered so much [...]
Check out the new website of German film director Marc Eberle, a long time collaborator who specializes in directing cutting-edge documentaries on Asian subjects. Marc has covered human trafficking on the Indian subcontinent (Nepal’s Sold Out Daughters, 2001), the world’s greatest gathering of human beings, the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India (The Greatest Show [...]
Yes, there is now a facebook page on The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, my 2005 novel. This new amazing facebook feature will feature news, reviews and updates on this ripping story of three hippies who drove a bus full of drugs from London to Kathamndu in 1976. There are plans to republish The Devil’s Road [...]
Punk‘s been pretty dead in Europe for decades and in the US, this particular counterculture never really took off. But in today’s South and Southeast Asia, young kids turn to anti-culture in an effort to distance themselves from ultra conservative pears who leave no room for personal expression. Punks in Burma playing secret concerts in [...]
Very nice to see my new book Sacred Skin, the first English language publication on Thailand’s sacred tattoos, known as Sak Yant, got a mention of a dermatological site in the US. Sacred Skin was photographed by Aroon Thaewchatturat, designed by NEW and published by Visionary World. I wrote the text. Check out this brief [...]
Really enjoyed today’s Daily Telegraph webchat (together with fellow journalist Michelle Jana Chan) with a wide variety of intelligent and complex questions on travel in Southeast Asia coming in hard and fast on such varied topics as boat trips across the Lao Cambodian border, New Year in Bangkok, marine national parks in Thailand and coastal [...]
I have just published a feature in the Friday supplement of The Rising Nepal, one of the country’s Eng;ish language newspapers. Why? Well, The Rising Nepal helped me start my career in 1997. The paper graciously offered me the use of a typewriter and I hammered out a series of feature stories on Nepali culture [...]