Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
My first story in 2023 is for Nikkei Asia – about a new espionage novel by a former British secret service agent and journalist who takes a close look at China’s ambitions in Taiwan. In two months, China will attack Taiwan. China’s president has decided on reunification by force. More than 150.000 troops are estimated […]
Continue ReadingMy latest story with Laure Siegel in the Nikkei Asian Review on how highways, bridges and dams flow from Chinese infrastructure bonanza in Nepal. A hard truck ride to the Nepal/China/Tibet border, the proverbial end of the world. Some 140 km to the north of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure plan is in […]
Continue ReadingVIENTIANE — It is Saturday afternoon in tourist high season, and Vientiane is very quiet. Most shops are closed for the weekend. A couple of Asian tour groups ascend the Patuxai, the Laotian capital’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe. On every floor, stalls are packed with five-year-old photocopies of the Lonely Planet guide to […]
Continue ReadingBurmese army soldier in the hills above Myauk-U, Rakhine State, looking for Muslim ‘terrorists’ 400000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Burma in the past couple of weeks. Overwhelming evidence suggests that the Burmese military, along with civilian militias, is engaging in ethnic cleansing, driving people from their homes, torching their villages, raping their children and murdering […]
Continue ReadingJust spent a mad week in Hong Kong, following ARTE correspondent Laure Siegel conducting interviews with ten residents on the imminent 20th anniversary of the city’s handover from the colonial Britishers to the Chinese, for ARTE TV. Check out the Hong Kong Dossier here. My portraits are in the vignettes of Témoignages : les voix […]
Continue ReadingI was in Tubbataha in 1994. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. I watched hundreds of sharks pooling around coral ledges at 35 meters, so many they kept bumping into me. I watched giant tuna glitter in the dark 30 meters below me, leading tens of thousands of giant barracuda through the depths. I […]
Continue ReadingChris Taylor, author of Harvest Season, a dystopian backpacker novel set in China that I recently reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, recaps and comments one of our meetings in Bangkok and our discussion on the future of backpacking, guidebooks and my novel The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, which will be republished as an e-book […]
Continue ReadingMy review of Chris Taylor´s excellent novel Harvest Season is running in The Wall Street Journal this week. A thoughtful meditation on backpacker mayhem in Southern China, quite unlike Alex Garland´s The Beach. Read the full review here.
Continue ReadingTom Vater talks pop music in Asia with Sean Hocking, owner of Metal Postcard, Hong Kong´s most prolific alternative record label. In 2010, Metal Postcard released the debut single of Phnom Penh`s The Cambodian Space Project. This year, Hocking will unleash a 7″ vinyl single of Pussy & The Learjets, Bangkok’s loudest RocknRoll band, on […]
Continue ReadingEvery day, we appear to be moving a little closer to a state of affairs where governments could become obsolete. Large parts of the world have always been ruled by people who don’t really qualify as governments, but in recent years, perfectly respectable rulers have also shown signs (not for the first time) that they […]
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