Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
Some of my tattoo reportage, especially work I did in India with Laure Siegel, is now available as a smart phone app (who said I was not a technology savvy cutting edge content generator?), both in French and English. ‘ Take a look at the amazing tattoo related material on offer at ATC Tattoo.
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 ReadingSet on the banks of the Song River and facing spectacular limestone mountain ridges, Vang Vieng’s swankiest hotel resort offers a winning combination of Laotian culture and French colonial era ambience, with fantastic service, excellent facilities, great tours and a good restaurant… I am just back from Laos, where I was researching articles for the […]
Continue ReadingLast story of 2017, first story of 2018, with Laure Siegel. The show stays on the road and the road takes me wherever. Home is anywhere I lay my head. In this instance, north of Kolkata, the world’s most beautiful city, along the banks for the river Hooghly. Really enjoyed researching this one and am […]
Continue ReadingMy latest travel feature with Laure Siegel on one of my favorite cities – Kolkata – for CNN Travel Mother Teresa did the same for this spendid city as Spielberg did for sharks. She ruined the West Bengal capital’s reputation for generations. But Teresa is dead, the city is on a bumpy rebound and its […]
Continue ReadingThe eastern India state of Odisha, stretching for more than 300 miles along the Bay of Bengal, bristles with architectural and cultural gems. Tropical, remote and home to some of the subcontinent’s most striking temples, much of the state was off-limits to foreign travel for some years because of Maoist unrest but reopened in 2016. […]
Continue ReadingA few words om the excellent art house movie PsycheDelhi by Surya Dash. If Godard and Tarkovsky had conceived an illegitimate child, with an anarchist bohemian Brahmin capturing the surrealist copulation on camera round the back of a chowk in the Indian capital, the offspring might look something like PsycheDelhi. Delhi is usually perceived […]
Continue ReadingMy latest feature with Laure Siegel for the Nikkei Asian Review – Japan’s love affair with Alsace grows stronger. After 150 years, French region continues to attract Japanese companies “If a Japanese company wants to get off the ground in France, it will move to Paris,” says Japanese entrepreneur Kentaro Kitajima. “If it wants to […]
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 ReadingCircus shows temple tourists another side of Cambodia – Creative training offers an alternative lifestyle for young performers SIEM REAP, Cambodia — It is a stiflingly hot Friday evening in Siem Reap, western Cambodia. The big top is packed, and there is an air of excitement as 300 or so spectators squeeze onto narrow wooden […]
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