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 [...]
I have just come to the end of an extended stay in India. I have been living in an old crumbling palace, the infamous and incredible Z Hotel in Puri, Orissa, facing the Bay of Bengal, hanging with my co-conspirator Aroon Thaewchatturat. Puri, once a hippy haven for Japanese drop-outs, is now an all but [...]
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 [...]
In July and August 2009, Tom Vater and photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat travelled overland from Kolkata to Orissa, where they witnessed the magnificent Rath Yatra car festival in Puri, along with one million pilgrims. They continued through Andhra Pradesh to Chennai and Mahabalipuram, town of shore temples and hustlers (the latter destination is sadly well past its sell-by date, [...]
The Andhra fishermen of Puri on India’s east coast are fighting for cultural, financial and spiritual survival. First light on Puri Beach. Pentacotta fishing village, which grows like a misshapen appendix from the resort’s northern beach front, is coming to life. More than 10.000 people from Andhra Pradesh live in small one-storey stone and mud [...]