The Bucket People - Full Moon Party on Ko Phangan

Welcome to the Full Moon Party, one of the most celebrated and long-running dance culture (this term should be applied loosely) events on the planet.
Since the early 1990s, Ko Phangan, a small island in the Golf of Thailand, has been part of the Axis of Techno that stretches from Mallorca and Ibiza to Goa and Thailand.

The Illustrated Kill Convention

Once a year , in a temple near Bangkok, Thailand's would-be mafiosis and hardmen gather to get tattooed by the resident monks. The tattoos are said to have magic protective powers. More than 5000 of the most usual suspects are hanging out to exchange tall stories, get their second skin upgraded and to pose.

In the course of the day, many of the attending criminals under-go a state of violent trance as they transmutate into animals that have been grafted onto their skins. Grown men are reduced to the movement of monkeys and snakes before their animist alter personalities explode and burn up in a brief flash of violence.

This feature has been published in Fortean Times (UK), Maxim and FHM

Aroon Thaewchatturat - Photographer - Ethnobotanist

Independent publisher Orchid Press challenges complacent book outlets in Bangkok

Orchid Press, one of Thailand’s longest running independent publishers, opened its first retail outlet in Bangkok in November 2005. The specialist bookshop, located on the fourth floor of Silom Plaza, next to Sala Daeng Skytrain Station, was the brainchild of Chris Frape, Director of Orchid.

“As I was looking for titles on Buddhism and Asian art, I got more and more wound up by the fact that I had to travel to another continent to get hold of material that would help me learn about the region I live in.”

Published in The South Eastern Globe, Lifestyle+Travel and Untamed Travel

The Moken and the Wave

The sea gypsies of the Andaman Sea, a small indigenous fishing community in Thailand, saved the lives of tourists and locals alike when the giant Tsunami that devastated coastal communities in South Asia reached their islands.
Yet the Moken sea gypsies are facing stark choices in the aftermath of catastrophe. Pressured by squabbling powerbrokers and NGOs to assimilate and remain on the mainland, most sea-gypsies decided to abandon the relative safety of their refugee camp and returned to their home in the Ko Surin National Park. But their village and all their belongings were taken by the Tsunami. Without boats, the nomadic sea-farers cannot sustain themselves on the islands.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.onasia.com)

Tom Vater and Aroon Thaewchatturat have followed the story and plight of the sea gypsies for many years.

Articles and photographs have appeared in GEO Magazine, The International Herald Tribune, Courier International, f-roots, Fortean Times, Untamed Travel, LIFESTYLE+TRAVEL and AsiaTimes-Online.

An essay on the life and music of the sea gypsies is published in Tom Vater's 'Beyond the Pancake Trench - Road Tales From The Wild East' by Orchid Press.

Buy this title.

The music of the Moken sea gypsies was recorded by Tom Vater in 1999 and the Topic Records/British Library CD issue remains in print.

A Panorama photo book by Aroon Thaewchatturat and Tom Vater on Thailand's hill tribes and sea gypsies is published by Reise Know How.

There's a Killer on the Beach

Jerry Lee Lewis at the Ko Samui Music Festival 2005

Jerry Lee Lewis, who turned 70 this year, recently played a one-off show at Ko Samui's second Music Festival in southern Thailand in September 2005. Despite jet-lag and a frail constitution, the Killer delivered a blinding performance.

The Three Pagodas Pass

Following the River Kwai west, from Kanchanaburi, location of the infamous WW2 bridge, on the Death Railway, the hustle and bustle of central Thailand soon gives way to a slower pace, a more languid and quiet atmosphere. Replanted teak and rubber, cassava plantations and wild untended clusters of bamboo crowd the tracks and in the mid-day heat it is easy to imagine the incredible toil and suffering the POWs had to endure to chisel their way through granite rock walls. In the end, the infamous bridge was blown up, most of the tracks uprooted again and the Japanese surrendered.
Beyond Namtok, the final stop for the Death Railway today, rolling hills give way to an amazing landscape of limestone mountains and a seventy kilometer stretch of newly surfaced road along a dammed lake, the Khao Laem Reservoir, dotted with floating houses from where much the local population makes a living in fishing. During the dry season, the hillsides are set on fire, which makes for hazy views, but at night the burning patches of land are visible for miles and turn the entire province into an otherworldly, truly remote part of the world.

This feature was published in LIFESTYLE+TRAVEL and in The Nation (Thailand).

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival

New Photo Feature !!

The Vegetarian Festival on the tourist island Phuket in Southern Thailand is a truly bizarre occasion. Men and women, ostensibly possessed by gods, pierce their tongues and cheeks with sharp implements. Adepts apparently feel no pain, and show little no sign of real injury.

This feature includes historical context and background, contemporary angles and tales as well as stunning photographs of the festivities and self mutilations.

This feature was published in Fortean Times, Untamed Travel Magazine and Tattoo (Italy).

The Chonburi Buffalo Race

The race track is a 300-metre stretch of ankle deep mud. The morning sun is blindingly hot. Hundreds of spectators cling to the railings or line the turnstiles besides the track. Underneath the start banner four jockeys, who all ride bareback, are trying to get on top of their unlikely racing beasts. The pit crews continually pour water onto the animals to keep them from overheating. The buffaloes are nervous and aggressive. Riders are thrown several times before the race even starts.

Chuwit, Thailand's sex king turned anti corruption crusader and member of parliament, unveils the secrets of the world's largest sex industry.

Chuwit Kamolvisit is one of Thailand's best-known celebrities. But Chuwit is not a pop star or actor, nor a politician or athlete.Chuwit is a sex king. The 42-year old Chinese Thai owns a string of high-class massage parlors. And Thailand boasts the world's largest sex industry, despite the fact that prostitution is illegal in the kingdom. Chuwit employs more than 3000 women and claims to be worth a 120 million $. Senators, MPs and policemen are regular customers.
Now the police, the anti-money-laundering agency, his competitors, women's rights groups and the government are after the sex king.

Photographs: Steve Sandford (www.asianeye.ca) and Tom Vater

Published in Marie Claire, Sleazenation and Farang Magazine.

Real Rebel Music

Nga Surachai Chanthimathon, writer, singer, guitarist and one of Thailand’s most vocal social critics, fused the sounds of Thai and Khmer folk music traditions with Bob Dylan style protest songs and picked up a gun to defend his convictions. His band, Caravan, was instrumental in the creation of one of Thailand’s most enduring musical genres – phreng phua chiwit – Song For Life.
Nga’s songs reflect the huge social upheavals that shook South East Asia in the 1960s and 70s. His life’s work is a musical bridge between tradition and revolutionary endeavor, between the arcane flow of sounds that have, for centuries, emanated from the pin and the khaen, the traditional instruments of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and the songs of the war the Americans were losing in Vietnam.
Nga’s story is a brilliant confirmation of the power of the word, the song and of cultural evolution as a means to push for social change, while feeding on a rich but neglected musical heritage – the Thai folk tradition.

This story was first published by f-roots, the UK’s major world music magazine. It has also appeared in FarangMagazine.

Phi Ta Khon - Thailand's Halloween

Grown men riding cardboard buffaloes, children wearing fearsome masks and waving wooden penises in your face, old women wailing and a procession that features kings, queens, Osama Bin Laden, taxi girls and an enlightened mystic. Thailand has it all, riotous and colorful.

The Phi Ta Khon Festival takes place in Dan Sai, a small town in northern Thailand. The tourist brochure tells us that the local people are very proud of this ‘unique and colorful traditional merit–making ceremony, which has been passed on from generation to generation’. The precise origin of Phi Ta Khon is unclear. But it is believed that the roots of the festival revolve around an important tale of the Buddha's last life, before he reached Nirvana.
According to Buddhist folklore, the Buddha-to-be was born as Prince Vessandorn, a generous man who gave freely to the people. One day, he gave away a white elephant, a royal creature, revered as a symbol of rain. The townspeople were so angry for fear of drought and famine, that they banished the prince into exile. The prince left the village. His subjects forgot him and even thought that he was already dead. When he suddenly returned, his people were overjoyed. They welcomed him back with a celebration so loud that even the dead were awakened from their slumbers to join in the festivities.

Fat chance for the (Heineken) Fat Fest

Altamont Speedway. 1969. The summer of love reverberates round the dying days of the swinging 60s and the Rolling Stones are doing a free show for their fans. Because they didn’t make it to Woodstock. The Hell’s Angels are hired in for security. Bad move. The several 100.000 fans all drop bad acid, the atmosphere tilts from hippy love into RocknRoll hell and a guy is stabbed to death in front of the stage while the Stones hack through ‘Sympathy for the devil’. Bummer. Festival gone wrong. The end of the 1960s and all that....

This feature was published as the cover story of Farang Magazine in 2005.