Author: tom

Tom Vater is a (sometimes) best-selling writer and freelance journalist, working predominantly in Asia for the past 25 years. He has published more than 20 books, including 4 crime fiction novels. *** Check out Tom’s gritty, eclectic crime fiction: The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, first published in 2006, currently available in English and Spanish. The Detective Maier Trilogy: The Cambodian Book of the Dead (2013), The Man with the Golden Mind (2014) and The Monsoon Ghost Image (2018) His new collection of novellas, Kolkata Noir is out with Next Chapter soon. *** Besides his fiction, Tom has published more than twenty non-fiction books, including the highly acclaimed Sacred Skin with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, and the more recent Burmese Light with photographer Hans Kemp. In 2014, he published Cambodia: Journey through the Land of the Khmer with long time Lonely Planet photographer Kraig Lieb which became Cambodia’s bestselling illustrated book in 2018. Tom is the co-author of several documentary screenplays, most notably The Most Secret Place on Earth, a feature on the CIA’s covert war in 1960s Laos. Tom has published numerous guides to Thailand and Cambodia for Reise Know How and for Moon Books, and he is a Daily Telegraph destination expert. His article are published in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Guardian, Nikkei Asia, Marie Claire, Geographical and many other publications.

Pleasures of the Flesh – and the Mind, in The Economist Podcast

June 1, 2022June 24, 2022tom

A museum tells the history of one of Bangkok’s notorious districts – Patpong has hosted artists, spies, serial killers and sex workers. “There’s a lot more to Patpong than sex,” Michael Messner says. The district lies east of the Chao Phraya river in Thailand’s capital city; two parallel streets host night markets, bars, clubs and […]

An interview with Thailand-based musician Hugo: “What kind of person wants to be in power?”, in Roadbook

May 31, 2022tom

I interviewed the fantabulous pop star Hugo for Roadbook the other day… Hugo Chakrabongse Levy is a warm, otherworldly, and handsome presence – a man of bell-bottom trousers, ornate shirts, wide-brimmed hats, and hand-rolled orange-flavoured cigarettes. He’s also a rock star. Born in the UK, Hugo, as he’s known, attended school in London until he […]

Pleasures of the Flesh – and the Mind, in The Economist

May 28, 2022June 24, 2022tom

A museum tells the history of one of Bangkok’s notorious districts – Patpong has hosted artists, spies, serial killers and sex workers “There’s a lot more to Patpong than sex,” Michael Messner says. The district lies east of the Chao Phraya river in Thailand’s capital city; two parallel streets host night markets, bars, clubs and […]

Thailand has cannabis fever, in Eco-Business

May 20, 2022May 20, 2022tom

… but how green will the kingdom’s ganja trade be? In July, Thailand is set to remove cannabis and hemp from the country’s narcotics list. Eco-Business explores the likely environmental and social impacts of the cannabis trade in the first Southeast Asian country to legalise weed. Thailand’s high-end hotels serve cannabis cocktails, spas work with cannabis […]

Two decades on, ‘The Beach’ faces fresh problems, in Nikkei Asia

May 19, 2022May 20, 2022tom

My latest feature story in Nikkei Asia – on the troubled reopening of iconic Maya Bay on Koh Phi Phi in southern Thailand, made famous by Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie The Beach & subsequently destroyed by uncontrolled mass tourism. “Oh, it’s so f—ing beautiful,” exclaims Etienne, one of the characters in the Hollywood […]

Books: For creative protest, in Thailand the writing is on the wall, in Nikkei Asia

April 21, 2022May 20, 2022tom

My latest story examines an illustrated book that traces the history of political street art and graffiti in Thailand. “In 2013, a friend took me down the railway tracks behind Klong Prem prison. I saw this forest of cement columns covered in artwork and I was instantly attracted,” says photographer Rupert Mann, author of “Bangkok […]

Bangkok museum highlights curious fame of serial killer, in Nikkei Asia

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022tom

Shortly before Christmas 2003, Canadian photographer Steve Sandford and I were sitting in the visitors’ room of Kathmandu’s Central Jail. It was cold, damp and noisy as relatives held shouted conversations with inmates sitting on the other side of a concrete wall topped by a chicken-wire fence. We were there to interview Charles Sobhraj, Asia’s […]

My Small Town in Germany

April 4, 2022May 20, 2022tom

A few days ago, a man called Deckert died in Weinheim, the town I come from in Germany. Deckert was a member of my home town’s local council from 1975 to 1999 and again from 2019 until he died. He was also a teacher and a civil servant. Deckert joined the far right NPD in […]

Headwinds buffet Thailand’s ‘sea nomads’, in Nikkei Asia

March 9, 2022May 20, 2022tom

PHANG NGA, Thailand — “I get a lot of motivation from the life I chose,” says Lena Bumiller-Klathale, a 34-year-old German who has traded her European past for a life on the ocean in Asia. “Living on a boat without running water could be seen as backward, but sailing to a beautiful bay and taking […]

Interview on Sak Yant & Sacred Skin, in Berliner Zeitung (German)

February 24, 2022May 20, 2022tom

DPA correspondent Carola Frentzen interviewed Ajarn Neng On Nut and myself for her feature on Sak Yant, Thailand’s spirit tattoos, out in Der Tagesspiegel. Read the full story here. Buy the first English language book on sak yant, beautifully photographed by Aroon Thaewchatturat, the best-selling Sacred Skin here. Check out the new Sacred Skin website.