Burma – Page 4 – Tom Vater

New Crime Wave Press Title: Gaijin Cowgirl by Jame DiBiasio Out Now!!!

March 10, 2013March 10, 2013tomLeave a Comment

After having one of our titles, Mindfulness and Murder in the Top 100 Crime novels on Amazon this week, Crime Wave Press introduces it’s latest thriller: Gaijin Cowgirl by Jame DiBiasio. Gaijin Cowgirl is a high octane adventure introducing Val Benson, flaky Tokyo hostess and utterly unreliable protagonist who stumbles across a map to one […]

Burmese Fairy Tales

September 21, 2012September 21, 2012tomLeave a Comment

Long time collaborator Marc Eberle and his co-director Maung Maung Tha Myint have just released the trailer for their forth-coming documentary Burmese Fairy Tales, a small person’s journey into a mysterious world where spirituality and sex meet. Nono, a gay, cross-dressing dwarf visits the ancient Taungbyone spirit festival near Mandalay where psychics of the “third […]

Pictures of Sittwe – Home of the Rohingya

September 13, 2012September 13, 2012tomLeave a Comment

I was in Sittwe, Rakhine State in Burma recently, the site of serious communal riots between Rakhine people and Muslim Rohingya who have been living in the state for generations and are currently the victims of a hate campaign instigated by politicians, ordinary people, Buddhist monks and government officials. I spent three weeks in Burma […]

Burmese Days

September 1, 2012September 15, 2012tomLeave a Comment

Three weeks on the road in Burma, from north to south and back again. Early mornings and late nights, buses, boats, trishaws, motorbikes, bicycles and planes, virtually non-stop rain and lots of amazing conversations. Hardly a country but very much a state, the land between India and China is many things to different people – […]

The Sounds of the Moken – Sea Gypsies of Southeast Asia

June 27, 2012June 30, 2012tomLeave a Comment

I used to work with the British Library’s Sound Archive a decade ago and collected and documented music from around Asia for the library’s International Music Collection. Several ethnographic CDs of this work were released in the 90s, the rest sits in London and is accessible to researchers. The music of the Moken Sea Gypsies […]

Freiheit in Burma – Marc Eberles neuer Kurzfilm fuer die ARD

January 17, 2012tomLeave a Comment

Marc Eberle hat gerade einen neuen Kurzfilmbeitrag fuer die ARD in Rangoon gedreht. Vom 31. Dezember 2011 bis zum 4. Januar 2012 fand in der ehemaligen burmesischen Hauptstadt das erste Filmfest der Freiheit statt. Komiker Zaganar und Nobelpreisträgerin Aung Sang Suu Kyi haben diese erste von der burmesischen Regierung nicht zensierte Festival organisiert. Hier ist […]

William Young is dead – Former CIA agent shoots himself in Chiang Mai

April 5, 2011June 24, 2013tom6 Comments

William Young, the CIA agent who is credited with allegedly discovering Long Cheng in northern Laos, a remote valley which became a top secret CIA air base in 1965 – and soon after the busiest airport in the world – shot himself in Chiang Mai, Thailand a few days ago. During the making of the […]

Let’s Visit Burma – Tom Vater on the pros and cons of tourism in Burma

November 7, 2010September 15, 2012tomLeave a Comment

As the Burmese generals celebrate another well-deserved victory today – no, not the election results which are a foregone conclusion, but the staunch support the regime receives from China, India and Thailand, while European and American businesses are doing their best to get around sanctions so that, they say, Myanmar does not become a province […]

The Moken – Die Musik der Seenomaden Südostasiens auf CD – The Moken – Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Sea – CD, by Topic Records (UK)

February 4, 2001May 31, 2022adminLeave a Comment

The Moken – Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Sea ist in Zusammenarbeit mit der British Library bei Topic Records (UK) erschienen. Die Lieder der Moken, der letzten Seenomaden der Andamanischen See, wurden 1999 von Tom Vater auf Ko Surin, einem Inselarchipel vor der Westküste Thailands, aufgenommen. Fotos von Aroon Thaewchatturat. Liner notes von Tom Vater The Moken […]