counterculture – Tom Vater

The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu reviewed at The Hard Hat Book Site

November 8, 2021November 8, 2021tom

The Hard Hat Book Site has a wonderful review of The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu/ Thanks! Young hippies growing old! As if it is not bad enough that we lose our youth and can’t go back, we also have to cope with the fact that our youth still reserves the right to hang around and […]

The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu reviewed by author Isobel Blackthorn

August 30, 2021August 30, 2021tom

Writer Isobel Blackthorn dropped a wonderful review of The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu. The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu is as much an atmospheric and absorbing read as it is fast-paced entertainment. It’s 1975, and four young men in an old Bedford van pull up in the Hindu Kush on the Peshawar-Kabul road to follow through […]

The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu – Review

July 24, 2021August 4, 2021tom

Laura at Bookscaretc wrote a great review for The Devil’s Rod to Kathmandu. ….Author Tom Vater is described as working predominantly in Asia, and as well as fiction has been a travel writer. And it is clear from his writing that he has both a deep knowledge and a great love for the environments he […]

Interviewing Pyra – Thailand’s Dystopian Pop Deity.

July 19, 2021August 25, 2021tom

Had a great time interviewing Pyra, a Thai pop diva with things to say about her country and culture. “A few years ago, I had the chance to meet Jack Marr. I told him I had met a lot of rich people who were very unhappy. He agreed with me. He said he’d given all […]

The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu at wildwritinglife – Review

July 8, 2021August 4, 2021tom

wildwritinglife reviews The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu! …Beyond the very loaded action line, which appeals to the action-thirsty reader, The Devil´s Road to Kathmandu by the author and journalist Tom Vater has very fine human observations and a well-tempered timeline. The idea of coming back and forth from a period of time to another is a frequent […]

The Elephant in the Room – Short Story

August 23, 2020August 23, 2020tomLeave a Comment

British crime fiction imprint Close to the Bone published my short story The Elephant in the Room, set in the drug addled backpacker scene of southern Thailand. The bungalow burst open, the flimsy lock ripped from the door frame and clattering to the floor.“Where’s Jimmy?”Zoe shot up from the bed and shrunk back against the […]

We were somewhere around Barstow – my Hunter S Thompson tribute from 2005

February 21, 2020February 21, 2020tomLeave a Comment

Tom Vater’s favorite opening line in literature is Hunter S Thompson’s awesome first words in ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. On a recent trip to California I drove from LA to Fresno. With Hunter in mind, […]

Tom Vater reports for the SEA Globe – The Overstay – Bangkok’s Underground Music Venue

January 17, 2011April 15, 2011tomLeave a Comment

The Trash Palace The crowd surges forward. The singer, a skinny white guy, screams into the microphone, which has been taped to the top of a camera tripod. The room is so hot that water drips from the ceiling. Strips of linoleum are coming off the floor in long torn rolls of dirty plastic. The […]

Real Rebel Music – Tom Vater talks to Thailand’s Bob Dylan, in FolkRoots Magazine

July 10, 2003May 31, 2022tom3 Comments

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 […]