Michael Messner – Tom Vater

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]