https://www.scmp.com/rss/326431/feed Peter Janssen has been based in Bangkok, Thailand, since 1980, writing for a variety of news organisations and publications over the past four decades. He has covered political, economic, social and cultural developments in Thailand and Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam most of his journalistic career. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com The Chao Phraya River is one of Bangkok’s great attractions. Board one of the vessels that ply the river and much of the capital’s recent history is laid out before you – the Temple of Dawn (renovated by King Taksin when the capital was on the western, Thonburi, side of the river, the shabby fringes of Chinatown, the walls of the Grand Palace and the old East Asiatic Company headquarters, and Portuguese-built churches. Surprisingly, given the great variety of vessels on the waterway, passenger... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3096126/riverboat-queens-bangkok-how-three-generations-women-turned?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3096126/riverboat-queens-bangkok-how-three-generations-women-turned?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 06 Aug 2020 09:15:11 +0000 When Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Myanmar last month he may have been impressed by the government’s tight control over traffic in Naypyidaw. “They closed off six roads in the capital for three to four hours, before and after his arrival, and for hours during trips to the hotel,” says a Myanmar employee of a multilateral organisation with an office in Naypyidaw. “This would have been impossible in Yangon,” he adds. Not that it made much difference. Naypyidaw’s six-lane... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3050983/deserted-asian-capital-may-finally-start-come-alive-thanks?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3050983/deserted-asian-capital-may-finally-start-come-alive-thanks?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 18 Feb 2020 04:35:57 +0000 “I love Patpong,” says Michael Messner, founder and curator of the recently opened Patpong Museum in Bangkok. The Austrian entrepreneur, 42, and five partners have invested more than US$1 million in the museum, a well-researched showcase of art, artefacts and information that charts the history of a neighbourhood that gave birth to one of the world’s most notorious red light districts. He is keen to stress, however, that the museum does not just focus on the sex industry. “In the museum tour we... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3039692/patpong-rise-bangkoks-most-famous-red-light-district?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3039692/patpong-rise-bangkoks-most-famous-red-light-district?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 29 Nov 2019 04:15:07 +0000 Saffron-robed monks are a common sight across Thailand, collecting alms from the Buddhist faithful every morning, sitting cross-legged in temples, kneeling in prayer. More than 99.9 per cent of them are men, and the nation’s Buddhist authorities are firm in their resolve to keep it that way. Soon after Bhikkhuni Dhammananda, who had been ordained as a female monk in 2003 in Sri Lanka, helped ordain eight women monks in Thailand in 2014, the Sangha Supreme Council, Buddhism’s ruling body in the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3038412/thailands-rebel-female-buddhist-monk-fighting-sexism-and-her?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3038412/thailands-rebel-female-buddhist-monk-fighting-sexism-and-her?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 21 Nov 2019 00:15:12 +0000 Buddhist monk Ratha Vayagool, 51, is a frequent visitor to Dasa Book Café. One of Bangkok’s most popular second-hand bookshops, it is situated in the middle of the city’s main residential neighbourhood for well-off Thais and the expatriate community. “I come and browse,” Ratha says. “Sometimes I go to the third floor and I will stay for six hours. You never know what you will find. That’s what I like about it.” Ratha is an atypical Thai monk. His father was in the diplomatic service, so from the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3033308/inside-bangkoks-bustling-used-book-stores-where-english-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3033308/inside-bangkoks-bustling-used-book-stores-where-english-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Oct 2019 06:00:08 +0000 Sporting a panama hat, his signature collarless shirt and sarong-like longyi, Sulak Sivaraksa addressed an auditorium at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University this month on the disappearance of fellow activist Sombath Somphone. The Laotian citizen went missing at a police checkpoint in Vientiane in 2012. “Sombath is a good friend of mine,” says Sulak, who at the age of 86 remains Thailand’s best-known political gadfly. His long career as a social critic and activist has driven him into exile twice... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3022373/how-activist-buddhist-convinced-thai-king-law-insulting-monarchy-was?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3022373/how-activist-buddhist-convinced-thai-king-law-insulting-monarchy-was?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 13 Aug 2019 10:30:09 +0000 Bangkok’s Dusit Thani hotel – a much loved landmark in the Thai capital since it opened 49 years ago – has closed to make way for a redevelopment its management insists will leave much of the building’s heritage and legacy intact. The Dusit Thani (Heavenly City) was one of the city’s first five-star hotels when it opened for business on February 27, 1970. From day one the luxury hotel emphasised “Thainess”, from exceedingly polite service in the lobby to the golden spire atop the roof (modelled... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3005209/bangkoks-beloved-luxury-hotel-dusit-thani-will-retain?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3005209/bangkoks-beloved-luxury-hotel-dusit-thani-will-retain?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 09 Apr 2019 00:15:03 +0000 When the Wat Mangkon (Dragon Temple) MRT station finally opens in September this year, the back alleys of Bangkok’s Chinatown will be easily accessible on foot, which has always been the best means of transport in this most congested neighbourhood in the Thai capital. If it opens on schedule, that is. The station, one of several stops on an extension of the Blue Line that opened in 2004 and which now ends at the Hua Lamphong Railway Station on the eastern outskirts of Chinatown, has been under... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3004480/four-great-places-eat-bangkoks-chinatown-when-its-subway?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3004480/four-great-places-eat-bangkoks-chinatown-when-its-subway?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:30:06 +0000 “People always remember the man who dug the village well,” goes an old Chinese saying. If that’s still true today, Beijing should have fond memories of Anand Panyarachun, the former Thai diplomat who did much to re-establish Sino-Thai relations in the mid-1970s. The legacy of Anand, 86, who twice served as prime minister of Thailand, is captured in the recently launched Anand Panyarachun And the Making of Modern Thailand, an “authorised biography” compiled and written by long-time Bangkok-based... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2183273/prime-minister-who-modernised-thailand-diplomat-who-broke-ice-maos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2183273/prime-minister-who-modernised-thailand-diplomat-who-broke-ice-maos?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Jan 2019 10:30:53 +0000 Visiting Jakarta, known for some of Asia’s worst traffic jams, should become slightly more bearable this year with the opening in March of the first 16 kilometres of the North-South Mass Rapid Transit Jakarta rail system – the Indonesian capital’s first. Work on the project started in 2003, and was subject to numerous delays, but the MRT line – comprising both subways and overhead rail – will be capable of carrying up to 200,000 passengers a day in air-conditioned comfort. It will run from the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2180503/inside-indonesias-first-five-star-hotel-jakarta-and-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2180503/inside-indonesias-first-five-star-hotel-jakarta-and-its?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Jan 2019 16:02:23 +0000 Bangkok’s Chinatown is one of the largest and oldest in the world, established in 1782 by mostly immigrants from southern China’s Chaozhou region. And like many Chinatowns around the world, it is quickly gentrifying. A district on the eastern fringes of Chinatown is now home to a cluster of hipster bars and restaurants, including a live music club and tapas bar. The government has been promoting Chinatown as an arts district, and as a result, galleries have sprung up in the past few years. Now,... https://www.scmp.com/identity/how-bangkoks-chinatown-fighting-gentrification/article/3000290?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/identity/how-bangkoks-chinatown-fighting-gentrification/article/3000290?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 05 Dec 2018 16:16:59 +0000 Myanmese entrepreneur Ngwe Tun plans to send a shipment of expensive Geisha coffee to Hong Kong in April next year, notching up another first for the country’s fledgling “speciality” coffee industry. Ngwe Tun, 43, founder and director of Aung Nay Lin Htun – which has been producing coffee under the Genius brand since 2012 – started importing Geisha coffee trees from Panama four years ago. Why we love coffee so much: the bitter truth about caffeine The first crop of the speciality beans should be... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2176129/out-opium-coffee-myanmar-targets-speciality-market?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2176129/out-opium-coffee-myanmar-targets-speciality-market?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Dec 2018 04:45:30 +0000 Like many successful Sino-Thai businessmen, Vichai Sriprasert was instilled with the Chinese work ethic from a young age. “My grandmother would say, ‘Be honest, work hard and don’t spend anything,’” Vichai says. The 75-year-old grew up with his grandmother in Bangkok while his parents worked in Ayutthaya province in central Thailand, running the family rice mill. How Havana of the East gave up on tobacco growing Despite his grandmother’s maxim, the family was willing to spend money when it came... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2172144/how-chinese-thais-came-dominate-thailands-rice-export-business?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2172144/how-chinese-thais-came-dominate-thailands-rice-export-business?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 08 Nov 2018 00:45:45 +0000 Lim Chin Tsong was one of the few Chinese migrants to succeed in colonial-era Burma, now Myanmar – which the British incorporated into its much bigger possession, India, and where Chinese were subordinate to Indians, in contrast to their status in other Southeast Asian cities. “Unlike the Chinese in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, the population in Burma has had restricted access to trade and remained small in number since the colonial era,” writes Jayde Lin Roberts, the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2171173/burmese-days-yangon-monuments-rare-chinese-who-made-their-fortunes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2171173/burmese-days-yangon-monuments-rare-chinese-who-made-their-fortunes?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:45:45 +0000 In December 1957, Sukarno, the first president of newly independent Indonesia, expelled some 46,000 Dutch people living and working in the country and nationalised their businesses, slamming the final door shut on 350 years of colonialism in what was formerly called the Dutch East Indies. Angry at the refusal of the Netherlands’ government to cede Papua New Guinea to Indonesia, which had been independent since 1945, Sukarno gave the Dutch one month to pack up and leave their former... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2167812/how-medan-tobacco-growers-blew-chance-stay-par-havana-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2167812/how-medan-tobacco-growers-blew-chance-stay-par-havana-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 11 Oct 2018 00:45:30 +0000 When Tjong Nyie Mie was a little girl, she and her younger brother would play hide and seek in their palatial family mansion on the main drag in Medan – a cosmopolitan entrepot during Indonesia’s Dutch colonial era dubbed the “Paris of Sumatra”. Nowadays, Tjong Nyie Mie (also known as Mimi Tjong) is the affable hostess of Tjong A Fie Mansion, which was opened to the public as a tourist attraction in 2009 and is named after her grandfather. 700 years of Chinese Indonesian history at risk as young... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2165970/indonesia-mansion-thats-monument-chinese-tycoons?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2165970/indonesia-mansion-thats-monument-chinese-tycoons?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Sep 2018 10:00:00 +0000 Luang Prabang, the royal capital of Laos before it became a communist nation in 1975, tends to attract the world-weary. “I was tired of the art world,” says Rik Gadella, founder and chief investor in Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden, which opened last year 2km (1¼ miles) outside Luang Prabang. It’s a 10- to 20-minute boat rode down the Mekong River, depending on the current. Has tourism stripped Luang Prabang of its soul? Gadella, a Dutch national, spent 25 years organising art exhibitions and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2161138/how-dutch-visitor-fell-love-laos-luang-prabang-stayed-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2161138/how-dutch-visitor-fell-love-laos-luang-prabang-stayed-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Aug 2018 03:30:00 +0000 When Chinese low-cost retail chain Miniso opened a shop in June on Sisavangvong Road, the main thoroughfare of Luang Prabang, it was the talk of the town. Not because of its cheap cosmetics, toys and household items. The shopkeepers had erected a flashing red and white neon sign; not unusual advertising bait elsewhere but forbidden in Luang Prabang, the royal capital of Laos until 1975 and a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1995. “It was completely against Unesco rules,” says Georgie Walsh,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2160947/chinese-tourist-invasion-feared-high-speed-laos-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2160947/chinese-tourist-invasion-feared-high-speed-laos-china?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:30:15 +0000 On August 10, the residents of Suphan Buri will receive yet another reminder of the man who put their town back on Thailand’s political map – Banharn Silpa-archa, a prime minister in the mid-1990s and provincial politician extraordinaire. A towering statue of Banharn, a diminutive man in real life, will be erected at the entrance to the Dragon Descendants Museum built in the shape of a dragon, part of Banharn’s bountiful legacy to the town 100km (60 miles) north of Bangkok. With subway’s... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2155821/chinese-thai-politicians-legacy-his-hometown-reminder-how?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2155821/chinese-thai-politicians-legacy-his-hometown-reminder-how?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:46:04 +0000 Next month the 74-room Yangon Excelsior – a renovation of the British colonial-era Steel Brothers company headquarters on Bo Sun Pat Street, Yangon – will welcome its first visitors. In December, or thereabouts, the stunning Rosewood Yangon – a makeover of the New Law Courts building on Strand Road, completed in 1931 – will open, adding 166 rooms to the luxury heritage hotel market in Myanmar’s former capital. The property will be managed by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, owned by Hong Kong-based... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2152075/why-new-heritage-hotels-yangon-myanmar-are-banking-asian?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2152075/why-new-heritage-hotels-yangon-myanmar-are-banking-asian?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 24 Jun 2018 23:45:57 +0000 Last year Thein Aung, 70, and his family moved out of their dilapidated house on 47th Street, downtown Yangon. They were making way for a complete interior refurbishing of their old homestead and the arrival of foreign tenants who would pay them hefty rents for the next five years. “This building is about 100 years old,” says Thein Aung, on a recent visit with his wife and two sons to the renovated two-storey home. “We lived in this house for five generations.” Selfies with armed guerillas:... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2148481/yangon-more-colonial-buildings-are-being-preserved-homeowners-realise-they?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2148481/yangon-more-colonial-buildings-are-being-preserved-homeowners-realise-they?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 31 May 2018 00:15:00 +0000 Suwilai Boonthawatchai, 63, was born and raised in Sampheng, the narrow street that for two centuries defined the commercial heart of Bangkok, known today as Chinatown. “At night we could walk to the street food stalls wearing our pyjamas,” Suwilai recalls of her childhood in the area. “It was comfortable and safe. There were no thieves at all at that time.” Grab coffee and a coffin at this Bangkok ‘death cafe’ Things started to change in the old neighbourhood in the early 1990s, when Thailand’s... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2141436/bangkoks-chinatown-braces-gentrification-now-subway-station?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2141436/bangkoks-chinatown-braces-gentrification-now-subway-station?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Apr 2018 01:45:46 +0000 A transgender extravaganza that has been running since 1974, Tiffany’s Show in Pattaya is still going strong, packing in hundreds of ogling tourists every night. The entrance fee is not cheap – 900 baht (US$28) for an ordinary ticket and 1,600 baht for VIP seats – but this does not put off an audience that nowadays is more than 60 per cent made up of Chinese tourists. Of the 35 million international tourists who visited Thailand last year, about 30 per cent came from China, making it Thailand’s... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2132657/chinese-tourists-flocking-pattaya-transgender-shows-thai?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2132657/chinese-tourists-flocking-pattaya-transgender-shows-thai?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:46:40 +0000