https://www.scmp.com/rss/8073/feed Simon Parry has been a newspaper journalist for more than 30 years and writes stories and features from Asia for newspapers and magazines around the world. He is based in Hong Kong and has reported from more than 25 countries and territories including North Korea, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com “Before we begin, are there any Americans here today?” asks the matronly tour guide as we stand impatiently at the brewery gates, bubbling with anticipation like grown-up versions of the children who won tickets to enter Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. We exchange nervous glances as she scans the group through narrowed eyes. When no one raises a hand, she smiles, turns on her heel, and leads us into a sprawling 19th century brewery complex; the magical realm of one of the world’s most... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3259871/elephant-room-tour-budweiser-budvar-brewery-home-original-budweiser-czech-republic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3259871/elephant-room-tour-budweiser-budvar-brewery-home-original-budweiser-czech-republic?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 Apr 2024 20:15:17 +0000 On a grey midwinter morning in Ravno Pole, a handful of mostly elderly residents amble listlessly past the scruffy village square, some picking up groceries from a small shop, others sitting on plastic seats in the lone cafe, tucking into US$2 servings of chicken and rice. The houses dotted around the square are crumbling, the roads potholed, and the only signal of profitable activity comes from the rumble of trucks passing through on their way to and from an industrial estate and a supermarket... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3210504/high-profile-belt-and-road-plan-build-europes-first-smart-city-bulgaria-lies-tatters?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3210504/high-profile-belt-and-road-plan-build-europes-first-smart-city-bulgaria-lies-tatters?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 17 Feb 2023 20:15:08 +0000 The burly construction worker’s eyes shine with evangelical zeal as he gestures towards the triangular hill looming over the small rural town of Visoko in Bosnia and tells us: “In 10 years’ time, more people will visit here than the Great Pyramid of Egypt.” A migrant labourer in Australia, he has flown home to take his elderly father from North Macedonia to a place called the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids in the hope of curing him of his chronic lung disease. “You can feel the positive energy... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3196845/novak-djokovic-endorsed-bosnian-valley-pyramids-8th-world-wonder-or-just-massive-hoax?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3196845/novak-djokovic-endorsed-bosnian-valley-pyramids-8th-world-wonder-or-just-massive-hoax?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Oct 2022 08:15:14 +0000 Even in his last yards, Brooklyn refused to accept that his race was run. Stricken with cancer, paralysed and struggling to breathe, he clung to life, believing he could defy the odds one last time. “He didn’t want to go, and that was the hardest part,” says animal welfare campaigner Carey Theil who – with wife Christine Dorchak – nursed Brooklyn, a former racing greyhound, through his dying days at their home in Massachusetts, in the United States. “We wanted Brooklyn to pass naturally, but he... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3188520/how-one-dog-helped-end-greyhound-racing-macau?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3188520/how-one-dog-helped-end-greyhound-racing-macau?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Aug 2022 05:15:28 +0000 Journalists get a bad press these days, and it often leads to cheap shots and vulgar insults. I’ve been called a sanctimonious windbag, a dirt-digging low life and a washed up, sad old hack – and that’s just by my wife and children. I cannot argue with them. I’m a disreputable relic of a dishonourable profession spiralling towards its inevitable, ignominious death. No one reads newspapers any more and no one watches television news. People get their information and form their world views in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3186228/why-we-cannot-let-journalism-die-ukraine-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3186228/why-we-cannot-let-journalism-die-ukraine-war?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Jul 2022 01:45:22 +0000 In a hushed courtroom in the north of England in March, jurors in the trial of a former national radio disc jockey accused of molesting youngsters in the Philippines listened intently, as a prosecuting lawyer conjured up the monsters of their own childhoods. The crimes of some of Britain’s most notorious and reviled paedophiles – television presenters Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall, and pop star Gary Glitter – were paraded before the jury to remind them how they destroyed lives from behind a cloak... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3176820/online-child-sex-abuse-soars-during-covid-19?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3176820/online-child-sex-abuse-soars-during-covid-19?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 May 2022 08:45:16 +0000 It’s a travel itinerary to bring tears of envy to the eyes of grounded Hongkongers: an exotic nature reserve in Madagascar followed by a boat trip across the Indian Ocean to the tropical Comoros Islands, then a journey from Addis Ababa to Hong Kong with a stopover in the Middle East, and finally a one-way flight from Hong Kong to the UK. The lone female traveller involved has clocked up more than 20,000km (12,400 miles) over the past 30 months, qualifying for the kind of air-mile count that... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3164142/hong-kongs-role-illegal-wildlife-trade-driven-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3164142/hong-kongs-role-illegal-wildlife-trade-driven-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 Jan 2022 23:15:15 +0000 Sarah Kong Siu-kuen’s laughter echoes around her white-walled flat in a smart suburb of Manchester where, with unopened packing boxes still piled in corners, she describes the day a 30-minute journey turned into a cross-England tour. Kong, who left Hong Kong in May with her son and daughter-in-law – both 25-year-old graduate accountants now looking for work and willing to switch careers if necessary – was staying in an Airbnb when they ventured out for their first train journey to inspect a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3154991/hong-kong-migrants-uk-open-about-their-hopes-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3154991/hong-kong-migrants-uk-open-about-their-hopes-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Nov 2021 22:15:07 +0000 When James Bond performed a death-defying motorcycle jump for No Time to Die in front of the cave home where her ancestors had lived for centuries, Dora Cappiello rushed to tell her 92-year-old father. “One of the most spectacular scenes for the film was shot outside the place where my father was born,” she says, proudly. “I tried to explain what was happening but he didn’t really understand.” His bewilderment is understandable. After all, Matera – clinging to a craggy hillside above a wild and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3150569/city-new-james-bond-movie-no-time-die-shame-italy-no?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3150569/city-new-james-bond-movie-no-time-die-shame-italy-no?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 30 Sep 2021 04:45:20 +0000 They were the shots that were heard around the world … and for a bookish 10-year-old girl in Philadelphia, in the United States, the assassination of John Lennon, in 1980, ignited a passion for The Beatles that would transplant her from stateside to Merseyside. “Day in, day out, all you would see on TV was thousands of people in floods of tears, and I thought, ‘Who was this guy? He must have been really important,’” Holly Tessler recalls. “That set me off wondering who The Beatles were. Being a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3132697/beatles-fans-can-study-masters-degree-fab-four?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3132697/beatles-fans-can-study-masters-degree-fab-four?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 09 May 2021 20:15:15 +0000 It’s October 2021. Thousands of jazz fans mingle beside a world-famous lake in a city steeped in history as one of Europe’s premier music festivals bursts exuberantly into life after having been silenced by the coronavirus pandemic. The Montreux Jazz Festival is back – although not just in its traditional home, on the shores of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva, but also alongside West Lake, in Hangzhou. The famous event, whose past performers have included Nina Simone, BB King and Ella Fitzgerald, is... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3131075/famous-european-jazz-festival-coming-china-after-main?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3131075/famous-european-jazz-festival-coming-china-after-main?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:50:14 +0000 A tide of emotion swept over Claire Martin as she stood alone in the concrete stairwell of a bland residential block off a busy Kowloon intersection. Then, just as she did almost 60 years earlier, when she had been left there by her mother as a newborn, she burst into tears. “Being on that staircase was an extraordinary moment,” she says. “I thought of my adoptive father. He always wanted to help me find my birth family but he couldn’t, and it would have been wonderful if he had been there with... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3127995/abandoned-babies-and-adopted-western-parents?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3127995/abandoned-babies-and-adopted-western-parents?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Apr 2021 02:15:16 +0000 It all kicked off on a Facebook page recently when a property agent in Sai Kung, in Hong Kong’s New Territories, advertised a village house for a monthly rent of HK$44,000 (US$5,670) with a “helper’s shed” in the garden. Scandalised readers called the use of language offensive and inappropriate, saying the notion of putting a domestic helper in a shed demonstrated the brutal inequality of living conditions for migrant workers in Asia’s World City. Others gamely defended the ad. One pointed out... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3125168/hong-kong-real-property-agent-advertises?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3125168/hong-kong-real-property-agent-advertises?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:15:17 +0000 At last. After four torturous years, a malign, brooding, and frankly ludicrous presence is finally about to be expunged from our lives. I’m not talking about Donald Trump, but rather the infuriating and idiotic form of verbal exchange his presidency has encouraged in this part of the world: whataboutisms. From the moment he swaggered into the White House, it’s been impossible to question any dark or sinister aspect of life in Asia without being met with a whataboutism. Human rights abuses: what... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3110497/trump-presidency-ending-can-we-wave-goodbye?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3110497/trump-presidency-ending-can-we-wave-goodbye?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Nov 2020 17:15:15 +0000 On a hillside above Phi Phi island in Thailand, nearly deserted at the height of summer, a young Dutch woman emerged like a mirage from the lush greenery and beamed at a German couple who – for a few moments – shared her splendid isolation. Clearly thrilled at this rare opportunity to talk with fellow Europeans, the woman chatted away and explained how she had just started managing a bar on the island when the pandemic hit and she suddenly found herself jobless and stranded thousands of miles... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3102502/five-star-hotel-bargains-and-free-food-thailand-lucky?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3102502/five-star-hotel-bargains-and-free-food-thailand-lucky?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Sep 2020 04:45:10 +0000 The tiger’s fate is sealed at a clandestine meeting outside a wildlife reserve two hours’ drive from Johannesburg, South Africa. An Asian businessman known as Michael waits in a saloon car with a brown paper bag stuffed with banknotes on the seat behind him. A 4x4 pulls up alongside and the driver joins Michael in his car, picks up the bag, and carries it to the owner of the reserve nearby. The deal is done, and the owner – who boasts on his website how animals at his reserve are “treated with... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3098882/lord-lions-and-tcm-tiger-bone-trade-exposing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3098882/lord-lions-and-tcm-tiger-bone-trade-exposing?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 28 Aug 2020 21:15:09 +0000 “My goodness. Are you really tourists from England?” asks a middle-aged Italian woman with a theatrical throw of her arms in the emptiness of one of the city’s best-loved pizzerias. As we nod our nervous confirmation – fearing this may be a prelude to a dressing down for having come to Italy in the middle of a pandemic – she breaks into a broad grin and declares: “Then welcome to Florence. We must roll out the red carpet for you.” Like every scene in this strangest of summers, our reception at a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3097060/family-road-trip-through-covid-19-hit-europe-one?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3097060/family-road-trip-through-covid-19-hit-europe-one?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Aug 2020 07:00:10 +0000 On a barren mountainside above the outskirts of Tirana, our footsteps echo ominously as we step through a series of airtight concrete and steel door­ways, each many inches thick, and into a labyrinth of corridors that burrow deep into Mount Dajti. Electric lights flicker, distant sirens moan, old desk telephones ring, and clipped, recorded voices drift up from the bowels of a once-secret five-storey subterranean complex created to save the skins of Albania’s ruling elite in the event of war,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3089282/dark-tourism-albania-our-suffering-yesterday-your?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3089282/dark-tourism-albania-our-suffering-yesterday-your?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Jun 2020 11:45:13 +0000 David Tse Ka-shing was taking his daily exercise, jogging through Soho in the heart of London, in the early days of Britain’s coronavirus lockdown in March, when he found himself at the receiving end of a racist outburst that dragged him back to the darkest times of his childhood. The Hong Kong-born actor and director had just passed a white, female pedestrian in her early 30s at a safe distance when she barked at him to “F*** off back to China.” When Tse turned back in dismay and replied, “I’m... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3086438/how-east-asians-uk-are-fighting-back-against?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3086438/how-east-asians-uk-are-fighting-back-against?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 31 May 2020 06:45:05 +0000 Well done, you lot. Your bars are open again and serving their HK$75 pints and HK$200 cocktails. Your favourite restaurants are digging their overpriced specials out of the freezer. Your gyms are reinstating their exorbitant monthly direct debits, your cinemas are screening the usual Hollywood tosh, and your schools are almost ready to take your terminally bored offspring off your hands. You have every right to feel more than just a little self-satisfied as you enjoy your new-found freedoms,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3084385/expat-who-fled-coronavirus-hong-kong-britain?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3084385/expat-who-fled-coronavirus-hong-kong-britain?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 May 2020 07:30:11 +0000 My teenage son is locked in an unequal struggle with one of the world’s most profitable airlines, and there’s clearly going to be only one winner. He spent the money he’d saved up from two years of weekend jobs to buy a HK$5,000 (US$645) ticket from Lufthansa to fly to Hong Kong at Easter and spend a fortnight with the friends he grew up with before his final year of school in Britain. The flight, of course, was cancelled because of coron­a­virus. But the German airline, which made a profit of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3082251/profit-making-airlines-are-refusing-refunds-why?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3082251/profit-making-airlines-are-refusing-refunds-why?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 May 2020 08:45:07 +0000 A wiry, shrew-like grandmother clambers out of her hammock, scuttles across her front yard, and breaks into a toothy grin of satisfaction as she shows us around the church she had built less than 15 metres from her home. Inside the simple wooden building, she raises a claw-like hand and points out rows of recent snapshots showing her leading services of worship, engaging in evangelist work around the region, and emerging from a muddy river with a triumphantly pious smile following her... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3065205/former-khmer-rouge-officers-accused?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3065205/former-khmer-rouge-officers-accused?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Mar 2020 21:00:13 +0000 “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,” proclaims a gaily painted sign to arriving guests treading barefoot across creaking wooden floorboards at the popular and exceptionally chilled-out Mama Tanon Guesthouse. “It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” No sooner has that slightly disturbing imagery sunk in than you are bombarded with more life lessons. “The earth has music for those who listen,” reads one sign. “Travelling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller,”... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3064778/laos-four-thousand-islands-remote-backpacker-idyll?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3064778/laos-four-thousand-islands-remote-backpacker-idyll?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 05 Mar 2020 04:15:05 +0000 So farewell then, Louis Vuitton. The purveyor of hideous, overpriced creamy-brown accessories for people with more money than taste is reportedly slamming shut the doors on its shop in Times Square, Causeway Bay, after failing to secure a reduction in its estimated HK$5 million monthly rent. Honestly, how vulgar and gauche of LV to quibble over money. Why should it expect to pay less just because Hong Kong, exhausted after months of unrest, now finds itself grappling with a deadly coronavirus,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3049460/hong-kongs-landlords-and-luxury-labels-why-i?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3049460/hong-kongs-landlords-and-luxury-labels-why-i?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Feb 2020 01:30:10 +0000 The boys running around the neighbourhood in grubby shorts and flip-flops called it the “magic door” – a plain metal gate in the garden wall of a friendly foreign businessman, whose incongruously grand two-storey home stood opposite their primary school in Angeles City, in the Philippines. From a wicker chair on his first-floor balcony, overlook­ing the school’s playground, the British businessman would shout greetings to passing youngsters as they filed out of class in the afternoons, throwing... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3033394/philippines-justice-slow-british-paedophile?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3033394/philippines-justice-slow-british-paedophile?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 Oct 2019 21:00:08 +0000 I’ve just spent some time in the Third World, and it was harrowing: potholed roads, packs of wild dogs, scowling villagers stripped to the waist as they strangle chickens on their doorsteps, and confused huddles of swivel-eyed expats who have clearly been away from civilisation for too long. OK, so maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have a mini-break in Sai Kung Country Park. But I needed somewhere to work in peace and thought it might be ideal, until I remembered the most Third World thing about... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3033368/superbad-broadband-problem-rural-hong-kongs-lo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3033368/superbad-broadband-problem-rural-hong-kongs-lo?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 17 Oct 2019 23:30:04 +0000 The star-struck young woman blushes with delight as the filmmaker leans in close, confiding that “if today goes well, you’ll be known all around the world. You can become a famous actress”. In just a few whirlwind weeks, 20-something Indonesian Siti Aisyah had earned more than she had ever made after being talent-spotted on a Kuala Lumpur street corner. Her new job was to go up behind strangers at various locations around the Malaysian capital and smear baby oil on their faces while the film... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3031514/kim-jong-nam-assassination-meet-indonesian-woman?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3031514/kim-jong-nam-assassination-meet-indonesian-woman?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Oct 2019 23:00:11 +0000 “You can say what you like about these protests,” my wife remarked breezily, between sips of Gordon’s on her chaise longue in our expat housing complex, Ivory Towers. “But at least it gets youngsters off their mobile phones and gives them a bit of exercise for a change.” Affronted by her crass colonial-era insensitivity, I lectured her sternly for several minutes about the evils of the now-abandoned extradition bill and the erosion of basic freedoms in Hong Kong as I topped up her pint glass.... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3027904/hong-kong-protests-fail-burst-bubble-entitled?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3027904/hong-kong-protests-fail-burst-bubble-entitled?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Sep 2019 03:00:12 +0000 Expatriates in Hong Kong have hideously hectic working and social lives – so we should magnanimously forgive them if they sometimes seem a little out of touch with local events and lacking in empathy for the population of the city where they enjoy their gilded existences. Take, for instance, the woman who moaned on a popular expat mums’ website about not being able to get to her Pilates class on Hong Kong Island on a Sunday morning in June when a million or so people suddenly and inconveni­ently... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3025838/when-civil-unrest-bursts-hong-kong-expats?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3025838/when-civil-unrest-bursts-hong-kong-expats?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Sep 2019 06:00:13 +0000 It is a pleasant and balmy August Friday in the British Midlands, and the employees of a Derbyshire factory are in cheerful spirits as they prepare to shut down production lines. Ahead of them is a summer weekend of barbecues, family get-togethers and the start of the English Premier League football season. Theirs is a highly agreeable spot in which to work, at the end of a wind­ing lane, surrounded by open fields, and a few minutes’ drive from the lush nature reserve of Saint Chad’s Water, home... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3022942/truth-about-tear-gas-how-hong-kong-police?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3022942/truth-about-tear-gas-how-hong-kong-police?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 15 Aug 2019 23:00:14 +0000 Lost somewhere in the crowds swarming the streets of Hong Kong every weekend through a long, hot summer of unrest is the diminutive figure of a veteran protester who understands better than most the importance of per­severance in fighting what appear to be lost causes. “Like everybody, I am devastated about what has happened,” says Becky Kwan Siu-wa. “I have been on every march, but I can only support them with my feet. I cannot allow myself to be in a situation where it will endanger my... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3021188/veteran-protester-becky-kwan-her-struggles?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3021188/veteran-protester-becky-kwan-her-struggles?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Aug 2019 07:00:15 +0000 The dinner bill for the two guests in the one-Michelin-starred Summer Palace restaurant, at the Island Shangri-La, came to HK$7,400 (US$940), and yet the diners’ verdict on the fish that was the centre­piece of their meal was well short of five stars. “It tasted a bit of gasoline,” one of them remarked. Days later, when they tucked into the same dish at the three-Michelin-starred T’ang Court, in Tsim Sha Tsui’s Langham Hotel, they were presented with a bill of close to HK$8,000. Their review,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3013237/humphead-wrasse-one-worlds-most-endangered-coral?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3013237/humphead-wrasse-one-worlds-most-endangered-coral?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jun 2019 05:30:04 +0000 It seemed like a big joke at first – a flood of emails offering cures for baldness or extensions to certain parts of my anatomy. I laughed them off, although they did leave the nagging feeling someone out there knew at least one thing about me only my wife should know. Next came emails saying, “I know what you’ve been looking at online and unless you send me US$1,000 by midnight I’ll distribute your internet history.” I laughed them off, too (after that nagging feeling persuaded me to max out my... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3012427/algorithms-have-made-advertising-feel-strangely?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3012427/algorithms-have-made-advertising-feel-strangely?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 30 May 2019 21:00:11 +0000 Travel-weary but effortlessly chic, Mrs Durrell strides purposefully through customs in Corfu, dragging two large suitcases behind her. A taxi driver awaits her and her children holding up a sign that reads: “The Durrell Family.” “Mrs Durrell. Welcome home,” shouts someone from the huddle waiting in the arrivals area. “Why, thank you,” she replies with a smile and a gracious bow, before she sashays out into the balmy evening air. It could be a scene from the sleepy port of the 1930s, when the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3001518/durrells-corfu-popular-tv-show-revives-greek-islands?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3001518/durrells-corfu-popular-tv-show-revives-greek-islands?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Mar 2019 18:00:04 +0000 Chatty, cheerful and brimming with mischievous gossip, Lindsay Sandiford sits cross-legged, knitting a pink baby blanket, and talks affectionately about her sons and the granddaughters she dotes on, whose faces smile out from pictures stuck on the walls around her bed. “They are a joy – a real joy,” she beams, gazing at the photos of the young cousins, aged one and six. “The younger one is marvellously bonkers. She’s such a character. If I was to die tomorrow, I would be happy I’ve had that... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/2188013/british-grandmother-lindsay-sandifords-life-balis-death-row?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/2188013/british-grandmother-lindsay-sandifords-life-balis-death-row?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 28 Feb 2019 13:02:30 +0000 In a picture-postcard village in eastern England, Alice Simpson plays happily with young relatives, her infectious laughter ringing out across the rolling countryside that surrounds her grandparents’ 400-year-old thatched cottage. Chasing the family’s dogs as they bound alongside frosty ploughed fields and giggling uproariously in a game of hide-and-seek beside a red phone box on the village green, Alice looks entirely at home in this quintessentially English winter scene. But this is no... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2182650/children-british-man-killed-chinese-wife?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2182650/children-british-man-killed-chinese-wife?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Jan 2019 08:30:00 +0000 As the sun sank over the sea off Langkawi on October 17, Britons John and Samantha Jones sat drinking with friends at a bar on Cenang Beach, laughing and joking as they basked in the evening warmth on the tropical Malaysian island that had been their home for 11 years. It was the last sunset John would ever see. Hours later, the burly 63-year-old was lying dead, a kitchen knife having been thrust into his chest in the bedroom of his retirement villa, less than 5km from Cenang Beach, while... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2172088/killing-british-expat-malaysian-island-langkawi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2172088/killing-british-expat-malaysian-island-langkawi?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 08 Nov 2018 20:00:15 +0000 Hong Kong’s biggest restaurant chain, Maxim’s, has bowed to pressure from wildlife groups and agreed to impose a total ban on shark fin dishes in all its outlets – but not until 2020. The move comes after the South China Morning Post revealed in June how the chain was continuing to offer shark fin on under-the-counter menus called “The Premium” despite claiming it had removed shark fin from all à la carte menus by the end of 2017. Maxim’s told the Post in a statement on Thursday that it would... https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2165098/shark-fin-will-be-gone-menus-2020-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2165098/shark-fin-will-be-gone-menus-2020-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 20 Sep 2018 14:19:11 +0000 Slumped dejectedly in her wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, former civil servant Au Wai-chun dissolves into tears and com­plains bitterly about the domestic helpers she says have turned her retirement into a nightmare. “Now I must bear the identity of a criminal until I die,” she says. “If I am unlucky enough to be convicted again, or if I die before the result comes, please promise to write an article that says a greedy maid can kill their ma’am.” The 65-year-old says she believes her plight... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158988/domestic-helper-accuses-former-employer-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158988/domestic-helper-accuses-former-employer-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Aug 2018 09:00:30 +0000 In a cluttered, slightly shambolic office overflowing with books and folders, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor David Faure smiles benignly and reflects on what he considers his enormous good fortune. “I was in the right place at the right time,” says the animated, jovial historian, as he reminisces on 30 years of exploring remote corners of China, to learn about its culture and history through the testimony of its people. “China was opening up in the 1980s and we were here in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2157904/understand-china-and-its-future-look-its-past?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2157904/understand-china-and-its-future-look-its-past?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Aug 2018 14:00:30 +0000 Volgograd was on standby for heavy casualties when notoriously rowdy England football fans arrived in the city for their team’s first game in the 2018 Fifa World Cup. As things turned out, they got only one … history teacher and Post Magazine travel contributor Chris Taylor, from Hong Kong, whose misadventures on the road to Volgograd turned him into a local celebrity overnight. “The England team is marching on into the last 16 of the World Cup, in Russia. But my World Cup journey began and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2152330/hong-kong-world-cup-fan-finds-fame-after?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2152330/hong-kong-world-cup-fan-finds-fame-after?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 25 Jun 2018 09:15:00 +0000 When the two women guests at the reception desk of Maxim’s Palace say they want to order shark fin, the black suited employee bends down and pulls out a menu from beneath the counter that is strikingly different from the ones on the tables. Grandly titled “The Premium”, the special menu kept discretely out of sight includes superior shark fin soup with chicken, ham, and vegetable in casserole for HK$780 a pot, and stir-fried shark fin with bean sprouts, crabmeat and egg for HK$680 a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2150331/shark-fin-still-served-popular-hong-kong-chain-maxims-despite-companys?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2150331/shark-fin-still-served-popular-hong-kong-chain-maxims-despite-companys?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 12 Jun 2018 11:00:30 +0000 On the shabby outskirts of a seaside resort in Thailand, a Chinese couple in beachwear lean across the back of an adult tiger. The big cat yawns with weary insouciance as two handlers cajole it around its pen and prod it with bamboo sticks. In a smaller enclosure, another couple giggle as they dangle their infant son over a juvenile tiger. Nearby, a tourist in his 20s poses as if in mid roar over two dozing young tigers before – prompted by the handlers – grabbing their tails and putting them up... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149910/tiger-selfies-chinese-indian-tourists-lead-cruel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149910/tiger-selfies-chinese-indian-tourists-lead-cruel?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2018 09:15:30 +0000 Blessing scams – in which small groups of fraudsters take advantage of elderly citizens, promising blessings of protection and, in the process, ridding the mark of their valuables – have provided mostly mainland criminal gangs with easy pickings in Hong Kong for two decades, and their frequency is rising alarmingly: the number of reported cases leapt more than seven-fold from 2016 to 2017. Police figures provided to Post Magazine show that the number of reported cases shot up from eight cases... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/2145718/why-blessing-scams-hong-kong-are-rise-and-how?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/2145718/why-blessing-scams-hong-kong-are-rise-and-how?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 May 2018 13:15:00 +0000 Laos, a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, has long held a key role in the global wildlife trade. Corruption and a flow of easy money across its porous borders have allowed the illegal trafficking of pangolins, helmeted hornbills and other wildlife products, as well as the country’s notorious tiger farms, to thrive. In 2016, the Laos government told the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) in 2016 that it intended to shut down the tiger... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2141635/tiger-farms-and-illegal-wildlife-trade?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2141635/tiger-farms-and-illegal-wildlife-trade?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Apr 2018 02:15:30 +0000 Powerful, well connected and fabulously wealthy, 58-year-old Su Guiqin is queen of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, a small enclave in the far northwest of Laosthat, just over a decade ago, was a poor fishing village on the Mekong River. With her husband, Zhao Wei, she now runs the Kings Romans empire, a Hong Kong-registered business that took out a 99-year lease on a 3,000-hectare chunk of Bokeo province in a deal with the Laos government in 2007 and transformed it into a lavish... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2141464/mr-big-wildlife-trafficking-could-elusive-laos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2141464/mr-big-wildlife-trafficking-could-elusive-laos?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Apr 2018 14:45:30 +0000 Low-level drug mules are convicted at a rate of more than one a day in Hong Kong’s High Court while only one gang organiser or senior syndicate member is sentenced every eight months, a study provided to Post Magazine shows. An analysis by former deputy director of public prosecutions John Reading SC found that of 1,619 traffickers convicted from 2012 to 2015, only six were organisers or senior gang members, while 1,519 (or 93 per cent) were couriers, apprehended either in Hong Kong or while... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/2137493/hong-kong-dishes-out-severe-punishment-drug?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/2137493/hong-kong-dishes-out-severe-punishment-drug?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Mar 2018 07:15:15 +0000 In the hustle and mayhem of a downtown Bangkok street teeming with prostitutes, sex tourists, garish bars and counterfeit-goods stalls, a grey-haired priest stops beneath a pedestrian footbridge to talk to two cocaine dealers from Ghana. “It’s 4,000 baht [US$130] a gram,” one of the dealers mumbles, rummaging in his jacket pockets and shuffling nervously from foot to foot. His eyes then land on the crucifix around the man’s neck and he says, with a broad grin, “I’m a Catholic too, Father.” The... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2137465/hong-kong-priests-mission-save-drug-mules-system?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2137465/hong-kong-priests-mission-save-drug-mules-system?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Mar 2018 07:15:15 +0000 The young mother is close to tears as she describes the fear and panic she felt as she waded through thigh-deep river water with her two-year-old daughter in her arms, surrounded by other fleeing refugees. “I was very afraid because I can’t swim,” says Habibah Abdullah, recalling the mass flight of Muslim Rohingya families. “Babies were crying and children all around me were screaming, ‘Mummy, mummy.’ One man collapsed in the water because of the heat.” Her harrowing account has a depressingly... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2131574/rohingya-refugees-employed-extras-bbc-tv-drama?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2131574/rohingya-refugees-employed-extras-bbc-tv-drama?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Feb 2018 01:15:30 +0000 What is it? A tiny, affordable and frankly rather shabby restaurant in the low-rise old quarter of Bangkok, near the Democracy Monument. It’s been in business for nearly a century, has only five tables and is run by elderly sisters. Oh, and it serves food fit for royalty. Food fit for royalty? Come off it. That’s just a tired food writer’s cliché. Not in this case. The Thai royal family lives just around the corner – the Grand Palace is 1km away – and the owners claim that highnesses dispatch... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/2130508/meghan-markle-thai-royalty-no-fuss-bangkok?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/2130508/meghan-markle-thai-royalty-no-fuss-bangkok?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 25 Jan 2018 12:30:15 +0000