Showing 31 - 40 of 65
Where there's smoke
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 06/03/2016
» I have a staff member whose name is Jerd. Jerd is one of my information channels into the Thai working class. He used to raise his family on the minimum wage of 300 baht a day as a rubber plantation worker. Being a benevolent employee I naturally raised that figure substantially when I hired him, and these days he is earning that amount plus an extra four or five percent; the joys of a foreign employer.
The persistence of serenity
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 24/01/2016
» Last week your columnist reported from the safety of his luxurious room at the Avani Atrium Hotel on New Phetchaburi Road, Bangkok, where he lamented the decline of the area’s red-light district of a quarter of a century ago. Lamented? Hardly. But that is beside the point.
A crash course in pop
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 15/11/2015
» In an effort to remain up with the times, I asked my staff last week to send me a selection of recent Thai pop songs.
Censors and sensibilities
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 25/10/2015
» Back when I was working at Channel 3, one of Thailand’s two major free-to-air commercial TV stations, there was a unique department consisting of three very refined, elegant ladies.
Insuring a headache
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 11/10/2015
» For five frenetic days Sombat flew in and out of my life, turning it upside down like a hurricane, then leaving it as abruptly as he arrived. I returned from lunch one day to see him sitting in reception holding a bag with caramelised cashew nuts from Phitsanulok, Chinese sausage from Chiang Mai and Moji sponge cake from Nakhon Sawan.
The number’s up for lottery’s middlemen
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 21/06/2015
» It’s been a long, hard slog, but the impossible was finally achieved this month when 80 baht lottery tickets went on sale for 80 baht. Is this the only country in the world where such a revelation would make the news?
A learning curve, from Nakhon Nayok to Finland
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 17/05/2015
» Forty years ago Finland was languishing economically and educationally. Today it leads the world in many global surveys. What did the country do?
The star of the Angkor Wat Marathon
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 21/12/2014
» Ten-year-old Gunsaray stepped on a mine earlier this year, blowing his left leg off. Such are the hazards of living in rural Cambodia, the most heavily mined country in the world.
Here's a sobering thought, why not enforce the law?
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 14/12/2014
» If you had chanced to look up at the sky these past few weeks, you would have been surprised by what you may have seen.
Declaring dependence
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 06/07/2014
» In light of last Friday’s American Independence Day celebrations, I am closing my eyes right now and imagining a Thailand devoid of all things American.