Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Bean there, Done that: Bangkok's best cafes
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 17/03/2013
» Bangkok's coffee houses offer more than just an air-conditioned escape from the overheated rigours of life in the capital. They are human petrol stations _ places to refuel, snack and reorder the mind amid the chaos. Coffee houses also serve as surrogate offices or libraries, places to meet business clients, study for exams or polish off a book. And, yes, the air-conditioning doesn't hurt either.
Brakes abandoned in 'Phnom penh express'
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 17/02/2013
» A Belgian-educated Khmer, a female Hezbollah-financing Israeli crime boss, a sexy Cambodian-born Mossad agent, a gung-ho US embassy worker and a Belgian ex-military diamond lord. In Phnom Penh Express, a first novel by Thailand-based Johan Smits, this quintet of self-serving characters cast their nets and drag each other ever closer in an implausible but highly readable thriller as tension mounts. Set in a Phnom Penh riddled with corruption and mismanagement, an imbroglio of misplaced packages and mistaken identity unfolds, as assassinations go awry amid an international turf battle.
The knock-on effect for Bangkok's knock-offs
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 20/01/2013
» Last week, a man came to tell Jasmine, a vendor in the Nana area, that the Department of Special Investigation would be conducting a raid. He took the unusual step of telling her not only to temporarily close down, but to move all of her counterfeit goods back home for two days.
Yen and the art of travelling on the cheap
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 02/09/2012
» There is a sign on the door of the Capsule Inn Tajima near Ueno Station in Tokyo discouraging tattooed patrons from making use of the baths or overnight capsules. This is aimed at Yakuza, organised crime figures, who once had leverage over urban businesses but whose influence has waned somewhat in recent years, even in the entertainment districts where they used to thrive.
All that wasn't washed away
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 19/08/2012
» At Koh Kret a Mon man points to a mark on the wall at the height of his head. "The water was here," he says of last October and November. "It was a bad time."
For-profit business model sees citizens reap dividends
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 03/06/2012
» In Yangon an organisation, FXB Myanmar, gives vocational training and business opportunities to HIV-positive workers and women rescued from the Thai sex industry. A manufacturer of affordable foot pumps for irrigation, Proximity Designs, has a network of distribution channels to upcountry farmers that NGOs and government organisations envy. BusinessKind-Myanmar sells low-cost mosquito netting in malarial and dengue fever regions, and half of its work force is also HIV-positive. Myanmar Business Executives provides low-interest microcredit and networking outlets to needy individuals and organisations.
A mercenary's tale
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 06/05/2012
» Peter Slade was once in prison for five years on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit another murder and attempting to overthrow a foreign government _ partly a victim, he says, of a corrupt Australian judicial system. He fought in the Vietnam War, was a security contractor in 1973 Rhodesia, a debt collector at home in Melbourne and as far afield as Nigeria, and arrived in reconstruction-era Cambodia and Iraq without connections but a desire to start anew, in stints that would last some seven years each. He witnessed first-hand the Bangkok coup that killed journalists Neil Davis and Bill Latch in 1985 and was on the beach in Patong the morning the tsunami struck Phuket in 2004.
Voices of the silent
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 11/03/2012
» Last Thursday was International Women's Day, an occasion that for a century has served for people to demand greater civil rights, representation and equality; to honour wives, mothers and girlfriends and the accomplishments of women; to call for an end to global hunger and poverty; and, increasingly, to highlight the plight of refugees and the displaced.
All packed up and many places to go
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 15/01/2012
» Twenty or even 10 years ago, Western budget travellers would descend on the country, spending tens of thousands of baht on flights and then, to the bemusement of Thais, proceed to travel in third-class train carriages or buses to rudimentary guest houses on the beach or upcountry that cost 40 baht a night, where they showered out of buckets and shared dormitories with strangers.