• THAILAND

  Ghosts among the people

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 22/01/2012

  » They come from Iran and Sri Lanka, Pakistan and China, central Africa, Cambodia and elsewhere around the world, fleeing persecution for their beliefs or serious concerns about their safety and that of their families.

• THAILAND

  She shall not be moved

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 12/02/2012

  » Five years ago, Boeung Kak Lake was Phnom Penh's largest. It served as home to some 20,000 Cambodians as well as the capital's backpacker ghetto, where foreign travellers would sit on guest house patios in a cannabis haze to watch the sun set over the waters and finish another Angkor Beer. And although the lake was full of sewage and debris and was hardly pristine, it served as an important catchment basin for the capital, providing equilibrium during the wet and dry seasons.

• THAILAND

  Bringing hearts and Seoul to Thailand

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 26/02/2012

  » When 54 South Korean teachers arrived in Thailand on Sept 28 last year, their culture shock was compounded by the flooding disaster under way then. Many of the teachers, here on a government sponsored exchange programme, saw their classes postponed and some were left to wonder just what they were doing here. Called "volunteer" teachers by the Thai government, they are in fact paid instructors on wages equivalent to those of Thai junior teachers _ around 10,000 baht a month.

• THAILAND

  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.

• THAILAND

  These guys oughta be locked up! Cage fighting hits town

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 25/03/2012

  » In last weekend's main event, Arnaud ''The Game'' Lepont was losing, staggering on unsteady legs as his opponent landed kick after blow and at one point had him in a choke hold. Krysztof ''Haja'' Hajtalowicz, a Polish master of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, had a 10cm height advantage and far greater reach. A blow to the face had split the Frenchman's lower lip, and blood poured from his mouth.

• THAILAND

  Muay Thai strikes for Olympic glory

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 08/04/2012

  » An eventful week for combat sports in Thailand culminated on Tuesday night at Lat Phrao's Bangkok Convention Centre with a showcase of muay Thai, Thailand's traditional martial art, for an international audience.

• THAILAND

  Supporters knocked for a loop by MMA ban

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 08/04/2012

  » Less than a week before muay Thai's application to the IOC and World Games, and a few days after Spectrum reported on a high-profile local mixed martial arts (MMA) competition, MMA was banned in Thailand by the Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT) on the grounds that it was hurting the image of muay Thai. MMA is a discipline fought in an octagonal cage using any number of fighting and grappling techniques. To hone stand-up combat techniques, many international competitors train in muay Thai, and for years MMA fighters have been coming to train in the Kingdom.

• THAILAND

  For African footballers, the grass is greener in Thailand

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 15/04/2012

  » The Thai Premier League _ boosted by increasing sponsorship, popular support and financial backing from politicians and corporate millionaire chairmen _ is on the rise. TPL champions Buriram United defeated the top teams of the Japanese and Chinese leagues in its first two Asian Champions League matches last month, an achievement unimaginable a few years ago.

• THAILAND

  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.

• THAILAND

  Dragons & butterflies, an inmate finds inner peace

  Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 13/05/2012

  » South African Alexander Krebs, known to friends and family as "Shani", arrived in Bangkok in April 1994 on a 10 day holiday. He was 34 at the time and writing a novel, but was also a 15-year-long drug addict who had a sporadic wild streak in him and had just broken up with his fiancee. His family thought the time away would do him good.

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