A Few Words From Me There was no issue last week, and I owe you a short explanation: I spent most of it getting back to Bangkok, a journey that always takes longer than the flight suggests. I arrived to serious flooding, and water is still standing in up country Bangkok and the provinces around
A Few Words From Me Some good news from the Mekong to start with, and it’s been a while since I could write that sentence with a straight face. In Kratie, up in Cambodia’s northeast, the Irrawaddy dolphin count is heading the right way, and after writing in August about the Laos side of the
A Few Words From Me Anak Krakatau has form for making headlines it would rather not, though I’ll say this for it, this time it let the world’s rarest rhino off comparatively lightly. Ujung Kulon has now sat out two Krakatau eruptions unscathed, which either says something reassuring about that stretch of coast or something
A Few Words From Me… Malaysia and Vietnam did something rather good for the region this week, six new names added to the ASEAN Heritage Park list between them, Bako and Lambir Hills among them. That sounds like the sort of thing that only matters to committee minutes until you realise Bako is a place
A Few Words From Me… Money keeps surfacing as the theme this week, or rather the question of where it actually ends up once it’s left your hand. Marriott Bonvoy’s new partnership with the orangutan foundation in Perak is about as clean an example as you’ll find: scan a QR code at check-in in Malaysia
A Few Words From Me The biggest story coming out of the region this week is the weather itself. Green season brings a wash of colour to the region yet it can also prove to be a wash out, with lives disrupted through incessant rain that brings flooding to low-lying areas. Laos is dealing with
A Few Words From Me As the region embraces green season, news on the ground is typically thin, and that’s the case this week as some countries in the region move from headline announcements to the quieter work of planning ahead. That’s especially true in Laos, where authorities are making good use of their time,
A Few Words From Me Lampang doesn’t get that much attention – even from people like myself who’ve spent years in Thailand. This week its lac-dyed textiles earned official protected status, the same kind Champagne has, which feels overdue in the best way, a craft that could easily have been left to fade (no pun
A Few Words From Me Three governments seem to have landed on the same idea this week: that how people move through a place matters as much as where they go. Thailand has started training its first proper hiking guides, launched at Khao Yai, one of the national parks that together see more than ten
Around the Region There is a particular kind of trip I keep thinking about this week: the one you take somewhere precisely because it is quiet, not despite it. Siem Reap is having a hard year for reasons that have nothing to do with Angkor Wat itself, and everything to do with jet fuel prices
Malaysia and Vietnam Just Added Six Parks to an Exclusive List. The Badge Is the Easy Part.
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Da Nang Just Wrote a 219-Point Rulebook for What “Green” Actually Means. Here’s What’s in It.
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