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Secret Sauce: Sriracha, a Bangkok Story
Who doesn’t like a good food origin story? We all want to say we know ‘the real story’ behind something. Well let me tell you a Bangkok foodie tale about sriracha sauce, one you’ll be using to spice up dinner parties for years to come. In June 2012 the publishers of Oxford English Dictionary (OED)… Read more
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Faces Forged in Flames: Thailand’s Last Portrait Miniatures Artist
Photos are so much a part of our lives nowadays that we all too easily take for granted the technical mastery behind one click of a button, and how the very innovation behind capturing that image itself was the result of our desire to mimic the hand of an artist. The last time I checked… Read more
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The Secret Garden Where Tales of Mythical Mountains, Merchant Nobles and Medical Missionaries Span Two Centuries
Near the foot of Bangkok’s majestic Memorial Bridge on the Thonburi side of the Chao Phraya River, a thin, gleaming white spindle of a spire soars over 60 meters atop an elegant bell-shaped stupa, surrounded by 16 smaller, equally colourless and identically shaped constructions. Visible from across much of the nearby vicinity, the Maha Chedi… Read more
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A City Guide Bound in Cloth and Gold Written by One of Thailand’s Most Remarkable ExPats Serves as a Paper Time Machine to 1920s Siam
In 2011, I fell under the spell of a Woody Allen film called “Midnight in Paris”, a gorgeously shot cinematic love letter to past and present day Paris, as well as the city of the director’s imagination. In the movie, the protagonist Gil is transported back in time one evening at the stroke of midnight… Read more
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As It Was: The Bangkok House Where One Tenacious Woman’s Gift of Nostalgia Lives On
Bangkok’s collective memory can seem shortsighted — increasingly blurred the further removed it is from its past. For many of us who live here today, it can be hard to imagine a time when the cityscape was not dominated by concrete, condominiums and highways, but rather, dotted throughout with wooden houses, low rise buildings and… Read more
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[SINGAPORE EDITION] The Last of Us: Golden Mile Complex and the Final Days of Singapore’s Little Thailand
This story began as a quest that has likely been embarked upon by countless Thais who live in Singapore, searching for Holy Basil — that aromatic, mildly peppery cousin of mint known in Thai as Kra Pao, the sine qua non of herbs that tugs at the heart strings of every Thai. Without it, you… Read more