Hat Yai is what Sungai Kolok wants to be: an actual den of sin and iniquity. It oozes sex, which runs along its gutters like gunk, clogging them in the rain. The latter hasn’t stopped yet, and won’t before I
The Pattani bus stand is a little out of town, swathed in greenery, which trembles slightly on the breeze, seemingly excited by the prospect of rain. I take a motorcycle taxi into the center of town, hanging off the back
The Cityline bus from Kota Bharu takes an hour and a half to cover fifty kilometers and stops with a start fifty meters from the border. Rantau Panjang is alive with activity characteristic of border towns the world over: roadside
This story begins in Malaysia. It begins in Malaysia, in Kota Bharu, the capital of the north-eastern state of Kelantan, on a dusty train platform at the edge of the city, not far from the river, which leads to the
We pulled out of Amornsup Village in Nong Chok, in Bangkok’s far-eastern boondocks, in the late afternoon when its residents begin to stir. In the central square, barefooted teenagers played soccer on the dusty concrete—the sun’s anvil throughout most of
Songkran is not the best time of year to be a correspondent in Pattaya. It’s not that the story you’re after – a hard-hitting piece on sex tourism, naturally – has gone anywhere. Given the Thai New Year tradition of
In Pattaya’s Arab quarter, off the Thai sex capital’s famous Walking Street, a Kuwaiti man climbed down from the bar where he had been dancing for ten minutes and rejoined his friends at their table. They were drinking Chivas Regal