Features on Asian Art, Culture, History & Travel
Features
The Hotel That Bangkok Forgot
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (11 July 2025)
’You climb the staircase. The wood groans softly beneath your feet. Mao still watches from the lobby wall. Outside, Bangkok hurtles towards the future.’
K by Vicky Cheng
Review by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (16 April 2026)
High above Bangkok, Vicky Cheng’s latest gastronomic venture does not disappoint.
Jashn Curries & Kebabs
Review by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (8 February 2026)
Royal fare in Downtown Bangkok, our correspondent savors the delights.
TOP 10 GREAT LESSER-KNOWN OUTDOOR DESTINATIONS IN THAILAND
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (18 October 2025)
From the usual bustling beaches and islands of the South to the little visited areas of Northeast Thailand, Joe Cummings offers us 10 intriguing alternatives.
More Than Skin Deep
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (12 November 2025)
Explore Bangkok’s magic ink trail.
FROM RICE MARKET TO TRAVEL HUB
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (22 March 2026)
How Bangkok’s most loved backpacker neighborhood became what it is today.
Where Service Meets Heritage: Inside Bangkok’s Nai Lert Butler Academy
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (25 November 2025)
In a city where luxury hotels rise almost as quickly as condominium towers, the art of hospitality can sometimes seem reduced to polished surfaces and scripted smiles. Yet tucked away within one of Bangkok’s most remarkable green spaces, a new generation of hospitality professionals is learning a very different lesson—one rooted in history, cultural intelligence, and the timeless principle that true service is deeply personal.
Graham Greene’s Saigon
Old Saigon
I deliberately used a quotation from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American in the introduction to this book. It’s probably the best novel, at least in English, on Vietnam, its politics and its mores in the middle of the 20th century. No Vietnamese city is more closely associated with Greene than Saigon. Yet his chief protagonists – Fowler, and Pyle – travel much further afield, to Hanoi and Haiphong in the north, to Ninh Binh and the cathedral town of Phat Diem in south-central Tonkin, as well as to the Cao Dai Holy See at Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon. Fowler even takes part in a French dive-bombing operation in the northwest near Lai Chau, while the sound of heavy artillery from a major battle at Hoa Binh can clearly be heard at night from downtown Hanoi. Even legendary Halong Bay gets a mention.