Features on Asian Art, Culture, History & Travel
Features
Golden Lanterns Of Chiang Mai
Celebrating The Age-Old Yee Peng Festival of Northern Thailand
Yee Peng is a northern Thai term signifying the full moon of the twelfth month of the lunar calendar. In Chiang Mai, Yee Peng is celebrated as a religious holiday. Throughout the region temples are full as people make merit, whilst monks give special sermons and recite religious texts. Traditionally, scrolls illustrating these texts were hung outside the temples to help explain the monks’ readings, and in some small villages of the north this custom is still followed.
STALKING MONKS
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (11 January 2025)
Famous French filmmaker and writer Jean-Claude Lubtchansky makes it clear to our correspondent and facilitator, “We want monks who are practicing the tradition and who can show us their practice by example, and it has to be real.”
Pondicherry
Where India Meets France
For most people, images of European imperialism in South Asia are inextricably bound up with the poetry of Kipling and the pomp of the British Raj. Yet few people, by contrast, are familiar with the former French Indian Territories, administered from the sleepy colonial enclave of Pondicherry until their return to India in 1954.
The Chanthaburi Tales
Story by Ron Emmons / CPA Media (23 July, 2023)
Scenes to rival Chaucer’s classic await visitors to Chanthaburi in Thailand’s east.
THE HANDICRAFT HIGHWAY
Story by Ron Emmons / CPA Media (14 August 2023)
The inhabitants of the former kingdom of Lanna have developed a reputation for producing some of the most beautiful and diverse handicrafts in Asia.
THAI TRANSPORT
Story by Ron Emmons / CPA Media (11 December 2023)
Once you’ve booked your dream holiday to Thailand how are you going to get around? Our reporter Ron Emmons has the answers.
Electric Ghosts and Surf Psych: Dengue Fever Returns to Phnom Penh
Review by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (28 March 2025)
“Cambodia isn’t just where the music comes from,” says guitarist Zac Holtzman. “It’s where the spirit of what we do was born."
OLD LANTA
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (15 November 2023)
The eastern shore of Koh Lanta offers a more subdued take on the popular Thai island, writes Joe Cummings, who is already daydreaming of his next visit.