Features on Asian Art, Culture, History & Travel
Features
Socialist Realism In Laos
Final Frontier for Socialist Realism
Languid, land-locked Laos, "last frontier" of the cold war, innocent victim of meddlesome neighbours and predatory super-powers, is an unlikely setting for the imperial twilight of an essentially European art form. And yet, here by the banks of the mighty Mekong and there by the stone-age burial urns of the Plain of Jars, long after its demise in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the school of art known as ’Socialist Realism’ is on its last Laotian legs.
Venerating The River Goddess
Thailand’s Graceful Loy Krathong Festival
Each year at November full moon, people gather by stretches of open water throughout Thailand to celebrate Loy Krathong. Small but elaborate lotus-shaped creations bearing traditional offerings of flowers, incense, candles and a coin are floated in countless numbers on streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, and even the open sea to reverence and pay homage to Mae Khongkha, the goddess of rivers and waters.
Doi Chiang Dao
Mysterious And Majestic Mountain of Northern Thailand
"The peak of Chieng Dao stands boldly up, 7,160 feet above sea level. It is a very imposing limestone rock, as it springs almost perpendicularly from the plain to a height of six thousand feet." James Macarthy’s description of this eastern outpost of the Upper Tennasserim range, written a hundred years ago, was the first scientific estimation of the height of one of Northern Thailand’s most spectacular formations.
Images Of Doi Mae Salong
A vision of pristine hills, long ago, straddling an unmarked and unobserved frontier between states as yet unformed. Unpopulated save by birds and beasts, the only human visitors are wandering hunters, mystics and anchorites, refugees from justice – or from oppression. A Southeast Asian Shangri-la without name and beyond knowledge, silently awaiting discovery and settlement.
Ordaining Pol Pot
Should Pol Pot Be Allowed Into Monkhood
The Venerable Maha Ghosananda, one of Cambodia’s most senior and respected religious figures, recently suggested that both Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge "Brother No. 1", and his most effective and ruthless military commander, Ta Mok, should abandon their struggle and enter the monkhood. "If they agree to be monks, they will give up their ambition, violence and killing," argued Maha Ghosananda in a recent issue of the Khmer-language paper Liberty News.
Faces of Khlong Toey
Story by Joe Cummings / CPA Media (20 June, 2020)
Intrepid shooter Tim Russell documents an endangered Bangkok community.
Bun Nam
Vientiane’s "Bun Nam" Water Festival
No country shares closer cultural and social links with Thailand than Laos. The majority of the inhabitants of both countries – Thai and Lao – belong to the same Tai group of peoples, the predominant religion is Theravada Buddhism, and the languages are, for the most part, mutually comprehensible. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Thai and the Lao share many festivals, both sacred and mundane.
Chiang Mai’s Shan Connection: Thailand’s Colourful Poy Sang Long Festival
Story and Pictures by David Henley and Andrew Forbes / CPA Media (January, 2021)
Probably because of their remoteness from Bangkok and their high demographic presence, the Shans of Mae Hong Son Province are confident, culturally secure, and very sure of their place in the scheme of things. Like the central Thais they are devout Buddhists (albeit with more than a touch of animism included), and their flourishing temples, redolent of Burma and of Shan State, have long excited the curiosity of visitors. The Shan ordination ceremony of Poy Sang Long, held in Mae Hong Son each April, is also a popular attraction. Yet Shan people are not just to be found in Mae Hong Son. In recent years they have also been making their cultural presence felt in Chiang Mai, the capital of the north.