Bangkok-style Bauhaus

Just the thought of renovating a home can make some people shudder; renovating a home while living in a foreign country presents an even greater challenge. But completely renovating a home overseas when you don’t even own it? To Australian designer Kristina Zanic and her fiance, it seemed like the obvious thing to do. Bangkok-based…

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Pre-natal poses

“Yoga poses can nurture the pregnant woman in a way that other forms of exercise won’t. Lying on bolsters and having pillows and blankets all around you – I mean, how luxurious!. And then being told to just lie there and breath…” Canadian Leslie Hogya, an Iyengar yoga instructor currently teaching pre-natal yoga classes at…

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Making a difference from your desk

Picture contributing to your community in some way and you may assume you’d have to spend half a day at a shelter a week or maybe drive a van on the streets. In Bangkok, Australian Margo Towie found a way to assist pregnant and post-natal women without needing to leave her office. Since January 1999,…

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They who wield the hammer

“She’s very good at art.” “I think clients like her! She’s very patient when it comes to talking to clients.” “But I don’t have good eyes like her!” “Oh, but she has a good eye for jewellery.” So two friends who work together enthusiastically point out each others’ good points. Yaovanee Nirandara has a passion…

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Bangkok dining and drinking guide

Thais take their food very seriously. Combine this fact with Bangkok’s vibrant cosmopolitanism and you have a city that will consistently keep your taste buds singing. You might dine in a traditional Thai house serving the finest of Thai cuisine, or find yourself tucked away in a French restaurant able to compete with the best…

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Bangkok district guide

To put it simply, Bangkok can seem like a nightmare to the uninitiated. Sprawling expressways and overpasses, the huge new Sky Train and crowded streets full of vendors give the city a distinct Blade Runneresque feel. To confuse matters further, there’s no true ‘centre’ to the city, with various districts famed for different reasons being…

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A Star Called Henry

By Roddy Doyle This punch of a novel traces the first twenty years of Henry Smart, born into the slums of Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century. The young Smart competes with his dead younger brother Henry for the attention of his spirit-broken mother, while his father is out being bouncer and occasional…

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Poetry in motion

A lover’s shirt, motorcycle taxi drivers, an extracted tapeworm, the letters ‘SP’, a hangover, the cremation of a friend. Sweaty palms, lubricated throats, mellifluous voices, nervous coughs and laughs. We’re at the latest instalment of Bangkok Poetry, an initiative started by American Wesley Hsu last September and gathering momentum as word of its existence spreads….

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Marketing strategies: Where do you fit in?

You could almost be forgiven for thinking the marketing world has gone mad. Motorola, the BTS Skytrain and Fly Now throwing a huge fashion show together? Nokia and Christian Dior launching their latest phones and fashions in one big fashion extravaganza? Frito Lay and Nokia joining together for a promotion that?s seen people buying boxes…

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