Category Archives: Bangkok

Stonehenge in Bangkok

July 31, 2022 – 11:18 am

New Englanders are relatively starved of archaeological ruins other than frost-heaved stone walls from vanished farms snaking through the woods or the smooth walls of the Quincy Quarries. Not one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was on our side of the Atlantic nor from Africa or the Far East graced list either […]

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A Shabbas Goy In Bangkok

August 18, 2019 – 10:32 pm

In 1991 I arrived in Thailand and visited the Rebbi of the Jewelry trade. We exchanged good wishes as I was a respected shabbas goy and he was a learned man connected to my contacts on New York’s 47th Street. “What are you thinking of doing here in Bangkok?” the old man asked with a […]

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Paving Over Paradise

April 1, 2019 – 9:22 am

My first visit to Bangkok was in 1990. I stayed at the Malaysia Hotel on Soi Duplei, once the 60s haunt of the infamous backpacker murderer Charles Sobhraj. The trees were bordered by sylvan compounds and I played basketball at the military school next to the Lumpini Muay-Thai stadium. Patpong was a twenty-minute walk through […]

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Sleaze a la Old Bangkok

April 1, 2019 – 7:29 am

Most tourists to Thailand have wandered through Patpong, but the old sex entrepot has been tamed by time, but even twenty years ago other than the sex shows on the second floors there was never too much sleaze of the soi. Mostly straight-forward go-go bars and beer halls with the usual barfine and ‘love you […]

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Patpong Back to Normal

March 31, 2019 – 10:25 pm

GW Bush passed through Bangkok on his way to the Beijing Olympics. His economic advisers trawled the city for copyright sin. They were disappointed to discover the hotbeds of terrorist fake luxury goods had been purified by the ever-vigilant Bangkok Police. Al-Quada supporters on Patpong were reduced to sellign bananas and the Islamic fascists behind […]

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