Feature Stories
Suicide Notes on Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell, Kevin Hines and the Middle-Aged Plumber Down the Street
On the first anniversary of the passing of Anthony Bourdain, Jim Algie looks at the spiking suicide rate in the West and how a man who survived a leap from the Golden Gate Bridge is leading a revolution in suicide prevention and awareness. My brother and I were nine...
Bangkok Prison Visit with a Convicted Killer
To get a glimpse of Thailand’s dark side and its Third World injustice system, no daytrip is more illuminating than a Bangkok prison visit, writes Jim Algie. Opening the back door of a pink taxi, I told the driver in Thai that I wanted to go to Klong Prem Prison. I...
Bangkok Expat Tales #1: The Infamous Farang Fights with Lucifer’s Cabbie
Of all the Bangkok expat tales of the 1990s, this anecdote of a Western guy who dared to mouth off and take on an abusive Thai taxi driver is the stuff of urban legends What resident or visitor has not at one time or another wanted to smack or berate a Thai cabbie for...
When Heath Insurance Means Life, Death or Bankruptcy
When a young Brit fell off a train going from Bangkok to Surat Thani in April 2017, it brought back a similar accident that spawned this story and underlined the need for health insurance, writes Jim Algie. Riding the night train from Penang, Malaysia to Bangkok, a...
The Sexiest Thai Ghost Story of Them All
Without a grounding in the supernatural one is unable to understand the daily effects of Thailand’s ancient animistic culture. In this retelling of the infamous Thai ghost story Jim Algie untangles the historical truths from the fantastical legends. The Thai...
Eco Apocalypse
Weather patterns have gone schizo and loco lately with unheard of days of downpours in Bangkok during the dry season, cold snaps and lashes of wintry wind and frost in Europe, and even blizzards and school closures in normally balmy but rainy Vancouver. As one media...
Facebook for the Dead and Dying
A growing number of people are reconnecting with ailing Facebook friends even as they lay dying, or mourning their loved ones online, and the reality is not as ghoulish as it sounds On November 9th, 2010 an old friend posted the following status update on Facebook:...
One Bloody Night with the Bangkok Corpse Collectors
The rescue work of the Bangkok corpse collectors has been featured on the BBC, CNN and National Geographic TV, inspiring books like The Cars that Ate Bangkok by Philip Blenkinsop and a chapter in Bizarre Thailand, which is where this extract comes from. Poh Teck...
Aftershocks: 10th Anniversary of the Asian Tsunami
As a journalist who covered the first wave of the disaster and went back for many subsequent visits to write about the recovery efforts and the survivors coping with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Jim Algie looked back on the 10th anniversary of the Asian tsunami in...
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