Tag Archives: Thailand

In My Hands Today…

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Spirit House –  Christopher G. Moore

136227A farang is dead and the Bangkok police have a confession the next morning from a young paint-thinner addict. He claims he killed Ben Hoadly, an expat Brit, but Calvino has his doubts when he sees heavy bruises on the kid’s face. In no time Calvino is working both sides, out to find the killer for Hoadly’s wealthy father, and eager to clear the addict’s name for a beautiful friend who runs a charity in the slums. With the help of his best friend, Pratt, a Shakespeare quoting Thai police colonel, and his loyal assistant, Ratana, Calvino plunges into the dangerous world of addicts, dealers, fortune tellers, inexpensive hit men, oversexed foreigners, and professional bar girls.

In My Hands Today…

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Letters from Thailand – Botan, translated by Susan Fulop Kepner

234388Letters from Thailand is the story of Tan Suang U, a young man who leaves China to make his fortune in Thailand at the close of World War II, and ends up marrying, raising a family, and operating a successful business. The novel unfolds through his letters to his beloved mother in China.

In Tan Suang U’s lively account of his daily life in Bangkok’s bustling Chinatown, larger and deeper themes emerge: his determination to succeed at business in this strange new culture; his hopes for his family; his resentment at how easily his children embrace urban Thai culture at the expense of the Chinese heritage which he holds dear; his inability to understand or adopt Thai ways; and his growing alienation from a society that is changing too fast for him.

Instagram Interludes

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A couple of nights back, when iOS released it’s latest update, I could not download it initially. The reason was my phone didn’t have enough memory and this is a 65 GB memory phone! Photos, some back as far as 2011 were the biggest space hogs and so I started going through old photos to see if I could delete some. In the process, came across many photos which I will probably spam over the next few weeks!

The photos below are all throwbacks to our Chiang Mai holiday in end 2014 and are all plants and flowers. I’ll try and theme photos together and see if I can put together another couple of such posts….

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In My Hands Today…

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Killed at the Whim of a Hat (Jimm Juree #1) – Colin Cotterill

Set in present day rural Thailand, Jimm Juree was a crime reporter for the Chiang Mai Daily Mail with a somewhat eccentric family—a mother who might be drifting mentally; a grandfather—a retired cop—who rarely talks; a younger brother obsessed with body-building, and a transgendered, former beauty pageant queen, former older brother. When Jimm is forced to follow her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she’s convinced her career—maybe her life—is over. So when a van containing the skeletal remains of two hippies, one of them wearing a hat, is inexplicably unearthed in a local farmer’s field, Jimm is thrilled. Shortly thereafter an abbot at a local Buddhist temple is viciously murdered, with the temple’s monk and nun the only suspects. Suddenly Jimm’s new life becomes somewhat more promising—and a lot more deadly. And if Jimm is to make the most of this opportunity, and unravel the mysteries that underlie these inexplicable events, it will take luck, perseverance, and the help of her entire family.

In My Hands Today…

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Grandad There’s a Head on the Beach (Jimm Jurrie #1) – Colin Cotterill

In rural Thailand, former crime reporter Jimm Juree must grapple with her quirky family, a mysterious mother and daughter on the lam and the small matter of a head on the beach.

When Jimm Juree’s mother sold the family house and invested in a rundown ‘holiday camp’ at the southern end of Thailand on the Gulf of Siam, the family had little choice but to follow. Jimm Juree, who was well on her way to achieving her goal of becoming the primary crime reporter for the major daily newspaper in Chiang Mai, is less than thrilled to have lost her job as a reporter and to be stuck in the middle of nowhere where little of interest happens.

So it is with mixed feelings that she greets the news that a head has washed up on the beach. It’s tragic, of course, but this could be the sort of sensational murder that would get her a byline in a major daily and keep her toehold on her journalism career. Now all she has to do is find out who was murdered, and why. Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach is the second Jimm Juree Mystery from Colin Cotterill.