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    Unsung Isaan

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    Sam Phan Bok

    Immediately on returning from Burma (see previous blog), I began my current job—updating two chapters of The Rough Guide to Thailand (Northeast and Central Plains) for the new edition (October 2015). After plotting my route around the Northeast, I headed south from Chiang Mai to Khorat, then east to Ubon Ratchathani, and from there zig-zagged across the ‘elephant’s ear’ of Thailand, commonly known as Isaan. I spent a few weeks visiting every town, looking at lots of hotels and restaurants, as well as bus stations and hospitals, but I also found time to check out a few places that were previously not in the guide.

    My favourite place, as a photographer who loves shooting nature abstracts, was Sam Phan Bok (Three Thousand Holes), a surreal section of the Mekong River bed where rock pools are exposed during the dry season (Nov-May). Check out the images in the gallery below.

    Isaan is Thailand’s least-visited region and gets short shrift from most guidebooks. Yet it’s also a great place to travel, for a host of reasons, not least of which is that there are no other tourists around to spoil your enjoyment. Add to this the Khmer temples, the mysterious Mekong River, the fiery food, the quiet, country roads and the hospitable, generous people, and you’ve got the recipe for a memorable adventure.

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    Ebola Revisited: The Green Monkey's Tale

    Personal Post Apocalypse Social Issues
    The Ebola virus has certainly captured the world's attention, especially now it's moved into Europe and the USA. The first outbreak of this deadly virus occurred in 1976, when it was more commonly known as the Green Monkey Disease, since it was thought to have originated in a particular type of monkey. I happened to be travelling in South Sudan at the time, and was devastated to find many villages deserted, their inhabitants either struck down by the disease or having fled to escape its contagious grip.

    Some years later, when I was preparing a book of short stories as part of my M.A. in English (Creative Writing) at San Francisco State University, I used my visit to this obscure part of the world as the basis for a story called...

                       THE GREEN MONKEY’S TALE

    The truck ploughed to a stop, sending clouds of red dust swirling into the dense jungle of the Central African Republic. As the haze cleared, a small boy became visible at the roadside, holding out the body of a dead monkey by the tail. He squinted at the driver and shouted.

       “Hey, mister! Fresh shot today! Only fifty francs!”

       “Let me see,” the driver responded, a gleam in his eye. “Fifty francs, hey? Well, take this for it.” He pushed three ten-franc notes into the boy’s hand, and swung the corpse onto the dashboard of the cab. The boy ran off into the undergrowth, pushing the notes into his ragged shorts, while the driver pulled away again, grinning at Chris, his English passenger.

       “Hey, man, now we have a feast tonight. You eat monkey before?” he asked, his white eyes shining from the deep caverns of his cranium.

       “No, Emille,” Chris answered, wincing at the thought. “I’ve eaten some strange things lately – snake, elephant, locusts – but never monkey.”

    The tiny skull of the animal seemed to sneer at him as it rocked on the dashboard like a stuffed toy. Its minute hands still clung to an imaginary branch and its green fur bristled. 
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    Streamlining my life

    This last week I've had great fun throwing out a load of junk from my office...stacks of brochures and magazines accumulated on various research trips over recent years. I think I enjoy this activity so much as it's a way of re-defining myself, through making decisions about what's important to me and what isn't. 

    I've also been streamlining my website. If you've visited before, you might notice that my home page has disappeared. I realized that most people who visit this website are not so interested in me as in the words I write and the images I take, so I've just shifted my introductory audio slideshow to the top of my blog page and done away with the rest. I've also been making changes to other parts of the site, mostly on my periodicals page, where I've deleted the story I had posted on the Loy Krathong Festival in Thailand, and added scans of half a dozen feature articles that show the variety of topics that I write about and photograph.

    I hope that you find this streamlined version of ronemmons.com fun to browse, and if you have any suggestions of things you'd like to see more or less of, just drop me an email via the button at the foot of the page. Thanks for visiting!
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    What's New in North Vietnam 2014

    Publishing Social Issues Vietnam Writing
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    Schoolkids riding through the Ho Citadel



    Having suffered perhaps more than any other nation in the 20th century, Vietnam is making up for lost time in the 21st century. The economy is growing fast, communications (especially roads) are improving everywhere, new hotels are being built and tourists are arriving in ever increasing numbers. 

    Though few of the following places are 'new' as such, they are all either new to the Rough Guide for the next edition (2015), which I've just spent several months updating, or have been subject to change recently, such as the restoration work at My Son, a temple complex of the Cham people near Hoi An and Da Nang.
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    Restoration work at G Group, My Son

    Restoration at My Son
    The My Son complex of Cham temples located in a lush valley around 40km from Hoi An is one of Vietnam's World Heritage sites and brings a steady stream of visitors every day to view the ruins of a once-powerful civilization. However, many of the ruins were in such a decrepit state that they gave little idea of how the site once was. Now a sensitive restoration project by UNESCO has brought back to life Group G of these temples, and ongoing work is transforming the ruins of Group E, which dates back to the 8th century.
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    Hoa's Place

    Social Issues Vietnam
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    Fusion Maia—one of many luxury resorts on Non Nuoc Beach.

    You might think that in a Communist society, the government would want to take from the rich and give to the poor, but in Vietnam, it's the other way round. Take the case of...

                          Hoa's Place

    I was nearly finished with my update of Danang for the new edition of the guide. I had checked out the Cham Museum and Cao Dai Temple to make sure there were no major changes, I had carefully marked on the map the location of new bridges crossing the river, including the spectacular, fire-breathing Dragon Bridge, and had stood on the 20th floor of the new Grand Mercure and Novotel hotels, listening to PR reps wax lyrical about the benefits  of spending £150 a night to sleep in their rooms perched high above the city. I had also found  some new restaurants that cater to Westerners' tastes, and a couple of reasonable mini hotels to recommend for people looking for mid-range accommodation. All I needed was a hostel or some cheap lodging to list for backpackers, who are now visiting Vietnam in droves, before I could head off to Hoi An, one of my favourite towns in the entire country.
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    Let's Play Extinctathon!

    Post Apocalypse Reviews
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    Next for the chop in Extinctathon?

    I read an intriguing book recently--Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It’s a kind of ‘1984’ for the 21st century, a post-apocalyptic novel (date unspecified) that mentions various factors, such as rising sea levels flooding major cities, holes in the ozone layer and a pandemic along the lines of the Ebola virus (which has just re-appeared in Guinea in the last few days), which  have wiped out virtually all life on the planet. All that remains are a few human survivors and genetically-modified life forms gone wild, like wolvogs, pigoons, and rakunks.