News

Houa* sat on the doorstep of her bamboo house helping her grandmother pluck a chicken. She is not even ten years old, but she is learning how to become a ‘good wife.’ As the Covid pandemic and economic crisis hit the family hard, Houa dropped out ...

In mid September, a 25-year-old trans person, Jatuporn “New” Sae-Ung, was sentenced to three years in prison for wearing a Thai traditional dress and performing a mock fashion walk at a political protest in Bangkok back in October 2020. She was charged with royal defamation, ...

Malaysia deported 150 Myanmar nationals this month, including former navy officers seeking asylum, and plans to send back more despite the risk of arrest they face at home, four sources familiar with the matter said. The deportations come despite Malaysia’s condemnation of violence in Myanmar since the military ...

In the remote and densely forested northeastern province of Mondulkiri in Cambodia, Song Pro, a member of the indigenous Bunong community, stares at a rubber plantation that was once a sacred forest. When the war in Indochina came to Cambodia in the 1970s, the forest saved ...

Twelve teams of directors and producers from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have been selected to take part in a ten-day filmmaking workshop this December. This is the second year running that Netflix is a major sponsor of the Short Film Camp led by Purin ...

The Minister of Public Works and Transport of Laos, Mr. Viengsavath Siphandone, met with Thailand’s Minister of Transport, Mr. Saksayam Chidchob, and his team last week to discuss the project’s development. This was after Thailand’s Department of Rail Transport provided an update on the progress ...

The number of illegal rare-earth element mining businesses in northern Kachin State has now increased much greater than the previous years, according to local sources. Locals say rare-earth mining was seen only in hilly border areas near Panwa before Myanmar’s political change in 2021, but the ...

On a sunset wander through Hanoi, you may be surprised by the peculiar sight of men haphazardly perched in nooks and crannies playing the ancient game of xiangqi. The strangely spectacular Chinese strategy game has for generations been hugely popular in Hanoi, though interestingly it seems only ...

A run-down department store tucked among Bangkok’s skyscrapers is home to the rooftop Pata Zoo, where nearly 300 animals pace in cages littered with feces, food scraps and trash. Bua Noi, the main attraction at the zoo and the only gorilla known to be in ...

In recent years, the fate of Southeast Asia’s great river – the Mekong – has attracted growing international scrutiny. The Mekong faces many challenges, from the impacts of climate change and saline encroachment in its delta, to dam developments on the headwaters of the river ...