New Mandala

New perspectives on mainland Southeast Asia

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Puer tea – store with care!

June 10th, 2008 by Jinghong Zhang, Guest Contributor · 8 Comments

[One fascinating aspect of the latest wave of commercialization in the borderlands of China and southeast Asia is the dramatic revival in popularity of Yunnan's Puer tea. Jinghong Zhang is a PhD student at the Australian National University who is studying the production, marketing and consumption of Puer tea. She has provided this brief report [...]

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Tags: China · Yunnan

The lèse majesté plot thickens

June 10th, 2008 by Nicholas Farrelly · 26 Comments

Over at the Thai Visa forum they recently shut down a discussion with this abrupt directive:
Due to the danger to Thaivisa this topic is closed as the previous topics of this nature. Admin’s decision and a correct one.
While this does happen from time-to-time it isn’t an everyday event.  So…why were they so concerned?
Here are some thoughts:
Anyone [...]

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Tags: Thailand · lese majeste