New Mandala

Long-term readers may recall that I have something of a sideline interest in the unevenness of Western fast food proliferation across mainland Southeast Asia.  Indeed two of my very early New Mandala posts were on this topic (back in the first months: 30 June 2006 and 4 August 2006).  In May 2008 I even put out an endorsement for KFC’s decision [...]

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I have received this very interesting paper on primary health care in Thailand from Mary Ditton and Leigh Lehane of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. This is a crucially important issue for rural people in Thailand and it’s great to see some solid grass-roots research being done. Here is a brief summary:
In 2001 Thailand established [...]

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Myanmar government figures for the latest financial year have been released and essentially it’s more of the same.
Gas sales to Thailand amounted to about US$2.38 billion, a slight drop on last year’s $2.53 billion, and continued to be by far the largest export earner. However, the volume exported dropped sharply from 516 billion cubic feet [...]

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A New Mandala reader has urged us to feature this letter from the Bangkok Post.
Letter writer Mr Warner (”Isan and self-reliance”, Postbag, July 5), who has resided in a small northeast village for five months, cites health care as an enduring gift from Thaksin Shinawatra.  Forty years ago, when I first came to Thailand, one [...]

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As people across the world have been investing in hand sanitiser and face masks to protect themselves from the dreaded swine flu, those who have worked for the last few years in controlling bird flu might feel that their chickens and ducks are no longer getting the attention they deserve. But fear [...]

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