BANGKOK (AP) — Trudging up a lush mountainside to a remote village, plunging through a swift-moving river in the footsteps of elephants and cruising Bangkok’s gleaming luxury malls — with each step, I walked into different worlds, each one beautiful, all in Thailand. Don’t forget glittering temples, bustling night markets …
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand has undergone a dramatic transformation over King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 70-year reign, largely propelled by one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and a willingness to open up to the outside world. Some of the changes since the king ascended the throne in 1946, when the kingdom …
LONOKE, Ark. (AP) — Heavy rain that brought record flooding to Louisiana recently has put a damper on the nation’s harvest of rice, a food staple that usually likes water as it grows but can’t be gathered by machine if fields are inundated. While rice is an aquatic plant, this …
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s military government announced Monday that it intends to sue a former prime minister for billions of dollars in losses it alleges were incurred by her administration’s rice subsidy program. The Cabinet official in charge of the prime minister’s office, Panadda Diskul, said a specially appointed committee …
BOUSRA, Cambodia (AP) — For generations, the indigenous Bunong were famous as the great elephant keepers and masters of the forests in eastern Cambodia. They called the fertile, rolling hills of their ancestral homeland “meh ne,” or mother — a source of food, livelihoods and self-identity. From its rich red …
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — As China opened one of its six dams on the upper Mekong River last month to help parched Southeast Asian countries down river cope with a record drought, it was hailed as benevolent water diplomacy. But to critics of hydroelectric dams built on the Mekong over …
TRACH, Cambodia (AP) — It’s been a busy morning for Cletus, Meynard, Victoria and others of their furry band. Tiny noses and long whiskers twitching, they’ve scurried and sniffed their way across 775 square meters (8,300 square feet) of fields to eliminate a scourge that has killed thousands of Cambodians: …
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s attorney general on Thursday pressed criminal charges against former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for negligence related to her government’s money-losing rice subsidy program, a move likely to prolong conflicts in a divided nation plagued by political turmoil and coups. Prosecutors from the Office of the Attorney …
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s economy barely grew last year as tourism, investment and exports fell after months of anti-government protests and a May coup. The National Economic and Social Development Board said Monday the economy grew 0.7 percent in 2014, falling short of expectations of 1 percent growth. The government …
In this photo by Heng Sinith, a farmer is silhouetted as he drives his water buffalo cart loaded with rice hay after his day’s work at a paddy field in Samroang Kandal village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A little over half of Cambodia’s labor force is engaged …
THANON NANG KLARN, Thailand (AP) — Depending solely on the rains to either yield a good rice crop or leave their fields dry and barren, farmers in this village in northeastern Thailand, the country’s poorest region, led a precarious and back-breaking existence. Then they discovered bugs. At Boontham Puthachat’s home, …
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — Flooded paddy fields stretch along both sides of the highway leading to Myanmar’s capital, Napyitaw, where thousands of farmworkers, mostly women, uproot sprouts and then gently tap them on their feet to remove mud from the roots. Others walk through the mist, balancing sprouts on bamboo …