Undiscovered south-east Asia: remote towns and secret beaches

Considered by many to be the most remote city in Thailand, Nan lies in a river valley along the Thai-Laos border. Indeed, Nan was so difficult to reach that it managed to stay autonomous for centuries, only incorporating itself into Thailand proper in the 1930s. Today, Nan still retains mystique as a little-known former kingdom that boasts strong Lanna (Northern Thai) influence.
Nan province is rich in natural beauty, as its national parks can attest. Arguably the most famous national park – Doi Khu Pha – offers the province’s highest mountain and a smattering of villages featuring the Mien, Lu, Hmong and Htin tribes: ethnic groups uncommon in the rest of Thailand. Nan’s most famous temple, Wat Phumin, is known for its beautifully drawn murals, while visitors can dig deeper into Nan’s history at the.
While Nan’s cultural history makes it part of northern Thailand, neighbouring Loei province is technically a part of the Thailand’s north-eastern Isaan region. Tucked alongside the Mekong River border with Laos, Loei is a mountainous mix of rice paddies, flowery meadows and dramatic scenery that remains a relatively underexplored part of the Land of Smiles. Known among Thais as the “Sea of Mountains” and the kingdom’s coldest province, Loei serves enterprising travellers ample opportunities to explore the local flora and culture.

Bali’s New Year’s Day – time to stay in, turn off the lights, and keep quiet

New Year’s Day in the West might mean a hangover, a walk and a pub lunch. In Bali, New Year is welcomed in a very different manner – with a day of silence.
The largely Hindu Indonesian island celebrates Nyepi – Silent Day – by completely shutting down for 24 hours. In Ubud, where I’m staying, shops are closing early, ATMs aren’t working and streets are being closed. From 6am tomorrow (28 March) until 6am on Wednesday (the date changes annually following the lunar calendar), no one will leave their home. Religious rules state there should be no traffic, no fire, no work and no pleasure. Streets are eerily empty, shops and restaurants remain closed, the beaches are shut, use of electricity is kept to a minimum, there’s no transport – even the airport closes – and the pecalang community police go on patrol, ensuring compliance and reprimanding anyone who steps outside their premises.

Nobody Loves Peace Better Than Donald Trump?

They will represent a passionate rejection of anti-Muslim hatred, immigrant-scapegoating and refugee-bashing, not just in the US, but here in Britain, too. They will offer a reminder that powerful vested interests – including plutocrats such as Trump – should be blamed for our social and economic woes, not those fleeing foreign violence and persecution. They will promote feminism and women’s rights in defiance of a self-confessed harasser of women. They will champion the cause of trans rights against the transphobe-in-chief, who has singled out this minority to be excluded from the US military. They will advance the cause of saving the planet from a climate change crisis exacerbated by Trumpism. They will challenge the warmongering of Trump’s administration, which threatens the lives of tens of millions of people. And they will seek to unite progressives from either side of the Atlantic in these common causes. The mirror image of Trumpism will be on the streets.
 
May’s government is weak, shambolic and crisis-ridden. The last thing it wants or needs is mass protests on the streets. As soon as Trump touches down on British soil, this is what will happen. That is their choice. The biggest carnival against hatred this country has ever seen awaits. From LGBT rights to women’s rights, from workers’ rights to anti-racism, we already know that protest works. Both May and Trump deserve to learn this instructive lesson.

Enemy At The Gates

We have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

We have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

Henry Fraser: ‘There were so many moments before my accident I took for granted’

Fraser looks out at the large garden in Hertfordshire where he and his three brothers used to run around with a freedom he can only imagine now. “The first surgery was unsuccessful,” Fraser recalls after his spinal cord had been severed and crushed when he dived in the sea in Portugal in 2009. Surgeons spent seven hours trying to re-align the vertebrae. “Before the second surgery my heart kept stopping because I had a pacemaker. I couldn’t breathe myself, couldn’t even talk. The pacemaker box was next to my head so I wasn’t sleeping. The second surgery was so huge because they had to open up the back of my neck [and screw the damaged vertebrae into place]. I felt even worse than before.

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“I was on so many drugs because I’d also contracted MRSA and pneumonia and my mind was all over the shop. I had visions that everything was going to be fine and I would move again. But your mind takes you to places you never knew existed and you think the worst thoughts. My heart stopped a couple more times and I thought: ‘I could die today. How much more do I have to take? And then you’re told: ‘You’ll never be able to move your arms and legs again.’ You think: ‘This is just too much.’

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Contain him in his repulsiveness, and the more extreme he appears to be, the less like other men.
So all these women saying “me too” – who have they been assaulted by? No one famous. No one who guaranteed them an Oscar. Not big, powerful men but ordinary men with more power than women. Enough power to shut them up. For this is the way of the world.
Can those ways change? Is something actually happening here? I hesitate, but a connection may finally be being made between the paucity of women behind the camera and the way women are shown in front of it. The absolute imbalance of power at the top of the dream factory is hardly news.

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Contain him in his repulsiveness, and the more extreme he appears to be, the less like other men.
So all these women saying “me too” – who have they been assaulted by? No one famous. No one who guaranteed them an Oscar. Not big, powerful men but ordinary men with more power than women. Enough power to shut them up. For this is the way of the world.
Can those ways change? Is something actually happening here? I hesitate, but a connection may finally be being made between the paucity of women behind the camera and the way women are shown in front of it. The absolute imbalance of power at the top of the dream factory is hardly news.