On Nov. 13, Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi walked free from seven years of house arrest in Rangoon. She called her son Kim Aris. She greeted supporters outside her lakeside home. Then she got on a plane to Bangkok where, on a stage erected in a parking lot on the city's outskirts, she appeared in a film made by a bearded Frenchman called Luc Something. That's what some of the 2,000 Thai extras on the set of Luc Besson's ...

In "Farangs," a short story by Thai-American writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap, a guesthouse owner grumbles about foreign tourists and their narrow tastes. "P---y and elephants," she says. "That's all these people want." Actually, we foreigners want much more. We want a drug-dealing monkey and an ass-kicking monk. We want a facial tattoo, men with breasts, and Mike Tyson tunelessly singing "One Night in Bangkok." And we get them all in The Hangover Part II, a sequel to the highest-grossing ...

Two decades ago, a Thai gardener climbed into the palace of a Saudi prince through a second-story window, busted open a safe with a screwdriver and stole some 200 pounds of jewelry. The former Saudi charg d'affaires in Bangkok told the Washington Post that the gardener stuffed "rubies the size of chicken eggs" in his vacuum-cleaner bag, along with a huge, nearly flawless blue diamond, which at 50 carats would be one of the largest blue diamonds ...

Bangkok's hottest hangout was actually born from "six months of despair and depression." After completing a course of curatorial studies and unable to renew her Rockefeller Foundation research funds, Somrak Sila wondered what she could do to "bring art closer to Thai people." Knowing that "another commercial gallery wasn't the answer," Somrak, 32, and three partners created WTF, tel: 662 6246. It's a hipster-filled, three-story bar, caf, exhibition space and screening room — with a dance floor. ...

Aid workers said Friday that at least 120 people were killed by the magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hit Thursday, rattling high-rises in Bangkok and sending people streaming into the streets of Hanoi. Details of the disaster were slowly seeping out from Shan State in northeastern Burma, a relatively remote region near the border with Laos and Thailand in the heart of the area known as the Golden Triangle. Homes, monasteries and government offices were among the 390 ...

Britain's gross domestic product suffered another decline in the third quarter of 2009, figures showed Friday, meaning the country remains mired in recession. The 81-year-old appeared outside the Bangkok hospital as onlookers shouted, "God bless the King." He was wheeled to an outdoor area of the hospital, where he paid respects to a statue of King Rama V. He then paid respects to a portrait of his late mother. The monarch's appearance was televised on local stations. He ...

Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest reigning monarch, has been hospitalized with fever and fatigue, the royal palace said Sunday. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 81, was admitted to a Bangkok hospital on Saturday night. Doctors are monitoring his condition while administering antibiotics and intravenous fluid, the statement from the Royal Household Bureau said. The statement was carried by Thai News Agency and other local media. The king was formally crowned on May 5, 1950. Thailand abolished absolute ...

A Russian writer who contradicted some authorities by suggesting that the hijacked cargo ship Arctic Sea was carrying something other than timber was fired after he fled Russia because of threats, he told CNN Friday. Mikhail Voitenko said in multiple media interviews that he caught the first flight to Istanbul, Turkey, this week to escape possible lawsuits or worse for his comments on the Arctic Sea saga. On Friday, he told CNN by cell phone that he had moved from ...

In 2007 and 2008, photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve visited North Korea by infiltrating a communist solidarity delegation. In the second story in his three-part TIME.com series, Van Houtryve describes the surveillance he was subjected to and the bizarre majesty of the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung. After dinner at the end of my second day, I was pulled aside by my guides. The interrogation lasted for four hours. The most grim-looking of our minders, Mr. Chung , was bad ...

John Yettaw, the American who had been sentenced to seven years of hard labor in Myanmar, was handed over to U.S. Embassy officials in the Southeast Asian nation on Sunday, an information ministry official said. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb obtained Yettaw's release a day earlier. The two are expected to fly to Bangkok, Thailand, aboard a military aircraft sometime Sunday. Yettaw, 53, a former military serviceman from Falcon, Missouri, was sentenced last week for a May 3 incident when he ...