Singapore stopped chasing the pink dollar, but Thailand has picked up the cause with zest. via a new AP favorite Magnoy’s Samsara, a Bangkok Post report on Thailand’s planned gay shopping district.:

Thailand’s first gay shopping zone will open next year as part of the one-billion-baht Tawana Center Park in Bangkok’s Lat Phrao district.

According to a report in the Bangkok Post today the "Gay Avenue" will comprise 2,400 square metres of retail space dedicated solely to shops owned by gays. The complex is reportedly owned by billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, who also owns the nearby Computer City complex.

Apart from Gay Avenue Zone, the project will offer products and services similar to what is available at Bangkok’s famous Chatuchak weekend market and the Suan Lum Night Baazar.

Mr Anusorn said the Gay Avenue would serve as the magnet to attract customers to the project because products created by gays tend to be chic and unique.

"I don’t think there will be any backlash on the project from the conservative sector of society because the products and services on offer will be furniture, fashion items, home decoration items, restaurants and coffeeshops. None of the shops will deal with sex," he said.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, singapore, southeast asia, thailand

AsiaPundit isn’t exceptionally concerned about the ‘rise of Japanese militarism. Whatever negative things that can be, justifiably, said about shrine visits and inflammatory textbooks, the vast majority of Japanese people are pacifist to a fault. The proposed constitutional revision will just bring Japan in line with the rest of the world (if China is so concerned about Japan militarizing, AsiaPundit suggests that a good way to prevent that from happening would be to help neutralize the North Korea threat).

That said, Japan’s lead in military technologies should also give neighbors a cause for concern. Japan has already advanced robotics far enough to make super cool Samurai robots.:

AP’s sources warn him that they are working on further military applications.:

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia, mechagodzilla

Just as people were getting used to mentioning Borneo without mentioning man-eating Dayaks, a baker in Thailand has decided to again link Southeast Asia with cannibalism.:

Here’s some food for thought: an art student in Thailand named Kittiwat Unarom has come up with a startling new idea — bread made to look like a human face!

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, southeast asia, thailand

One of the advantages of being an anonymous blogger is that it enables you to circulate rumors that would, if published without attribution, could get you in a world of trouble. From an anonymous journalist/blogger an update on the situation in Jiliin, the site where the Songhua river chemical spill originated.

The violence and reported deaths in Dongzhou have attracted many foreign media’s top priority southward. But the eerie silence of domestic media on the deputy mayor’s suicide in Jilin and the deeper, still evolving story behind it underscore the fact that the drama is far from over in the northeast.

The Beijing News had a story. 21st Century Business Herald had a story. Caijing Magazine had a story. None ran it. Word in town is, several of this country’s top leaders have contributed their share of opinion on this and put an abrupt end to all the buzz. The deputy mayor’s suicide seems to be the cause. An new, more powerful investigation taskforce put together by the central government that was scheduled to arrive in Jilin last week was put on hold after the suicide. Is Beijing afraid of more suicides?

Another, much more vicious piece of rumor has surfaced in Jilin, which, if verified, could easily explain all the weird developments. The 100-ton-or-so benzene and nitrobenzene in the Songhua, according to government sources there, was not accidently flushed down the sewer but DELIBERATELY LEAKED. Again, no guarantee for the authenticity of this information but in the absence of true, open news coverage rumor would have to do, for here and for now.

AsiaPundit as well does not guarantee the integrity of this information.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, censorship, china, east asia, harbin, jilin, northeast asia, media

Via China Top Blog, lesbian kisses under the chairman’s gaze. The PLA onlookers :

Technorati Tags: china, east asia, lesbian, northeast asia

Rajan has come upon a preliminary draft of the proposed constitution for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean):

7. Freedom of movement of people and goods shall be guaranteed except

a) When there is a national monopoly or well-connected corporation like Proton and PT Tri Polyta that needs to be protected.

b) When there is a pointless, wasteful, inefficient national industry that needs to be protected

c) For Jews…err, Israelis, in Malaysia and Indonesia.

d) For Filipinos and Indonesians going to Malaysia and Singapore, where in Malaysia they shall be placed in humiliating, delapidated camps where their rights shall not be protected.

e) To Acheh, Papua or occasionally, parts of the Spice Islands in Indonesia, the mountains of Vietnam, most states of Myanmar and the entirety of Laos, God-forbid any reporter sees anything there.

Technorati Tags: asia, asean

It seems that the video MMS of a stripped-naked female Chinese national being forced to do ‘ear squats’ by Malaysian police was an unwritten procedure.:

The five-member independent commission set-up to probe the nude ear-squat incident at the Petaling Jaya police lock-up yesterday heard from the Petaling Jaya OCPD that it was an ‘unwritten’ procedure which has gone on for a very long time. The officers who did not adhere to this ‘procedure’ could face disciplinary action. This story was covered on prime time news on TV3 last night.

A lot of things came to my mind as I watched the news report. First and foremost was how an officer could face disciplinary action for something that was unwritten. What did they charge him/her with? Insubordination for a standing order that was not even on paper?

Then it hit me. Unwritten Procedures are things I try to weed out on corporate consultancy engagements. We look for them to determine … culture.

Yes, culture.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, malaysia, southeast asia

A friend of JoLing Seow experiences traditional medicine in Malaysia. Ewww…:

Kj also did the suction thing and body scraping on this back because he was experiencing some back problem. Dam Ugly lah the result…gross…i wouldnt do it loh. So i asked him whether he feels rejuvenate after that….he said..erm…not much of a diffrence….Ask him when will the marks go away..probably in a week.

Mrs Asiapundit has had a similar procedure while in South Korea, thankfully minus the scraping.

(via BlogsMalaysia)

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, malaysia, southeast asia

Kudos to Cobrapost for its sense of humor. As part of a sting operation to nab corrupt politicians in a bribe-for-parliamentary questions scandal, Chandra Pratap Singh from Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi constituency was paid to ask the following in Parliament:

Is it true that while NRI firms such as India Uncut of USA, Sepia Mutiny of Britain and AnarCap Lib of Netherlands have been allowed to invest in Indian SSIs, the reputed German investment firm Desipundit has been denied permission? If so, the reasons thereof? Is the Union Government of India planning to make automatic the long procedure of permission for SSIs to import new technologies such as Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Blogrolls, Splogs and Hitcounters?



While nearly all the questions had a public interest element in them, some, like the one above, were passed on to the MPs with the intention of showing how easy it was for amateur teams to infiltrate the system and get bogus questions submitted in the balloting process. While, in this case, these were harmless, humour inducing efforts, in the hands of powerful lobbies this power acquires a sinister dimension. It is important to note some MPs like Kushwaha, Ram Pal and Gandhi even promised to put in questions “to harass” NISMA’s enemies.

This is not a joke. See page three of Cobrapost report here.

AsiaPundit is now considering which People’s Congress member he can buy some sponsorship from in the next session.

(Via Amit Varma’s India Uncut, and congrats to Amit on the mention in Parliament.)

UPDATE: More at Sepia Mutiny:

What the F%ck?? As Ennis blurted out loudly in our North Dakota HQ earlier this morning, “Sweet! We’re famous! Dude(ette) - this is so much cooler than I thought the blog would ever get.”….

Now for the part I don’t understand. Why the hell were we labeled as a “British” blog entity? Desipundit is similarly pissed that his “firm” was denied permission to invest in Indian SSIs. Something very Syriana-like is going on here if you ask me. The powers that be are trying to manipulate the playing field.

My parents who are in India right now are going to get a kick out of this. They always thought that we’d get in trouble with the U.S. government but never thought that this blog would play a minor part in taking down Indian politicians all the way from North Dakota.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, corruption, india, south asia

AsiaPundit is, for better or worse, a journalist by day. While blogging tradition is to shoot from the hip without a full array of evidence, the day job demands a bit more. On the Dongzhou incident, AP has been pretty silent. That’s largely AP relying on instinct. It’s better to be slow than to be wrong, even though it’s bad to be either.

There’s a lot of chatter on the matter, but with death tolls between three (the unreliable CPP service Xinhua) and 70 (unreliable FLG rag Epoch Times) it’s hard to find a source of clarity.

One thing that is certain, as Richard at Peking Duck states, is that things are "a serious mess".:

The whole thing is extraordinary. Hundreds of riots occur in China every day, but, as the article says, police and paramilitary forces rarely shoot civilian demonstrators. Xinhua, as I posted yesterday, put out a lengthy article claiming it was all about thuggish "instigators" who were wickedly inciting the villagers, who the poor law enforecement officials were "forced" to shoot down. And within 12 hours, that Xinhua article vanished. Somewhere within that period of time someone in the government apparently realized just how serious a mess this was, and that trying to scapegoat the demonstrators wasn;t going to work.

Meanwhile, since the Xinhua article came and went, there seems to be a blackout on news coming out of China; a Google News search shows it’s only the foreign press that’s covering it (with plenty of sensational coverage from Epoch Times, of course).

ESWN has, as always, provided better coverage than widely available elsewhere - though as by consolidating reports rather than reporting. Gateway Pundit has a decent roundup of images and videos which are well worth watching even though many are sourced by the Epoch Times. (AP will more-or-less trust Epoch Times visual evidence, that’s much harder to fake than CPC resignations).

(On the FLG, AP finds them about as reliable as the Scientologists, but he does not take the CPC line on the movement.  Note, AP would not care to see Tom Cruise tortured to death just because he has nutty ideas about psychiatry, has corrupted Katie Holmes and was so nuts that he would divorce a hottie like Nicole Kidman. Although all of that would probably be more of a reason for torturing Tom than what the CPC has tortured FLG members for. AP opposes torture, even against Tom Cruise.)

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, dongzhou, east asia, northeast asia