Killer disease remains an open secret in Southeast Asia

‘. . . most of the time, the patient has already passed away.’

The bacterium that causes Melioidosis.  Source: Eye of Science

There may be some folks who call a disease that still kills the “Vietnam Time-Bomb.”  More than 300 U.S. servicemen who fought in Vietnam were infected with it.

Melioidosis, as it is known medically, caused their deaths.  It may be Southeast Asia’s most quiet killer, a stealthy predator.

The deadly disease occurs throughout the world’s warm climes; in Southeast Asia, it is especially present in northeastern Thailand and perhaps less so in Cambodia as far as can be known.  Because it lurks with so little public awareness, physicians here don’t tend to look for it in ailing individuals, and those patients just perish, often within days.

“In Cambodia, we think 70 per cent

Vietnam and Cambodia: A study in surprising contrasts

Fashioned of recycled broken glass and ceramics, the Linh Phuoc pagoda (more photos just below) is decidedly bizarre, making Gaudi’s creations in Barcelona seem banal by comparison.

Please forgive my naïveté about having recently discovered some differences surprising to me between Vietnam and Cambodia in view of, or despite, the two nations’ tangled history, which I will ignore here.

After my return early this month from spending nearly two weeks in Nha Trang, Dalat and Saigon (which I prefer to the official “Ho Chi Minh City”), I saw for myself how Vietnam has changed in the dozen or so years since my previous brief visit.  It also proved impossible to

Uneven journalistic standards the norm in Cambodia

Happy Khmer New Year!

Photo supplied by the police shows nearly naked defendants who were arrested on fraud charges.  It was published last month in the Phnom Penh Post.

Consider me to be a grammar Nazi.  Perhaps even worse, I tend to be a journalism tyrant as well, someone who finds himself, perhaps irrationally, irritated by lapses from commonly high journalistic standards.

I read Cambodia’s three English-language dailies online every morning or in print just about every afternoon that I am in Phnom Penh.  Rarely do I get through any of the publications without finding a lapse in standards that are, to my mind, unforgivable.

I decided one day in December to skim the three journals for their lapses over a few days. Herewith what I discovered: