During my trip through North Thailand earlier this month with my friend Frans, we encountered something unusual.  While driving along to Doi Angkhang I noticed something happening in a shop and we decided to have a quick look.  This turned into a bit longer than planned as Frans even admitted - that despite driving here a few times previously - he had never seen anything like it. At first, I only noticed this Elephant mural... Over the years, I visited Bangkok’s Chinatown cou

Late October, the Dishonorable Edward Pastanga and I visited Wilhelmus von N 's place, as we had been invited once again for a vinyl evening.  I had prepared myself by digging up some old singles and albums from my collection, as well as buying a new platter: Go Go Crankin’ - Paint The White House Black …  Afterwards, we sat down in his vinyl sanctuary, opened the beers, and started playing some discs, which is a kind of ancient ritual for us by now.  Most of the brought alo

Back in the Stone Age, uh, the very early 1960s, when I was just a tiny kid, I’d noticed that everybody in my family loved reading, which fascinated me a lot. Unfortunately, whenever I looked into those books, there were only meaningless scribbles, which at 4 years of age, I couldn’t read yet… However, there were also books and magazines with pictures, lots of them, and those were much more interesting. Despite the scribbles, those images were fascinating, and I could more or

Let’s travel back in time, to 1966, late February, location: Nieuw Loosdrecht, Netherlands. I’m 7 years old and eagerly awaiting the delivery of the local newspaper: De Gooi en Eemlander . Not because I’m interested in the news, but because of the comics which include my favorite heroes, Suske & Wiske . In the English speaking part of the world these two are known as follows: UK: " Bob & Bobette " or " Spike and Suzy ", but in the US as " Willy and Wanda " A new adventure has

Bangkok's Chinatown remains a fascinating place, no matter how often I visit, whether walking through familiar lanes and neighborhoods or exploring narrow alleys. This time, my focus was on houses, not the really ancient shophouses, but more on those from the 1950s & 60s. Some resemble slices of cake, such as the one above! Rooms like blocks stacked on top of each other, painted in soft pastel colors... But other colors are popular too! Of course, not everyone can afford to t

Last week, my son asked me out of the blue if I played chess… I had to think for a moment, as the last time I played chess was probably...

By now, my Art For Art's Sake series has reached over 400 cartoons, and I still enjoy mashing things up, a good sign! As explained in...

Earlier this month, there was a street art festival in Bangkok, of which I only managed to check out the last 2 days. Still better than...

Over the years, I moved from physical objects (photos, books, vinyl, CDs, etc.) more and more to digital versions (jpg, epub, pdf, mp3,...

Whether we like it or not, Google has made quite an impact on how we travel. Whereas in the past we used large paper foldout maps,...