On Thursday 23rd August 1973 a man walked in to the Stockholm branch of Kreditbanken. He sprayed the ceiling with bullets and yelled: “The party starts! Down on the floor!”. It was not a robbery: he was demanding three million Swedish Kronor and the liberation of a pal of his from a high security jail.
The ‘party’ went on for six days and finally ended with the man being arrested and the four hostages freed. Out of all this came the coining of a new psychopathological term: “Stockholm syndrome”, a form of understanding and emotional attachment that some hostage victims can develop for their captor.
The man responsible for Stockholm syndrome is called Jan-Erik Olsson, or simply Janne. He is about to turn seventy and lives in Thailand, in the home village of his latest wife, Phian, whom he met in Sweden. It’s not actually a village, more an expanse of paddy fields with huts and cabins dotted nearly up to the border with Laos, in the far east of Isaan, the country’s poorest north-easterly region. Olsson bought land there, built a big house and opened a minimarket. He made money and was a local figure of authority. But his fortunes have turned: the minimarket is about to close down, crushed by competition from the big shopping malls that are even opening there. Some of his land is being farmed by his wife’s relatives. Most of it has been sold off. As has his car. The land he still owns brings him 50 Euros a month in rent. And the Swedish government has docked his pension.
“They’ve never forgotten me”, he says, spreading his big arms wide. Now he hopes to earn something with the book he has written (Stockolm-Syndromet, currently only available in Swedish), the film they may make out of it, and the talks he may give in Swedish schools.
In the meantime, as soon as he meets a Westerner, a farang as they are called in Thailand, he immediately lets off some steam. He tells his story and talks about criminal life and the thieves’ code, about a Beretta he bought in Italy, a beautiful woman he met in Via Prè in Genoa, about travelling across European borders during the Cold War. Those would seem to have been the days of his life. Like a war for those that have been through it.
I was his guest for a day. I slept on top of 200 bottles of whisky he had bought for the minimarket but didn’t want to hand over to the person who now rents it. I feel asleep to the sound of his wife reciting her daily hour-and-a-half prayers in front of the altar in the living room and I awoke at six in the morning as she set off to the temple to pray again.
Whether walking, eating or drinking beer under the little canopy out front, Janne never stopped talking. Of his ever-changing fortunes, his children, his love stories, Swedish winters and the dry season in Isaan. Of his being a Buddhist, of the amulets given to him by a venerable monk that hang on a gold chain over his chest and distended stomach.

At times he got upset, the occasional little outburst, and often he laughed. As he remembers certain things, and especially while talking about his children, he gets the shivers and rubs his forearms. He seems sincere. He has no regrets and makes no apologies. “What’s the point?”. He prefers to help the people in this poor region. He has even offered to pay for a big statue of Buddha for a small monastery.

The day after I left he called me to say that I had left my cigarettes at his house. “Good job, really”, he said, “They’re bad for you”.

“What bloody country could I have become editor in with such a small investment? Sure the government backed me. I said to them: hey, your international image is not that great. Maybe I can help you”. So says Ross Dunkley, the Australian director and editor of The Myanmar Times, the only Burmese newspaper targeting the outside world.
On 10th February, Ross was arrested in Rangoon on immigration charges. He is also reported as having been charged with consorting with prostitutes and marijuana possession. Ross is being held at Insein prison, a place where political adversaries are detained and tortured. His hearing is set for 24th February. If found guilty, he risks up to five years in jail.
Up to last Thursday this big, bald-headed Australian could call himself a lucky man. He had always managed to get on in a country where the worst nightmares can come true in a rude awakening.
In fact, Ross had made a deal with the devil. His Mephistopheles was Khyn Nyunt. In 2000, when Ross launched The Myanmar Times, the operation was approved by the then first secretary of the military junta and military intelligence commander. That’s why, when I asked Ross how he was coping with the censorship (I’m still amazed by how ingenuous the question was), he replied: “I said: I could be more useful to you if the newspaper weren’t subject to the standard censorship, Military Intelligence control would be more appropriate”.
At the time of our meeting, General Nyunt was prime minister and Ross had the benefit of full protection: he was the man presenting the human face of the junta to the West. A few months later, though, the General was removed from office “for health reasons”, then arrested for corruption and sentenced to 44 years in jail at Insein. Some say that he was later placed under house arrest, but no one really knows where he has ended up.
A few years later I met Ross again. He was still fighting fit and busier than ever. In the meantime he had made other deals with other devils. The first with “Sonny” Myant Swe, the son of General Thein Swe, who in 2005 was head of the department of international relations at the Military Secret Service. Then the Swe family also fell out of favour and ended up in jail. Ross then made a deal with doctor Tin Tun Oo, a local tycoon who had links with the junta.
The problem is that Dr. Oo has not been disgraced. On the contrary, he has become a member of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the “democratic” side of the junta. So when discussions began over the running of The Myanmar Times editing company (which in the meantime had started other publications in South East Asia), it was time for Ross to suffer for his past deals. This is the view taken by many local observers and by his partner and fellow countryman David Armstrong.
Maybe Ross wound up in jail because he thought times really had changed and that in Burma there was room for discussion (which insults his intelligence). More probably, his bosses in the authorities thought they didn’t need him, or his help improving the country’s image, anymore. They seem to be convinced of having initiated a country on its way to a new era, a new system and a new political platform towards democracy. “Discipline-flourishing”, as General Than Shwe, the real Lucifer of Burma, puts it, but still democracy.
Some western newspapers will have you believe that the Burmese and Than Shwe have achieved their goal. This deprives many people of strong outside support and puts them at risk. Not Ross though. He will probably, and hopefully, be alright. But what of the over 2000 political prisoners held at Insein jail and at other detection centres across Myanmar? They have been there for years and will probably remain there. Forgotten.
Once again, it’s the world that’s making a deal with the devil. So how can we condemn Ross? Let’s not, however, turn him into a martyr.

Lots of people want to buy a good guidebook. Not an existential, cultural, moral, political or philosophical compendium. A travel guide. But it’s increasingly difficult to find good ones. So much so that, today, travel writing is turning into a series of stereotypes, banalities and the vain aspirations of self-styled travellers. The best guidebook is increasingly turning out to be an escapist novel: a thriller, a crime or action story involving lots of sex and intrigue.
This is the case with the novels of John Burdett, the British former lawyer who divides his time between the Côte d'Azur and Thailand. His detective stories (where the mixed-race detective is torn between the mystical drive of an ex-monk and the carnal desires of a bordello patron) are the perfect guide to Bangkok and the wider Asia area.
Another recent example is the first novel by Ron McMillan, a Scottish journalist based in Bangkok with extensive experience of Korea and China. His first effort is entitled Yin Yang Tattoo and leads its reader on a discovery of Seoul and the rest of Korea.

“It’s not great literature”, said Ron in a recent interview. It’s escapist fiction, which offers a psychological escape from everyday problems, immersing the reader in an exotic, adventurous and erotic dimension far-removed from the mundane reality of existence.
The term escapist (whether associated with a novel, film or other artistic expression) is often used as a derogatory term, as opposed to more high-brow forms of expression. It indicates something politically incorrect.
But there are other areas in which escape has held on to a deeper, more complex meaning. It can express a sense of rebellion, abandon, transgression, desperation and vitality. A search for meaning in life. In this way, escape gives value and meaning to the forms in which it is expressed.
The perfect example of this is Easy Rider, the Dennis Hopper film that came to symbolise an age and a generation.

The escape trilogy by director Gabriele Salvatores (Marrakech Express, Turné, Puerto Escondido) was no less influential. The last of the three was adapted from the homonymous novel by Pino Cacucci, known for his protagonists prone to escape.
In this sense, escapist guidebooks are often books about escape itself. Especially because they have been written by expatriates, people who stay where nothing is familiar, where the light is surreal, the smells come from unknown spices and the sounds are alien. These self-exiles immerse themselves in a far-off place that reflects a reverse image of themselves. In Asia this feeling of escape is stronger than elsewhere. Outsiders have to deal with a complex mix of survival, adapt to traditions that are as ancient as they are outlandish, the language barrier, murky bureaucracy, corruption and adventure. It’s easy to get lost in this maze, giving in to self-indulgence and absolving oneself from one’s sins by committing others. Perhaps that’s what enables good guidebooks to be written. The problem lies in then wanting to go beyond, and starting to think about Conrad. But that’s another story. Another escape route.

It’s been a long time since my last post. Here’s a little story telling why.


I observe the gecko. It’s motionless under the lamp that casts a weak light on the table. It’s small and looks as though it’s made of rubber. I don’t move my hands, I try to stay still and keep watching it. Observing a gecko is useful: it teaches you attention, patience, perception of territory. We should observe animals more often, as the ancient Chinese wise men used to do.
Then, in among these esoteric meanderings, a quote from Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now comes to mind: “I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving”. This unsettling thought distracts me from the gecko. I make an imperceptible movement and it scuttles off the table and under another lamp on the railing that stands between me and the river. I look back to the notebook next to me, seeing the three lines of the haiku I was writing before the gecko appeared.
Wet following the
Rain opposite the
Temple at dawn.
The syllables don’t add up, and I can’t fit in the required five, seven, five pattern. For some unknown mental dysfunction, I am unable to scan the syllables.

This is how I sometimes end up spending my evenings in Bangkok. Holed up in an inn next to the river, perhaps in front of a bowl of crab curry and rice, I feel I am exactly where I should be. I don’t know why. It’s as though the end of the day gives me hope. Mornings scare me, as they bring the idea that I have to face my thoughts again for the rest of the day. During those evenings, though, I often get a flash of mental presence, a sense of synchronicity, a connection between subjective and objective events that occur at the same and between which there’s no relationship of cause-effect but a clear communion of meaning. I see the stories I would like to tell. And that often, by the time morning comes, have disappeared into my uncertainties. I end up just waiting for something to happen.
As Captain Willard says in the first scene of Apocalypse Now: “I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.”