Southeast Asia

In November 1995 I was escorted to Dili airport, and put on a plane out of Indonesian-occupied East Timor by 50 armed soldiers. (Apparently the Indonesians weren't wild about journalists.) I'd managed to hide from Intel for 12 hours the previous evening in the secret policemens' nightclub, where Javanese men with enormous guns were wrapped around tiny island girls like tree roots. All were too drunk to notice me, and I lasted long enough in East Timor to get my story for the Australian next morning.

How could this not give me a taste for Asia? I moved to northern Thailand from Australia in 2004, and have since lived and worked in Laos, Burma and (for several years now) my beloved Cambodia.

These stories were written for the New York Times, Bangkok Post, Phnom Penh Post and other publications, on Asian issues such as human rights, mass murder, corruption, floods, poverty and development.

Hague trials for Burmese junta? (New York Times)

250 freed by Burmese junta (New York Times)