It was not the first time I was confused with Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a Reuters veteran of 17 years until his resignation in June 2011.

And it certainly won’t be the last. In January 2012, I joined Reuters as Special Correspondent, Thailand and Indochina. In a bid to distinguish myself from illustrious namesake, I write under the byline “Andrew R.C. Marshall.” (My Reuters blog is here.)

There are many differences between me and Andrew MacGregor Marshall. Here is one: he is writing a critical biography of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, based on U.S. diplomatic cables acquired via WikiLeaks; I am not.

Here is another: I live in Bangkok, where I can be jailed for up to 15 years for offending the Thai royal family; he lives in Singapore, where he cannot.

In May 2011, a U.S. citizen was arrested in Thailand for allegedly posting a link on his blog to a banned biography of King Bhumibol. So forgive me if I don’t post a link to my namesake’s new website. I urge you to google “Andrew MacGregor Marshall” instead.

But my favorite response was an article on a travel website called www.atvisit.com. “Why the Beautiful Kuta Beach Bali to be Dirty With Garbage?” reads the headline. “Kuta beach is one beach which is known by its exotic,” it continues. “But why commencement the period of Dec 2010 to April 2011 there is extravagant increase of trumpery?” It ends with the solemn advice, “Act with for not littering.”

Kuta is not the only beach reviewed by the site. It also considers those of the Bahamas. Xanadu beach is “not uncomfortably huddled,” Mather Town is “an excellent abode for those who savor converging locals,” and Taino offers “all the tralatitious pastimes.” And don’t miss Golden Rock, which boasts “stunning hot sands on the boundary of a spectacularly dismal actress.”

The site belongs to an Indonesian called Herry Hendro. In another era, Hendro’s linguistic exuberance would mark him out as Surabaya’s answer to James Joyce. In fact, he writes in Indonesian and his computer puts it into English. His site demonstrates the limitations—or, if you like, the thrilling possibilities—of Google Translate.

For Hendro doesn’t restrict himself to tropical beaches. Here is his appraisal of the Kendall Hotel near Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “A breakfast strike, wireless internet, and a conceding to FITCORP suitableness edifice use are included with your stick. Additionally, meeting rooms are accessible for your byplay or ethnical events.” The hotel is “utterly situated as a propulsion disc for exploring the area or conducting line in either Beantown or University.”

Hendro also pays tribute to Saltspring Island, in British Columbia, which is famous for its “showy anaesthetic characters” and “the factual, old-fashioned sumptuosity” of its lodgings. But be warned: your voyage from the mainland could be hampered by an “unforesightful shipping fuckup.”

Tay Za on ice

Harder than you’d think. Two Burmese military helicopters reportedly tried and failed to extract tycoon Tay Za (right), a close business crony of Gen. Than Shwe and the owner of Air Bagan, and five others from Ice Mountain in Kachin State, where his helicopter was forced to land in bad weather on Monday. The first helicopter, dispatched by the Burmese army and thought to be Russia-made Mi-6, threatened to trigger an avalanche with its giant five-bladed main rotor and had to be withdrawn.

With apparently no aircraft of his own to save him, Tay Za’s company Htoo Trading urgently hired helicopters from India, Cambodia and Thailand. Thailand, in the form of an intrepid Thai company called Advance Aviation, got there first.

Advance Aviation (“Where Sky And Safety Meet”) dispatched not a Soviet-era behemoth, but a nippy EC-130 helicopter, usually hired out for about $2,000 a hour. “We had no idea whether we’d succeed,” says Noppaporn Nasylvanta, who runs sales and marketing for the company, “but we wanted to try.” The EC-130 arrived in northern Burma on Wednesday evening. Tay Za and his party spent another night on Ice Mountain before the EC-130 lifted them to safety in three sorties around noon today.

The first sortie took away the injured. Tay Za, who was on the second flight, is reportedly in “good health“—news that will no doubt disappoint many of those who envy his immense fortune.

In Indonesia, a military tribunal found three soldiers guilty of torturing Papuans. Horrific footage of this abuse was filmed and posted on YouTube last year. This compelled the Indonesian military to act; so, probably, did the U.S., which recently re-established military links with Kopassus, the special forces notorious for human rights abuses. (Orlando and I witnessed the aftermath of a Kopassus massacre in 2003; watch Orlando’s powerful film on it here.)

For what they did to their victims—they held a burning stick to one man’s genitals, a knife to another’s face (right)—the Indonesian soldiers got off lightly: the tribunal gave them 8 to 10 months in jail. But the sentences still represent a grudging acknowledgment that torture exists in the Indonesian armed forces and that those who commit it should be held accountable.

Now look at Thailand—specifically, at an article in today’s Bangkok Post. “Nothing the military has done has violated the rights of local people,” says Udomchai Thammasarorat, commander of the Fourth Army in southern Thailand. This is the same Udomchai who told me and Orlando, “We confirm we have never committed torture”—even as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups continue to document its systematic use against the Malay-Muslim minority in southern Thailand.

Please watch “Thailand’s Tropical Gulag” and, if it moves you in any way, leave a comment below. I’m very interested to hear what you think.

Cholera bacteria

Haiti’s cholera epidemic took place some 10,000 miles from my home in Thailand, but I watched it unfold with more than just academic interest. I recently woke up feeling too nauseous to even sip water. Then diarrhea struck. A few hours later, weak and dehydrated, I was being wheeled into a Bangkok hospital, my blood pressure so low I couldn’t stand up without blacking out. I spent four days on an IV drip, cradling my aching guts.

I was treated for acute gastroenteritis caused by bacteria which the hospital failed to identify. But when I later described my symptoms and their alarmingly sudden onset to a British expert in diarrheal disease, he gave a different diagnosis: cholera.

I was shocked. Left untreated, cholera can kill within hours. Many governments under-report the disease, and not just because its name alone terrifies people. Cholera is a byword for backwardness and neglect. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls it “a key indicator of lack of social development.”

That certainly rings true of the place where I had fallen ill. Pattani is one of Thailand’s three southernmost provinces, a Muslim-majority region in an otherwise largely Buddhist nation. There, a brutal conflict between shadowy militants and government troops has killed more than 4,400 people. On 4 January 2011, this ill-reported war enters its eighth year, with no end in sight.

Statistically speaking, Pattani is a great place to catch cholera. Hundreds of people were infected during an outbreak in fishing communities along the Pattani River in late 2009. Most of the 982 cases reported by Thailand in the first six months of 2010 occurred in the south.

It is easy to blame the conflict. This region was annexed by Thailand a century ago and its Malay-speaking people have chafed under Bangkok’s rule ever since. Since the current hostilities erupted, insurgents have torched clinics and killed dozens of health workers, who are government employees and therefore considered legitimate targets. In the past, military intelligence agents have posed as health workers, endangering them further.

But the chief cause of the south’s health crisis is not years of conflict, but the decades of government neglect that preceded them. Take maternal deaths, another key indicator of the quality of a healthcare system. The maternal mortality ratio in the three southernmost provinces is double the national average of about 12 per 100,000 live births, reports the United Nations Development Programme. In one province, Yala, it is three times the national average.

Or look at polio vaccine coverage. The rallying cry of the Polio Global Eradication Initiative is “every last child,” but in Pattani province it’s more like every third child. Dr Piyanit Tharmaphornpilas, who runs the national immunization programme, has described southern Thailand as a “high-risk area” for the disease’s re-emergence.

That the region’s health system hasn’t collapsed entirely is credit to the bravery and dedication of its members. Despite being targets, health workers still enter southern villages more often than any other government officials and, after religious leaders and teachers, remain the most trusted.

The Thai government has offered them better pay and perks. But conditions won’t really improve until the violence does—and that’s unlikely for now. “Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has made little effort to tackle the political grievances that drive the insurgency,” reported the International Crisis Group in November. Amid continued conflict, only cholera and its attendant health miseries are guaranteed a safe refuge.

I’ve just heard that Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the news site Prachatai, has been arrested at Bangkok’s main international airport, apparently on charges of insulting the Thai monarchy. In March, Chiranuch (left) spent nearly four hours in a cage beneath a Bangkok courtroom while her bail was approved on previous charges under Thailand’s Cyber Crimes Act. I first met her the following month, after the deadly “Black Saturday” clashes on 10 April between government troops and Red Shirt protesters in Bangkok. Here’s what I wrote then:

Not long after Black Saturday, I met a Thai woman so dangerous that the Thai state is trying to put her behind bars for the rest of her natural life. We met on Silom Road, near the Rajaprasong protest site. A few nights before, I had watched a mob hurl rocks, bottles and abuse at Red Shirt barricades. Then five M-79 grenades had exploded amid the crowd. One person was killed and dozens injured. The government and the Red Shirts blamed each other, and the perpetrators were never found.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn doesn’t look very dangerous. She is a short, slightly plump woman of 43 who runs an independent news website called Prachatai. She is also one of first Thais to be prosecuted under the Cyber Crimes Act. Her offence? Someone made an oblique but unflattering comment about a member of the Thai royal family on Prachatai’s webboard, and Chiranuch didn’t remove it quickly enough. If convicted of all ten counts against her, she faces 50 years in jail. Prachatai — the name means “free people” — has been shut down.

“The internet is about openness,” says Chiranuch. “It opens minds. That’s what democracies need. But in Thailand the internet has become a battleground, just like the streets.” Chiranuch’s trial began the following month. She says she’s nervous, but doesn’t seem so. “Thailand has to admit that it’s not a real democracy,” she says quietly. “We cannot talk freely about many things.”

Meanwhile, chaos spreads. As I write, there are more clashes, more deaths, more injuries. Elsewhere in Thailand, Red Shirts shut down city halls and obstruct military personnel and equipment bound for the capital. The Yellow Shirts have reappeared to demand the army declare martial law. In Bangkok, grenade attacks and drive-by shootings — usually at night, on government or military buildings — are now so frequent I barely register them. There is talk of civil war, rumors of another military coup.

Is Thailand growing up or falling apart? It is too early to tell. But the old stereotype of Thais — simple, fun-loving, apolitical, as loyal as Labradors — is shattered forever. Chiranuch is relieved. “We’ve woken up from a fairytale,” she says. Then we walk together down Silom Road, past coils of razor wire and shuttered shops and soldiers with assault rifles, towards whatever kind of Thailand comes next.

Many thanks to Nick Nostitz for the photo of Chiranuch. Nick’s latest book ,”Red vs. Yellow, Volume 1: Thailand’s crisis of identity,” is available from all good bookstores.

Photo by John Stanmeyer/VII

Now that I’ve painstakingly sucker-cupped my way further up the media skyscraper, I almost always work with photographers. Some are assigned to a story I’ve already pitched, but usually we will conceive, pitch, do, and sell the story as a team.

Professional photojournalists are going through tough times right now, and I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the best. Along the way, I’ve learned the many rules that writers must observe when working with photographers. Here are just two:

Rule #17. Never, ever introduce them to interviewees as “my photographer.” This is like saying “This is my toothbrush” or “It won’t bite.” The photographer is neither goods nor chattel. On the rare occasions I’ve been assigned a photographer I don’t like, I’ve been tempted to try the variation, “This is the photographer of my idea,” or even the succinct but withering, “This is a photographer.” Weirdly—because I’m sure I deserve it—no photographer has ever introduced me as “my writer.”

Rule #2. Always try to stay out of their frame. (And not only stay out, but—with an increasing number of stills photographers now shooting video—shut up, too.) This rule is especially important if you are white, shaven-headed and halfway up an erupting volcano in Indonesia. I did a story for National Geographic magazine with photographer John Stanmeyer which involved covering a mystical Javanese ritual held to appease the ogre thought to live at the peak of Mt Merapi, one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It was a rare event and I was anxious to stay out of John’s way. I invite you to click on his photo above to enlarge it, and play “Where’s The Wally?”

Women’s magazines are better known for fashion than foreign corresponding. But browsing the online tear-sheets of the celebrated photo agency VII, I was struck by how many of its clients were magazines such as Amica, Chatelaine, Sara, and D la Repubblica delle Donne. Australian Marie Claire runs about three foreign stories in every issue.

None of this will surprise my colleague Abigail Haworth, Senior International Editor of Marie Claire (U.S.). She has written over 50 features from 26 countries for the magazine. Many of Haworth’s stories are powerful exposes of human rights abuses. She recently received a prestigious award from the Overseas Press Club of America for her investigation of the Mauritanian practice of force-feeding young women. It might seem incongruous to have such matters explored in pages scented by free perfume samples, says Haworth, but the bottom line is that women’s mags wouldn’t run these stories if readers weren’t interested. “Readers want to know about serious issues, and the huge response we get to many of our stories proves it,” she tells me.

Haworth & Pesta

This month’s issue of U.S. Marie Claire includes an investigative story by editor-at-large Abigail Pesta about an Iraqi father who murdered his American daughter in an apparent honour killing. At 4,000 words, it is almost New Yorker-long. Published last week, Pesta’s story has prompted an online debate and a petition to the U.S. Congress.

Contrast this with a 4 July cover story in The Sunday Times Magazine, about the death of photojournalism. When a British magazine that is justly famous for its reportage makes such a gloomy claim, you have to pay attention. Still, I disagree. Photojournalism and reportage are alive and kicking; it’s the newspapers and magazines that once published and paid for them that are flat-lining. Are women’s titles, with their fashion and beauty tips and the advertising such content generates, more inured in these troubled times and better able to fund foreign reporting? Or do they just have more faith in their readers’ interest in global issues?

There is advice like this: “Conduct regular drills with family members on taking cover from gunfire, etc.” There is also a bleak section on enduring abduction and torture: “If you are being brutally treated, try to mentally converse with loved ones, or talk to your God.”

I’ve been thinking about Jubelag during what has been another deadly period for Philippine journalism. On June 19, a tabloid journalist called Nestor Bedolido was shot six times by an unidentified gunman while buying cigarettes. It is believed Bedolido’s exposés had upset a local politician. Two radio broadcasters, Joselito Agustin and Desiderio Camangyan, were gunned down just days before. The three now join a list of 140 journalists who have been murdered in the Philippines since 1986.

That was the year dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown and democracy was, at least in theory, returned to all Filipinos. Since then, journalism has been an odd mix of licence and lethality. Filipino journalists have “historically ranked among the freest, most vibrant, and most outspoken in Southeast Asia,” says Freedom House in its global assessment of media freedom. At the same time, they are also among the world’s most imperiled.

In short, you are free to write about who and what you want, but your subjects are free to kill you for doing so.

It is no surprise to find the Philippines in third place, after war-torn Iraq and Somalia, on the 2010 Impunity Index, compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The index names countries “where journalists are slain and killers go free”.

Catching and convicting the killers is neither impossible nor unprecedented. In the past 14 months, the murderers of journalists Edgar Amoro (killed in 2005) and Armando Pace (2006) have received lengthy jail sentences. But President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who leaves office this week, has little to boast about, since 107 of the 140 murders took place on her watch.

So did the single deadliest attack on the media that the CPJ has ever documented. Last November, gunmen belonging to a powerful warlord allied with Arroyo massacred 57 men and women in the southern province of Maguindanao. At least 30 were media workers.

If only Arroyo’s departure alone would mean an end to the slaughter. Will President-elect Benigno Aquino do any better? His parents were icons of freedom: his father was assassinated, his late mother stared down a dictator. What better way to prove his democratic pedigree than by halting these murders? After all, many of the dead were killed for exposing the very corruption Aquino was elected to fight.

A version of this post appeared in the opinion pages of the South China Morning Post.

Red Shirt stage today (Photo by Andrew Marshall)

After six weeks it was hard to imagine Rajaprasong ever being protest-free. I walked through a military checkpoint outside Central department store, then past burned-out trucks and the charred remains of Red Shirt barricades. Beyond lay hastily abandoned shelters where the ground was strewn with clothes, sleeping mats, cooking stoves, shoes, heart-shaped clappers, and bags of festering rubbish.

The stage, with its now familiar banner—PEACEFUL PROTESTERS, NOT TERRORISTS—was deserted. Yesterday, I watched live on television as Nattawut Saikua, a core Red Shirt leader, stood on this stage and announced that he was about to surrender to the police. The crowd had jeered him. Now, the only spectators were dozens of empty plastic chairs.

The military offensive yesterday sparked dozens of arson attacks by protesters across Bangkok. Here at Rajaprasong, Central World—a giant structure containing two large department stores and scores of smaller shops—sustained the most damage. A section of the building has collapsed. Firefighters were still hosing down the smoldering wreckage. What glass remains on the building’s south side is shattered, soot-blackened or pockmarked with what looks like bullet and grenade holes. This building was once called the World Trade Center: its superstitious owners changed its name after the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.

Almost next door is Pathumwanaram temple. As I arrived, hundreds of Red Shirts were filing out through its gates, across the road, and into the headquarters of the Royal Thai Police opposite. At the back of the temple, six bodies—five men, one woman—lay on bloodied mats beneath the trees. They had been shot outside the temple the night before, then dragged through its gates. There, next to a shop selling Buddhism books and other religious supplies, flies buzzed around pools of drying blood.

Across the road at the police headquarters, about 1,500 protesters waited to go home. They were separated according to their province of origin, fed, and put on buses bound for home. The process took all morning.

The protesters were dejected, anxious, and exhausted. They were also defiant. “They got us out of here,” said Puwanai Sorabud, 40, a tour guide returning to the northern town of Chiang Rai, “but that doesn’t mean they’ve won. They can’t fight this many voices.”

The exodus reminded Nuan Kulboon, 65, a northeasterner who lived in Bangkok, of her days working with refugees on the Thailand-Cambodian border. “This situation isn’t very different,” she said. “We are refugees in our own country.”

Nuan had been in the temple for four terrifying days. “Nobody wants to stop fighting. This is the truth. Everyone here is saying, ‘I want my rights. I want my freedom.’”

Outside, a police sound-truck cruised slowly through the area. “Leave! Leave!” ordered the officer through his microphone. A few stragglers scooped up their belongings and hurried towards the police headquarters. One woman, Mayuree Sawatasai, a Red Shirt leader from Ayuthaya, fought back tears as she packed up her things. She understood Nattawut’s decision to surrender, although didn’t agree with it. “He doesn’t want us to get hurt. But we insisted on staying. We didn’t want to stop.”

After two months of disruption and distress, Bangkok can breathe a little easier. But only a little. Talk to the Red Shirts today, and even those who disagree vehemently with their views will understand that Thailand’s political turbulence is far from over.

The Reds will return to Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, to Buriram and Mukdahan, to Nong Khai and Nan, bringing home first-hand accounts of the bloody battle of Bangkok. Towns and villages across the north and northeast will be further radicalized. Until talks between the Reds and the government collapsed last week, a November election had seemed possible. But it is hard to imagine an election ever being held in such a poisonous political atmosphere.

I asked Puwanai from Chiang Mai what he will do when he gets home. “I don’t know yet,” he replied. “But if there are more protests, I’ll be back. We have to fight.”

I asked Mayuree from Ayuthaya the same question. “Wait and see,” she replied.