Vietnam’s economic rise is causing ripples around Asia, especially in Thailand. Any mention of the “V word” in Bangkok causes hand-wringing and furrowed brows among the city’s business executives. Vietnam is on track to overtake Thailand by the end of the decade to become Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy. Last week, Hanoi signed a new deal with Apple to expand production of smart-home devices in Vietnam – the latest in a series of big-money technology-sector deals.
 
Meanwhile, many Chinese tourists have been holidaying in Hạ Long Bay, Da Nang and Phú Quốc this year, rather than Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket. This trend is likely to be temporary; besides, losing low-spending tour groups can be seen as a sign of Thailand’s increasing maturity as a destination. Even so, Bangkok’s business community needs its government to come up with a big idea to kick-start a slowing economy, attract new investment and deliver a much-needed injection of confidence.

Thailand’s prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, recently spoke about the “nightmare” of Vietnam surpassing his country. Though he deserves credit for addressing the elephant in Bangkok’s boardrooms, his administration is short on flagship projects. Somewhat surprisingly, it backed a controversial scheme to build a Panama/Suez-style canal through the country’s Kra Isthmus. This centuries-old idea, which has evolved from being about an actual canal into a proposal to construct a so-called land bridge, is probably a placeholder until strategists and policy wonks can come up with something better. 
 
To fully understand the depths of Thai leaders’ despair requires some historical context. The country has long been one of the region’s top dogs: decades of Cold War-era investment and infrastructure from the US military arrived at a time when neighbours Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam struggled with various conflicts. Thailand’s good fortune – or clever diplomacy – created a comfortable consumer class and an era of complacency. Any early warning signals that did go off this century were drowned out by an influx of Chinese money. Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, Thailand has slipped behind in manufacturing and is becoming more and more reliant on tourism. Bangkok might host a Formula 1 race in 2028 – something that Hanoi failed to achieve amid a corruption crackdown – but there’s little to rev up interest outside of the Thai capital. 
 
The previous Pheu Thai-led government staked its future and that of the country on legalising casinos. It botched the public-consultation process and ended up losing everything, including power, but I have been surprised in recent months by the level of support that the idea still has among business owners. No one is pro gambling per se – far from it. They just want to see their government acting and creating momentum. The casino idea elicited plenty of overseas interest; corporate lawyers and dealmakers were busy travelling to Macau, Singapore and the Philippines to do due diligence on behalf of major foreign financiers. However, because of the Thai government’s refusal to take a gamble, political flip-flopping and a revolving cast of prime ministers, those investors will be looking elsewhere.
 
Thailand’s next election could happen as soon as March and it’s likely to be fought on the economy. All of the leading parties will need to think hard and bring grand ideas to the table that can deliver real change to make the country richer and less indebted. Now is not the time to become bogged down in idealism. Elitist debates about democracy or constitutional reform might win fans abroad but usually meet heavy resistance at home. Instead, parties need to inspire hope and start talking up the country on the campaign trail. Thailand continues to enjoy incredible advantages and has a huge head start over its neighbours that might never be closed even when Vietnam’s economic output eventually surpasses it. A prosperous Vietnam is good for a rising region still troubled by conflict – and it doesn’t need to come at Thailand’s expense.
 
James Chambers is Monocle’s Asia editor. You can read his lesson in cross-border communication in Southeast Asia here. Visiting and need big plans for Bangkok yourself? Check out our City Guide. 

Millions of Americans marched against their president this weekend but around the world, Donald Trump is swinging from win to win. Democratic leaders have tried to negate his role in ending Israel’s war with Hamas. But the president has remained unphased, bringing his signature “never-take-no-for-an-answer” diplomacy to Ukraine, Venezuela and beyond.

Make no mistake: with both ongoing attacks and Israeli hostage bodies still in Gaza, the Trump-led peace plan is far from guaranteed. But even Democratic stalwarts such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have applauded the president’s nous. Younger party members, however, have been far less generous. Prominent figures, including senator Mark Warner of Virginia and New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries, praised the cease-fire but left out any mention of Trump. Now, as that peace process gears up for phase two, the silence by many progressives regarding the president’s undeniable successes is becoming both deafening and potentially self-defeating. 

There can be little doubt that Trump has taken to his role as an unlikely and unbridled global enforcer. How else to describe the orgiastic affirmation demanded by him from more than a score of international leaders at last week’s Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit? Forget the chants of “king” from Trump’s detractors this weekend – his reach now feels downright imperial. 

It appears that the US president is only getting started, with his sights fixed most stridently on Ukraine. In a White House meeting last week, Trump reportedly screamed at president Volodymyr Zelensky, inveighing upon him to surrender the Donetsk region or face certain destruction by Russia. Such a move, demanded by Vladimir Putin, is a red line that Ukraine refuses to consider. But Trump, perhaps peeved by his loss of the Nobel Peace Prize last week, is well aware that adding Ukraine to his ceasefire portfolio could push him over the line to win the award next year. 

Far closer to home, Trump’s motives are more hegemonic as he pummels alleged narcotics-laden speed boats in the Caribbean. Having branded global drug syndicates as “terrorists”, the US military has now attacked about half a dozen light watercraft convoys – most of them originating from Venezuela but also more recently from Colombia. Leaders of both nations have not been shy to blast the US president for violating their sovereignty; Trump has responded by actively encouraging regime change in Venezuela and threatening to cut aid and impose tariffs on Colombia. 

Unsurprisingly, Democrats have framed the White House’s military campaign against the Trump-described “narco terrorists” as fundamentally unconstitutional. And they have actually found support among Republican counterparts, such as Kentucky senator Rand Paul, to prevent any major, wide-scale action against Caracas without Congressional approval. “It’s clear that there’s no congressional authorisation for this action,” says Virginia’s Democratic senator, Tim Kaine.

But with the 2026 midterm elections rapidly descending upon the US, the Democratic Party must evolve its strategy away from an approach that attacks, prevents and denies Trump’s every move and shift into a more congratulatory (or at least conciliatory) mode when warranted. There are plenty of American voters – notably centrist Latinos – who support military action against drug traffickers in Latin America, with or without Congressional sanction. With Latinos being the fastest-growing Republican demographic, Democrats risk alienating a crucial voting bloc if they continue to paint the president’s foreign exploits as illegal. 

Pretending that Trump is failing won’t stop him, especially amid dramatic wins such as the Gaza ceasefire. Mired in outdated thinking and plagued by incoherent leadership, progressives must work to make the 47th president’s wins their own if they want any chance of winning Washington next year, let alone in 2028.

Older artists are having a moment. This week, for example, Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton is presenting a major retrospective of nonagenarian German artist Gerhard Richter.

Though Richter stopped painting in 2017, deciding instead to continue drawing, many other artists are still painting throughout their later years. Peter Saul, whose distinctive surrealist works often comment on contemporary politics, is one such artist. The American is one of seven senior painters from around the world profiled in Monocle’s November issue, which is out on Thursday. All of them continue to work, stage major shows and find new success in their eighties and nineties. 

Read on for a special preview of Saul’s profile. And, if you’re in Paris this week, you can find Saul’s work at Gladstone Gallery’s booth A28 during Art Basel Paris. The trippy, technicolour brilliance of the paintings makes them even more unforgettable in person.

“Except for occasionally talking about modern art to college students, I haven’t done anything but paint pictures since 1959,” says Peter Saul. Those pictures are hard to forget. Saul’s subjects bend, distend, wriggle and writhe across the canvas, transforming into colourful, twisted monstrosities along the way.

Those subjects have changed with the times too: the Vietnam War, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump. American life – its vividness and its vulgarity – is a loose theme. That and, as Saul puts it, “bad guys”. “I have more freedom to distort, invent motivation or do anything I want to bad guys,” he says. “Whereas with ‘good guys’, the artist is supposed to follow the rules.”

Saul works from preliminary sketches that have a sense of “freshness”, which can be developed as he paints. As he adds his cacophony of colours, he thinks about how to make the painting interesting to the highest number of people. “The picture has to live in the world,” he says. Saul’s work has done just that for a long time but the critical response to it has become far warmer in recent years. While he is appreciative, the change has had little effect on his practice. “Unlike most artists I know, I don’t seem to respond much to encouragement,” he says. “As long as I’ve got the art supplies, I’m going to paint a picture.”

Read the full feature in the November issue of Monocle. Subscribe to Monocle today for unlimited access to all of our journalism.

The front pages are calling it the heist of the century. Even as Paris welcomes the world’s collectors, gallerists, artists and design brands for a series of major dates on the art calendar, it’s all that the French capital has been talking about. While toasting to the gall of the Louvre’s robbers over a vesper martini at Cravan after Design Miami Paris or making Arsène Lupin quips between the booths at Art Basel Paris might sound like fun, there’s now a real danger to the capital’s cultural cachet. Sunday’s theft of French crown jewels by power-tool-wielding thieves might have given newsrooms a few good headlines but the long-term consequences could be grave for the city’s visitors if the authorities overreact. 

There has predictably been a lot of noise in the media and French politicians have been lining up to blame each other for the incident. This could push decision-makers to vastly increase the Louvre’s security measures in the name of preventing anything like this from happening again. Though it’s true that some improvements to security are needed, locking down the 73,000 sq m institution would hinder its primary function: to welcome the public. 

It is the duty of museums to make knowledge and humanity’s great achievements accessible to all. Visitors should feel drawn in and inspired, not scrutinised by suspicious guards. Places such as the Louvre already suffer from the sheer volume of their visitors, which limits access to their treasures; advance online bookings and tedious lines are now a prerequisite. Tightening security will only lengthen waiting times and potentially put people off. Transforming the world’s most visited museum into Fort Knox would not only be impractical and expensive – it would also be antithetical to its raison d’être.

A graver concern is that the Louvre might decide – as some French museums already have in recent years – to replace priceless originals with facsimiles. Nobody wants to see such a storied institution turn to the Madame Tussauds model.  

Jewels are riskier to display than other artworks – as well as being very portable, the gemstones and precious metals that make up a necklace or a tiara can be taken apart and sold piecemeal (not something that could be said for the “Mona Lisa”). But authorities shouldn’t let criminals intimidate them into removing important cultural artefacts from the public’s eye. Not only would displaying copies make the past feel more remote than ever, but it would also signal that society cannot be trusted with the genuine articles. That’s not a message that a museum such as the Louvre can afford to send.

There’s no silver bullet but museums could start by ensuring that more of their rooms have surveillance cameras. And there are technological solutions too: for example, devices that diffuse a substance that can invisibly mark a particular piece and cling to thieves for weeks. Though unnoticeable to museumgoers, such forensic markers would make theft far more difficult and act as a deterrent.

In the days to come, we should all hope that as well as arresting the culprits and recovering the loot, Parisian authorities – whether at the museum or the Élysée – turn down the temperature and prioritise sensible security improvements that don’t risk making one of the world’s key cultural touchstones a less open, less trusting place.

Simon Bouvier is Monocle’s Paris bureau chief. For the upcoming November issue our culture editor followed special investigators on the hunt for Nazi-looted works of art. Subscribers can read a preview here.

When Dutch journalist Peter Schouten rang the doorbell of a house in Mar del Plata in early August, he didn’t know that it would unleash a global media storm. Schouten had travelled to the Argentinian city at the behest of a colleague, Cyril Rosman. For a decade, Rosman had been on the trail of a trove of missing artworks; the story of which reads like a thriller, with an intriguing cast of characters and a plot that spans geographies and generations. Rosman’s investigations centred on the family of Friedrich Kadgien, a financial adviser to Nazi politician Hermann Göring, who escaped to South America after the Second World War. Rosman had long suspected that Kadgien’s two daughters, Patricia and Alicia, might have knowledge of artworks looted during the Nazi regime from Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The latter’s heir, Marei von Saher, is in her eighties and lives in New York; she has spent much of her life searching for her father-in-law’s collection.

A dog barked inside the house but no one answered the door to Schouten. As he waited, he noticed a “For sale” sign and took a photo on his phone. Later, while having dinner at his hotel, he found the listing for the property online and spotted an image of a gilt-framed painting hanging above a green velvet sofa. He sent the link to Rosman in the Netherlands, who, the next morning, replied with excitement that he was reasonably confident that the artwork was the 1710 painting “Portrait of a Lady”. Over the next couple of weeks, Schouten was able to confirm that the painting was still in the house and tried to contact Patricia Kadgien through multiple channels. He received some ambiguous replies before being blocked on social media. Schouten’s story about the discovery was published on the Dutch news site Algemeen Dagblad (AD) on 25 August. “And then the rollercoaster started,” he says.

Along with the world’s media, multiple law enforcement agencies – Interpol, the FBI and the Argentinian police – quickly became involved. But when officers raided the Kadgien house and four other properties a few days later, the painting seemed to have vanished. The artwork’s second disappearance did nothing to quell the interest and the local general attorney assigned 15 people to work on the case. Eventually, the collective pressure of the media and the police yielded a response from the Kadgiens. On 3 September, the family handed over the painting and it was put on view at a media conference.

A criminal investigation has since been opened, which will focus on Patricia and her husband, and whether they attempted to obstruct justice by hiding the painting. “Portrait of a Lady”, meanwhile, will most likely make its way to New York and to Marei von Saher. “To dedicate your life to getting back all of your family’s possessions must be unbelievably tough,” says Schouten today, who was in regular contact with Von Saher throughout the saga. But he wishes that he could have spoken to the Kadgien sisters and heard their side of the story. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a father like that,” he says. “You are not to blame for your parents’ behaviour but you carry it with you your whole life.”

The Nazis are thought to have looted about 20 per cent of Europe’s art between 1933 and 1945, much of which – at least 100,000 objects – has yet to be returned. Of course, their regime was just one perpetrator of art theft. Schouten’s story made headlines across the globe but the everyday work of hunting for (and occasionally finding) lost or stolen artworks usually takes place with less fanfare.

On a quiet lane in central London is the unassuming office of the Art Loss Register (ALR), an organisation with the world’s largest private database of stolen art, antiques and collectables. Unlike Rosman’s quest to locate artworks from Goudstikker’s collection, the ALR checks individual items entering the market to investigate their provenance and demonstrate due diligence. The register currently features more than 700,000 lost or stolen artworks and the ALR performs about 450,000 searches on items prior to their sale. These are carried out on behalf of the likes of governments, law enforcement, museums, auction houses or private individuals.

“What we are looking for is some proof that the item can be sold on the open market,” says Olivia Whitting, the ALR’s head of cultural heritage and client manager. The organisation also registers the theft or loss of items and helps to reunite some of them with their owners. “It’s quite exciting because it’s the kind of detective work where you end up knowing so much about random parts of history, such as the great telephone exchange of the year 2000,” says Whitting. “That was when London phone numbers went from starting with ‘0171’ or ‘0181’ to ‘020’. If a document is from before 2000 but it has the newer telephone code, you might question whether it’s real.”

The work of registering objects on the database – or trying to match items to them – is usually done digitally. But when Monocle visits in early autumn, among the desktop computers, coffee mugs and copies of the Antiques Trade Gazette is an extraordinary artefact. In the corner of a room, under a blanket, is a 14th-century cenotaph. The grave marker was handed over to the ALR for restitution by an antiques dealer who had been tipped off that it was probably stolen. The ALR is now researching its origin to enable its return. The organisation has ascertained that it is probably from the late-medieval Timurid empire and from the grave of a young man or a child. The next step will be to approach the relevant embassy and investigate whether it can be returned to its country of origin.

When something is registered as lost on the database, the ALR will ask for proof of loss (such as a crime reference number) and of ownership. This might be an acquisition invoice or insurance document but it could also be a family photo featuring the artwork. Whitting was recently sent an image of a three-year-old girl having a tantrum on the floor in front of a Palmyrene sculpture and another picture of a Roman bust dressed in a tinsel crown at Christmas. “It’s a window into someone else’s childhood,” she says.

The ALR database of missing artworks reflects the breadth and strangeness of the wider market. It includes a toy car (an Aston Martin replica), JMW Turner’s death mask and a set of George Washington’s false teeth. “When human remains come up, that’s often when we think, ‘I wish this wasn’t on the art market,’” says Whitting. She recounts how a Belgian zoo recently wanted to look up a human head that had somehow, years ago, ended up in its collection. The ALR refused to search it and advised the zoo to try to return it to the Polynesian island from which it originally came.

Items on the register – paintings, vases or the occasional body part – might have been taken in a burglary or looted as the spoils of war. In the estimation of James Ratcliffe, the director of recoveries at the ALR, about a quarter of the database consists of works that were lost during the Second World War. “That doesn’t even touch the sides of what was taken by the Nazis,” he says.

Others are looking for these objects too. In Magdeburg, the German Lost Art Foundation acts as the country’s central body overseeing looted cultural property. It oversees hundreds of projects exploring Nazi looted art and manages its own register, the Lost Art Database. “We always have to keep in mind that we’re not only talking about the works of Pissarro, Picasso and Cézanne,” says Andrea Baresel-Brand, the head of the documentation and research data-management department. “We’re also talking about everyday things: knives, forks, cups and plates. For a family, they could mean everything.”

The story of looted art is tied to history but shaped by the present. In Germany, that often means contending with right-wing political parties that, says Baresel-Brand, “prefer not to deal with the past”. Elsewhere, attitudes in the art market have changed when it comes to dealing with items from colonised countries. “It’s interesting to think about the new frontiers of repatriation and the moral side of acquisitions,” says Ratcliffe. “Ten years ago the colonial history of an object was a curiosity. Now there’s a recognition that it’s an issue that needs to be addressed.” It’s a complex environment and Ratcliffe believes that the art market is sometimes a scapegoat for bigger questions facing society. “We’re calling this decolonisation but it’s not,” he says.

The field of looking for lost artworks is changing in other ways too. There has been a move towards “positive registration”, with the cataloguing of artefacts in museums that might be in danger because they are in a region at risk of conflict. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is expected to improve the image-matching process but it will take longer for it to perform the intricate work of due diligence. It’s also likely that technology will be used to create fraudulent documentation. “Say you have an export licence for a Roman mosaic from Lebanon in the 1970s,” says Ratcliffe. “Suddenly it’s possible for that document to appear with another mosaic. Tech will help people fighting against art crime but will also help those committing it.”

Combining the knowledge of an art historian with the nous of a detective, solving art crime is a complicated business. From the ALR’s database of artworks, three to five matches a week are made, while another department – the organisation’s busiest – looks into stolen watches and logs about 15 matches a day. Meanwhile, finding a “just and fair solution” to the question of what to do with a found stolen object is often not a straightforward process. Legal technicalities clash with the beliefs of individuals and, sometimes, the history of entire nations. As Schouten has discovered, the simple act of ringing someone’s doorbell can have sweeping consequences. It seems that the past, with all its painful memories and unresolved questions, is closer than we think.

The UK capital rarely gets its flowers as a design destination. The city’s fairs and festivals seem to be scattered almost randomly throughout the year. There’s London Craft Week and Clerkenwell Design Week, which take place in a rather disconnected manner each May. Every two years, the London Festival of Architecture coincides with June’s London Design Biennale. And let’s not forget the London Design Festival in September, which tends to rehash April’s Salone del Mobile in Milan. These events might not share a single, cohesive vision but what they do have in common is a dearth of glamour alla Milanese. Bored? Confused? Same. 
 
But every October, the pitching of one marquee on Mayfair’s Berkeley Square brings some much-needed fantasy to the capital’s design scene. Pad London, the ultra-premium fair dedicated to collectable design, gathers together an international roster of galleries from cities including Paris, São Paulo and New York to display contemporary rarities, 20th-century marvels and unexpected reissues. Crucially, the event has a clear vision: it’s about craft, covetable design and, perhaps most prominently, buying and selling. Inspiration can be found by simply wandering the museum-quality booths. There’s one clear destination and, as such, it galvanises those who attend, with parties spilling across Mayfair in the evening.

Fourth-generation antiques dealer Patrick Perrin founded the original Pad in Paris in 1998. In 2007 the concept hopped across the Channel and has since developed a well-heeled fanbase of jet-setters who are hoping to kit out their Gstaad chalet with a one-off Finn Juhl table (as seen at Swedish gallery Modernity’s booth) or a Gio Ponti circular games table that would make for a great Christmas gift for that person who has it all (if this is your conundrum, Rose Uniacke is the contact). When I spoke to gallerists on the opening day of the fair, they euphorically hinted at how profitable their morning had been, pointing to furniture, lighting, artworks and high jewellery with price tags north of £20,000 (€23,000) being snapped up. It turns out that money can buy taste if you know which galleries to turn to. 

As I was walking from stand to stand, people-watching almost eclipsed the joy of spotting a metal, bird-shaped table by French artist François-Xavier Lalanne. Despite much-reported (and somewhat debunked) concerns that the rich are upping sticks from the UK capital for tax-free pastures, those shopping their way through Pad London were an international crowd who still own boltholes off Kensington High Street. It’s no surprise that Pad originates in Paris, where craft continues to be valued. This is why we chose the City of Lights as one of our top creative communities in Monocle’s new, delightfully glossy Design Directory – an annual publication dedicated to the people and places that contribute to the industry. If you have inherent (as well as purchased) good taste, it’s worth picking up a copy. Maybe our next edition could include a guide to running a fair.
 
Grace Charlton is Monocle’s associate editor (design and fashion). For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

When Tomokuni Tsuji became president and CEO of Sanrio in 2020, he made headlines as Japan’s youngest-ever chief executive of a listed company. The grandson of founder Shintaro Tsuji was just 31 when he took the helm and has since overseen a new chapter for the company behind Hello Kitty, one of Japan’s most beloved cultural exports.

Under Tsuji’s leadership, Sanrio has entered a new era. The company achieved record growth, becoming a trillion-yen enterprise in 2024 as Hello Kitty celebrated her 50th anniversary.

With theme parks, a robust licensing business and nearly 150 stores in Japan (not to mention a cast of more than 450 characters), Sanrio continues to expand its global footprint and deepen its connection with fans around the world.

Monocle spoke to the young CEO during his recent visit to London, where Sanrio is serving as a major sponsor of the Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall.

Hello Kitty recently appeared in support of the Grand Sumo Tournament. Why was this collaboration an important moment for Sanrio?
Sanrio’s aim has always been to bring smiles to as many people as possible and this crossover of sport and Hello Kitty was sure to do so. Hello Kitty hails from London and King Charles wished her a happy birthday last year, which was a huge honour for us. We hoped that our involvement in the sumo tournament would excite people in the UK too. 

Under your leadership, Sanrio has seen strong growth. What have been the key adjustments and strategies driving that success?
Well, our success isn’t just down to me. It was achieved with the help of everyone around me. We’ve had a series of structural reforms within the company, which has helped to strengthen the organisation and refine our character strategy. We are starting to focus more on some of our other characters besides Hello Kitty, which, alongside a smart social-media strategy, is helping the brand to stay strong.

When you mention shifting focus to characters beyond Hello Kitty, which ones do you see resonating most strongly with global audiences?
While Hello Kitty will still be at the heart of what we do, our audience will be seeing more of our other characters such as My Melody, Kuromi and Cinnamoroll.

Hello Kitty currently makes up about 35 per cent of the company’s sales and we don’t want that to go down as the other designs become more popular. We want to increase the sales of all characters simultaneously.

Sanrio currently operates 150 stores in Japan. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for international retail growth and could that work beyond traditional shops?
The number of our shops in Asia is growing steadily, especially in China, and we would like to branch out into North American and European markets too. But we are also looking to create customer touch-points beyond traditional shops. Of course, bricks-and-mortar retail will always be part of our plan but we will also be focusing on location-based entertainment that will create real opportunities for customers to come into contact with the brand.

Wonderfruit, Asia’s answer to Burning Man and Glastonbury, is preparing to host its 10th edition in Thailand this December. The festival’s founder, Pete Phornprapha, joined us at The Chiefs conference in Jakarta earlier this year, where he spoke about his formative experiences in the 1990s rave scene and the dangers of limiting the genre of music that you dance to. 

How would you describe the unique proposition of Wonderfruit?
It’s a five-day, 24-hour, fully immersive celebration of culture in Chonburi, a province located just one and a half hours from Bangkok. It’s not just a music festival – it’s also a living, breathing cultural experiment. We own the land where the festival is held; we have planted more than 30,000 trees using the Miyawaki method; and we create permanent structures that allow for deep cultural exchange. 

We must be the most multicultural gathering of 28,000 people anywhere in the world. You go to Burning Man and more than 80 per cent of its attendees are American. At Glastonbury, I would say 90 per cent are from the UK. We attract a truly global audience and we’re not just showcasing culture – we’re actively creating it. We collaborate with architects, musicians and cultural practitioners to experiment and innovate.

What was the initial market gap that inspired the first event?
When I came back to Thailand in 2010, there was a lot of news about the environmental crisis and I became a bit scared. I wanted to become part of the dialogue rather than just listening to it and I thought that culture would be an interesting way to engage people. We began producing short films, none of which we shared publicly, and then it just catapulted into assembling a gathering.

How have you scaled the festival since that first gathering?
Organically. We do very little marketing and PR. We have seen remarkable growth from the likes of India, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia. France is now our largest contingent from Europe; it beat the UK last year. The only country where numbers are down is Thailand. Connecting to the local audience is very important to us and it’s something that we need to improve.

The festival is like a vibrant, 24-hour village. We host continuous cultural programming that blends music, art and environmental consciousness. About 70 per cent of our visitors fly in for Wonderfruit and most of them stay for five days, either camping or lodging in unique accommodations such as our Slow Wonder bungalows. Locals tend to book rooms in hotels nearby, spending about 10 hours with us at a time.

What pricing have you landed on for stays in the Wonderfruit Village?
A five-day pass costs about $280 (€240), with accommodation options ranging from free tent pitching to $5,500 (€4,717) bungalows. Interestingly, we’ve noticed that as the years progress, fewer people opt for free camping and the more expensive options are increasing in popularity.

Are you looking at international expansion?
We’ve been asked many times to bring Wonderfruit elsewhere, with particular interest from Japan. It’s not something that we’re closing the door to but the result wouldn’t be Wonderfruit. We would have to spend extensive time in Japan to understand the country and explore how to express the same kind of wonder and culture in a local context. 

And finally, there’s something we’ve been wondering. Are young people still dancing?
They certainly do at Wonderfruit. But what’s important is that we dance to all genres of music. It gives us enormous joy to see people dancing to mor lam, which is similar to Thai folk music. When Wonderfruit started, you would only hear mor lam in taxis and in the countryside.

Earlier this week I attended a conference in Tokyo and was reminded by several of the speakers on stage about the “emotional connection” of travel and how seeing the world “weaves a new sense of community and inclusivity among us”. My favourite was “how being out in the world allows us to find our authentic selves”. First, what does that even mean? That when I boarded my flight I was inauthentic? Was I an imposter travelling on the wrong passport? Had Interpol issued a “red flag” that would see me detained for having not discovered my authentic self while packing? Second, the amount of travel industry guff and gimmickery out there is truly alarming. I was also told that 83 per cent of travellers consider sustainability as a key part of their decision-making when booking a hotel (source please!) and “actively seek out sustainable practices” during the booking process. What? Sustainable on their finances perhaps but I have yet to come across anyone who gives two hoots about a hotel’s sustainability measures while they’re scrolling for the best possible price.

Travel, at its best, is a proper kick in the ass that jolts you and forces you to look at things in sharper relief. It makes you appreciate what you have back home, spot new opportunities that you wouldn’t mind incorporating when you’re back at base, set a few new benchmarks, possibly relax and maybe even force you to up sticks and relocate. Today’s column is an appeal to hotel groups, travel boards, cruise companies and airlines to start showing the real suite that I booked and not a CGI render; displaying a cabin that is currently flying in its global fleet rather than one still in mock-up mode in a hangar in Toulouse; and taking a fat red pen to scripts and cutting out “mindfulness”, “purpose”, “consciousness” and “meaning” from all in-room promo videos, TV spots and Youtube pre-rolls. A couple other travel tableaus that can go on permanent vacation are:

– The lady who throws open the floor-to-ceiling windows in her hotel room (99.3 per cent of properties globally do not have these windows), breathes deep and is caressed by billowing drapes
– The lady (possibly the same one) who we see walking along a trail, garden path or babbling brook, stretching out her hand to caress the wheat, ferns or lavender hedge
– The possibly burnt-out German auto executive (with good reason) breathing deeply on a Lululemon floor mat atop a wooden platform overlooking Balinese jungle canopy 
– Father and kids cannonballing into a beautiful, twinkling sea, when we know full well that the hotel operator’s health & safety and legal teams will fence off this part of the jetty and ask guests to only use the pool
– The contrived family celebration on the hotel lawn that has been through so many sensitivity and diversity committees that no potential guest recognises themselves at the gathering is anything but authentic
– Hot stones being placed on an oily back
– Hot oil trickling onto a forehead
– Hot bartender shaking a cocktail and laughing at most likely poorly dressed, out-of-shot guests
– Wacky old people having a kooky time in a hot tub. You will be familiar with the older black man in pork pie hat; white tanned lady in a turban with big glasses (remember, all older women need to look like Iris Apfel when casting seniors); white bald man with a crazy white beard; and tattooed, older black woman in a floral bikini and nose ring (remember, a nose ring is the international signifier for edgy for those over 80)
– Wacky middle-aged people having a kooky time on the hotel-bar dancefloor. This dancefloor does not exist in 99.7 per cent of global hotel properties

If all of this chimes, you’ll be happy to hear that Monocle’s The Escapist will be back just in time for Christmas and your 2026 travel planning. And, finally, a little quiz. What overused travel term was not employed in today’s column? The first three readers to respond from APAC, EMEA and the Americas get a treat. You’ll find me at tb@monocle.com.

A friend, a New York theatre producer, was staying with us last Saturday and kindly got us tickets to see the play Stereophonic, which tells the story of a band on the cusp of greatness – and meltdown. It’s heavily inspired by Fleetwood Mac and their recording of Rumours in the 1970s. We found our seats early and I watched the audience as it assembled. There were a lot of old Mac heads: people who would have remembered the period clearly if they hadn’t smoked quite so much pot. A man in the row behind me was talking about when he used to work in a recording studio just like the one set up on stage, listing the legends he had produced. There were also a lot of women who looked like they had spent their youth in tie-dye, their wild hair now a little greyer but their dresses still floaty and free.

One of these crumpled charmers was right behind me. As the play started, she decided that she needed refreshments. A metal water bottle was extracted from her bag, clanking as it banged on every surface in her vicinity (to be fair, perhaps she had once played the triangle in a folk group and was getting into the mood of the play). Then out came the sandwich, wrapped in crackling film. For some reason she decided to lean forwards to devour her crusty delight just a few centimetres from my ear, her hot cheese-and-pickle breath on my neck. Enough. Words were said. But we weren’t done. Whenever there was a reference in the play that she actually got, she would utter banalities such as “Oh ye”. It’s a bloody long play and after an hour she had clearly lost all interest. So now the phone came out. She was texting. Luckily someone else intervened and told her to behave.

We read a lot about declining attention spans, about how young people’s inability to focus is down to hours spent watching TikTok. But I think old folk are the worst in a theatre. They sneak whole picnics of food around in their bags, nod off and then have to request loud updates from their partners and forget to turn off their phones. And the theatres don’t help. Gone is the treat of interval drinks; now, in London, you can often take in a whole bottle of wine with you. Corks are popped, glasses dropped. Barrel of beer delivered to your seat and a spit-roast pig? No problem sir.
 
I left at the interval. Thirty minutes later I was home with the dog.

Sunday was a chance to regroup. We owed lunch to our friends James and Kate and their 15-year-old son, Horace (clever, cool, holds your eye, looks at his phone far less than I do). But as our producer friend had only just left, we suggested that we take them to a nice pub for a Sunday lunch. One of those things that can be magical on a sunny autumn day in London. 

As we sat down, the waitress said that she needed to let us know that they had run out of some starters. From an extensive list of appetisers it transpired that only two were available, a Greek salad or skewered prawns (only Sunday classics if you live in Athens). We went straight for mains. A few minutes later she returned to break the news – they had now run out of fish. Suddenly, those dismissed prawns became my main. Puddings, same story. The staff were nice, knocked some money off the final bill and explained to us that Saturday had been busier than expected. But if you know a day before that you are in trouble, why not do something – forewarn guests that it’s a limited menu or just go to the supermarket? I might return but if I do, I will ensure that I am carrying a theatre-style emergency picnic in my bag. Just in case.