The Bulletin

Stephff's world

Thailand's Sanguan Farm achieves certified humane cage-free rating‍

‍
Certification ceremony, Tuesday, 18 August, 1pm

Sanguan Farm, one of Thailand's leading cage-free egg producers, has achieved the internationally recognised Certified Humane® cage-free certification — a landmark milestone for Thailand's egg industry and a step forward in the country's transition towards more responsible, transparent egg production.

Global Food Partners (GFP) has partnered closely with Sanguan Farm for several years, providing technical support, on-farm training, and market connections that helped the farm reach this achievement. Join us to hear directly from Sanguan Farm about its cage-free journey, and from Certified Humane® on what this certification means for Thailand's food industry.

Sathit Kruarattikan, general manager, Sanguan Farm;

Naritsorn Pholperm, representative, Humane Farm Animal Care (Certified Humane®);

Pawitra Laochuenchomkul, Thailand corporate engagement lead, Global Food Partners.

This is not an FCCT event. Free and open to all.Bar and restaurant open.

The Chao Mae Thapthim Shrine case: Heritage preservation and the human cost of redevelopment

‍
Panel discussion, Thursday, 20 August, 7pm

Development around the Chao Mae Thapthim Shrine in Sam Yan (Photo by The Momentum).

The century-old Chao Mae Thapthim Shrine in Bangkok's Sam Yan district has become the focal point of a high-profile dispute over Chulalongkorn University’s Block 33 redevelopment project, raising broader questions about how cities balance urban renewal with the preservation of cultural heritage and historic communities.

As legal challenges over the project’s construction and the shrine’s future have unfolded, campaigners have also drawn attention to allegations that dozens of construction workers involved in the development have gone unpaid for more than a year, expanding the debate to include labour rights, public accountability and the social costs of redevelopment.

This panel brings together activists, a filmmaker, an MP and workers directly affected by the dispute to examine how a campaign to save a historic shrine evolved into a wider conversation about urban development, governance and workers' rights. The discussion will include an interactive investigation into the Block 33 project, a short documentary, testimony from affected workers and an update on the parliamentary inquiry into the case.

Speakers:

Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, Sam Yan Press founder, Harvard Divinity School student, recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award and Thailand’s first conscientious objector to military conscription.

Jirapreeya “Mew” Saeboo, Sam Yan Press manager and coordinator of the Morning Glory Collective, who will present the Wage Theft Watch investigation into the Block 33 project.

Pichanun Srisawad, filmmaker and researcher at 101 PUB – 101 Public Policy Think Tank, who will show a short documentary on the experiences of affected construction workers.

“Auntie Pha”, construction worker hit by the Block 33 wage dispute, waiting over a year for unpaid wages.

Thanaporn “Mai” Wijan, MP from the People’s Party, who will discuss the parliamentary probe into the Block 33 case and broader issues of labour protection in Thailand.

A representative from Property Management of Chulalongkorn University.

Moderator: TBC

Members who wish to book in advance should email info@fccthai.com or call the FCCT office on 02-652-0580.

Non-members can use this link.

Members free, non-members 400 baht; students and local media with ID 150 baht.Bar and restaurant open.

AI, power and global governance: Who will shape the rules of the 21st century?‍

‍
Panel discussion, Wednesday 26 August 7pm

Thailand has just hosted AI Governance Week, where Thai officials pitched the country as a future regional hub for AI rules. ASEAN is pushing its own guidelines, while the Philippines wants a binding framework by year-end, and Washington and Beijing are each trying to set the global standard. Everyone wants to write the rules. Almost no one agrees on what they should say.

That contest matters because AI is no longer just a technology question. It is becoming a source of economic, political and military power, and the rules that get written now – or don't – will shape who controls it, who profits from it, and who is left dependent on decisions made elsewhere.

Who will end up writing those rules: the United States, China, technology companies, or multilateral institutions? And what role can a region like Southeast Asia play in shaping outcomes rather than just living with them?

Speakers:

Pavitra Ramanujam, a lawyer who leads the Social and Environmental Justice Programme at the Association for Progressive Communications. Her work focuses on advocating for a rights-based approach to internet and digital governance, including AI, and on mitigating differentiated impacts of digital technologies on vulnerable communities.

Michael Bąk has held positions with USAID, UN and Meta and is currently Head of Policy for AI Safety Asia. His work focuses on policy and human rights. He’s also the author of www.margin-notes-squared.com, writing about decolonising tech and forces shaping our digital future.

Third guest: TBC

Moderator: Anneliese McAuliffe is an FCCT board member and journalist with more than 15 years’ international reporting experience. She works across technology, digital governance, AI and information integrity, advising international organisation on the political and geopolitical forces shaping the digital environment.

Members who wish to book in advance should email info@fccthai.com or call the FCCT office on 02-652-0580.

Non-members can use this link.

Members free, non-members 400 baht; students and local media with ID 150 baht.Bar and restaurant open.

Timor-Leste (East Timor): ASEAN’s newest member looks forward from a painful past

‍
Film screening, photo exhibition and panel, Thursday, 27 August, 6:30pm

Last October, Timor-Leste (East Timor) became the newest member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, taking its place among regional peers 26 years after the end of a brutal occupation by Indonesia.

Following its invasion in 1975, Indonesia largely sealed off the territory. During the occupation, approximately 20-30 percent of the population were killed or died from hunger and illness. Only a handful of passionate and committed foreign journalists made it into East Timor under those conditions. One who did was John Martinkus, who later authored a penetrating account about the conflict titled ‘A Dirty Little War’. Martinkus died in his native Australia last year but is still seen by many in Timor-Leste as a hero.

Martinkus helped alerted the world to the emerging threat from Indonesian military-supported militias that in 1999 tried to brutalize the Timorese into rejecting independence. Those violent tactics failed but cost many lives and destroyed much of the new nation’s infrastructure.  Almost 30 years later, Timor-Leste enjoys good ties with Indonesia, and is looking to its ASEAN partners and southern neighbour Australia to help grow its economy.

Join us for a reflection on the country’s remarkable journey while honoring the late John Martinkus and other journalists who documented the war in Timor-Leste at a rare screening of Carmela Baranowska’s powerful documentary, ‘Scenes from an Occupation,’ which won the 2000 Rory Peck Award and is the only film to document the last six months of Indonesia’s occupation. There will also be an exhibition of photos by Ian Timberlake, an Agence France-Presse correspondent who was in Timor-Leste and knew Martinkus well.

Francisco Tilman Cepeda, ambassador of Timor-Leste to Thailand, will make opening remarks before the film.

After the film, there will be a panel of speakers:

Dr Carmela Baranowska, director of ‘Scenes from an Occupation: East Timor 1999’.

Ian Timberlake, AFP correspondent in East Timor in 1999. His photos from the period are being exhibited in conjunction with this panel.

Moderator: Jonathan Head, who covered the 1999 events and is an FCCT board member.

Members who wish to book in advance should email info@fccthai.com or call the FCCT office on 02-652-0580.

Non-members can use this link.

Members free, non-members 400 baht; students and local media with ID 150 baht.Bar and restaurant open.

The Man Who Stole the Gods: A true story of war, obsession, and a global art conspiracy

‍
PREMIUM Book launch with Matthew Campbell, Thursday, 3 September, 7pm

Matthew Campbell is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy. It tells the astounding true story of how thousands of priceless artworks were looted during national turmoil, war and genocide between the 1960s to the 1990s with thousands of ancient temples and historical sites desecrated. During that period, Douglas Latchford, a British dealer based in Bangkok, was at the heart of a criminal web supplying the collections of American billionaires and cultural institutions.

Bloomberg’s award-winning Matthew Cambell, author of ‘The Man Who Stole the Gods’.

Campbell has reported from more than 25 countries on topics including crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, public health and the environment. His previous book, Dead in the Water—co-authored with Kit Chellel—was selected as a book of the year by The Economist, the Financial Times and The Times.

Campbell’s work has been recognized with some of the most prestigious honours in journalism. He and Chellel won Gerald Loeb and Overseas Press Club awards for their coverage of Goldman Sachs’ business dealings with Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Campbell has also received National Press Club, SOPA and SABEW awards for feature and investigative reporting.

He is a seven-time Loeb finalist in addition to his win with Chellel, and in 2022 was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for public interest reporting. Campbell was also a 2025 Jonathan Logan Family Foundation Fellow at New America. Born in Canada, he was educated at Yale, where he graduated with a BA in political science, and at Oxford, where he received a Masters of Philosophy in politics. He lives in Singapore with his family.

Moderator: Dominic Faulder, FCCT board member and Nikkei Asia associate editor.

Copies of the book will be available on the night.

Members who wish to book in advance should email info@fccthai.com or call the FCCT office on 02-652-0580.

Non-members can use this link.

Artist’s impression of the building of an Angkorian temple (Courtesy of Dominic Faulder).Members free, non-members 600 baht; students and local media with ID 200 baht.Bar and restaurant open.

The Salamander’s Tail – a spy novel by Michael Vatikiotis‍

‍
Book launch, Wednesday, 23 September, 7pm

Michael Vatikiotis, author of the best-selling Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia, is coming to the FCCT to launch his compelling new book, The Salamander’s Tail, a spy novel set along the Thai-Burma border that  traverses a fault line of strategic sparring between the United States and China on the cusp of a new Cold War.

Inspired and informed by four decades of experience as a journalist and private diplomat covering conflict in Asia, Vatikiotis brings to life one of the world’s most dangerous contemporary conflicts. The novel centres around Lance Friend, a rootless English do-gooder working for an environmental NGO in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Friend finds himself caught up in a high-stakes geopolitical contest between the US and China, using the long civil war in neighbouring Burma as a proxy battlefield.

Arrayed on either side of the Thai-Burma border is a cast of colourful characters escaping past lives to chase ideals, adventure and profit in the bad lands of Southeast Asia.

Praise for the book is already rolling in. “If Year of Living Dangerously was the classic Southeast Asian novel, The Salamander's Tail takes its place. A spy novel for the ages” says Jane Perlez, a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.

“A thoughtful and unsettling portrait of a region where environmental crisis, insurgency, and great-power rivalry intersect,” said Thant Myint U, author of The River of Lost Footsteps and The Hidden History of Burma.

Michael Vatikiotis has been a writer, broadcaster, journalist and private diplomat in Asia for nearly 40 years. His previous books include Indonesian Politics Under Suharto and Political Change in Southeast Asia, Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia and Lives Between the Lines: A Journey in Search of the Lost Levant. His novels include The Spice Garden and The Painter of Lost Souls. Vatikiotis also contributes regularly to podcasts, and to Nikkei Asia and other journals.

Vatikiotis is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), earned his doctorate, which was on Thailand, from Oxford University. He speaks both Thai and Indonesian. He will speak about the book and what inspired it, as well as real-world events that shaped the story.

The author discuss his work at the FCCT with Keith Richburg, a member of the Washington Post’s editorial board since 2023, and a veteran observer of China and Southeast Asia. Richburg’s storied career as a foreign correspondent includes postings as the Post’s bureau chief in Beijing and Hong Kong. He was president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong from 2021 to 2023.

Members who wish to book in advance should email info@fccthai.com or call the FCCT office on 02-652-0580.

Non-members can use this link.

Members free, non-members 400 baht; students and local media with ID 150 baht.Bar and restaurant open.

Co-working at the FCCT

‍
Tuesday, 18 August, 10am

Need a change of scenery from your home office? Join us for a coworking day at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) -- a perfect space for working professionals, digital nomads and anyone looking to break free from the home-office routine.

Enjoy a spacious, comfortable workspace with dedicated tables, a full restaurant, café and bar and exclusive lunch specials just for this event.

Whether you're tackling deadlines or networking with like-minded professionals, this is an opportunity to be productive in a collaborative, social environment. Come work, connect, and enjoy great food because working remotely doesn’t have to mean working alone.

Free and open to all.Bar and restaurant open.

Board games night

‍
Tuesday, 18 August, 7pm

Join us for a chilled night of board games with The Boring Club. Try your luck with classics like chess and backgammon or modern games including Catan and Pandemic.

The bar and restaurant will be open. Try our pizzas from the new pizza oven. The Boring Club meets at the FCCT clubhouse for games every Tuesday at 7pm.

Free and open to all.Bar and restaurant open.

FCCT pub trivia

‍
Friday, 28 August, 7pm

Gather your friends and colleagues for a night of pub trivia at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.

Come for a bite and a beverage and test your knowledge. 1,000 baht bar tab up for grabs for the winning team, to be redeemed on the night.

Advanced table bookings encouraged here.

Free and open to all.Bar and restaurant open.