Stephff's world
Can the 200-billion-baht loan deliver a just energy transition for Thailand?
Panel discussion, Monday, 31 August, 9:30am
Amid the global energy crisis that has driven up domestic living costs, the Thai government issued an Emergency Decree authorizing a 400-billion-baht loan — and allocated 200 billion baht specifically for ministerial energy transition projects.
To critically examine the fiscal efficiency, project selection criteria, and measurable impacts of this massive investment, the energy platform JustPow is hosting a panel discussion titled ‘Can the 200-Billion-Baht Loan Deliver a Just Energy Transition for Thailand?’
This event will bring together key policymakers, business leaders, and climate finance experts on August 31, 2026, from 9:30am to 12pm.
Join us at the FCCT to hear from:
Treerat Sirichantaropas, chief executive officer, New Energy Plus Solutions Co Ltd;
Supachot Chaiyasat, party-list MP, People’s Party;
Sarinee Achavanuntakul, director, Climate Finance Network Thailand (CFNT);
Issares Rattanadilok Na Phuket, managing director, Ultimate Packaging Co Ltd;
Moderated by Santichai Apornsri, coordinator, JustPow.
All proceedings will be held in Thai (no English interpretation provided).
This is not an FCCT event. Free and open to all.
Bar and restaurant open.
Rights, Justice and the Public Good: The record and future of Thai civil society
Launching Just Fund — A fund for social justice
Panel discussion, Monday, 31 August, 7pm
For years, independent media, human rights lawyers, civic organisations and community groups across Thailand have done work that is easy to take for granted until it disappears. They have defended people in court, documented abuses of power, brought neglected voices into public debate, investigated issues others would not, supported communities, and pushed for legal and policy change.
On August 31, organisations behind the Just Fund will come together to look at what this work has achieved, why it matters to Thai society, and why the institutions that make it possible need a stronger and more independent foundation.
The discussion will also look forward. What could these organisations do next — with new legal initiatives, public campaigns, independent reporting, research and community work — if more people in Thailand are directly invested in making that work possible?
Just Fund brings together 25 civil-society organisations, legal-aid groups and independent media organisations to build a more sustainable base of public support for rights, freedom, justice and democratic participation in Thailand.
Come hear what has already been built — and what we can build next.
Panelists:
Yingcheep Atchanont, project manager, Internet for People’s Law (iLaw);
Chiranuch Premchaiporn, Constitution Advocacy Alliance (CALL);
Hathairat Phaholtap, Editor-in-chief, The Isaan Record;
Narathip Jaidet, director, Thai Volunteer Service Foundation.
Hosted by: Nadthasiri Bergman, lawyer.
This is not an FCCT event. Free and open to all.
Bar and restaurant open.
Shifting narratives to strengthen public engagement in the green transition: A media & stakeholders' preview of Bangkok Climate Action Week 2026
Panel discussion, Wednesday, 2 September, 6.30pm
In 2025, more than 77,000 people from more than 34 countries took part in the inaugural Bangkok Climate Action Week (BKKCAW), joining over 270 stakeholder-organized events that involved more than 100 partner organisations. This breakout success instantly positioned Bangkok as Southeast Asia’s leading platform for whole-of-society climate action. The upcoming 2026 edition will be bigger and more ambitious.
One month ahead of Bangkok Climate Action Week 2026 (October 3 to 11), join us for an early look at the Asia-Pacific’s largest climate gathering to date. This session is designed for media, journalists, climate and environment communicators, policymakers, and climate-related professionals. It will explore how storytelling and media can help shape a new climate narrative, and ignite conversations around a new economy that is more resilient and people-centred.
Attendees will get a first look at the 2026 programme, the role of BKKCAW for more resilient and people-centred economies, and ways to get involved.
Speakers include:
Leo Horn-Phathanothai, founder, JUTI; convenor and co-chair of BKKCAW;
Wipaphan Wongsawang, co-founder of ThaiConsent and OpenGrants Foundation;
Peter du Pont, PhD, Asia Clean Energy Partners, co-founder and co-CEO, Asia Clean Energy Partners;
Dr Kritsada Boonchai, director, Thai Climate Justice for All;
Jareerat Petsom, communicator for Nature.
People who wish to book in advance, can register here, or email james@juti.earth
This is not an FCCT event. Free and open to all.
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 artefacts were looted during national turmoil, war and genocide between the 1960s and 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.
Matthew Campbell.
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.
What’s next for Myanmar’s quest for legitimacy? And where does that leave ASEAN?
Panel discussion: Thursday, 10 Sept, 7pm
Myanmar’s former military chief-turned President Min Aung Hlaing has already visited five countries since he took on his new role in April, two of which are ASEAN member states, Laos and Thailand. Soon he’s expected to visit more ASEAN neighbours, such as Cambodia and likely Vietnam. This circumvents a ban that the 11-member ASEAN grouping put on him since the 2021 coup and violent crackdown that spurred a civil war that has raged ever since.
Thailand has taken the first step and offered itself as a “bridge” by conducting its “calibrated re-engagement” to keep an open communication channel with Myanmar, ensuring Naypyitaw remains tethered to the regional bloc. But the aerial bombings and ground clashes with resistance forces continue on multiple fronts. ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus has been rejected by Min Aung Hlaing and the military-dominated parliament.
Five years on, how concerned is Min Aung Hlaing about the current ban on him participating in ASEAN talks? What leverage does ASEAN still have on Myanmar? Will we see a change in ASEAN’s dealings with Myanmar before the end of this year? And what can we expect when Singapore takes over as ASEAN chair next year in dealing with the Myanmar crisis? How will the protracted conflict continue to divide and destabilise Southeast Asia?
Speakers:
Kavi Chongkittavorn is currently a senior fellow at Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies. He is a veteran journalist who has covered Thai and regional politics for more than three decades for The Nation. He also served as special assistant to the secretary general of ASEAN, editor-in-chief and executive director of Myanmar Times, after terms as the paper’s bureau chief in Phnom Penh and Hanoi. He was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and an Asia Studies Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington DC. He now he writes a weekly column, “ThaI Pivot”, for The Bangkok Post.
Debbie Stothard is the founder and coordinator of ALTSEAN Burma, a non-government organisation focused on issues such as human rights, atrocity prevention and promoting democracy. She served as secretary-general of FIDH - the International Federation for Human Rights (2013-2019). She is the chair of ESCR-Net (International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), and a board member of the global feminist organization AWID. She also chairs the International Campaign for Rohingya and Innovation for Change.
Dr Lalita Hanwong is an assistant professor in the History Department at Kasetsart University in Bangkok. Her areas of academic interest include modern and contemporary history of Southeast Asia, with special emphasis on Myanmar. Dr Lalita also writes a column, Thai Phob Phama (Thailand Meets Myanmar) for Matichon newspaper and wrote a book titled ‘Hidden Myanmar’ that examines its contemporary political history through a foreign policy perspective, to grasp the root causes of problems that persist today. She has been a member of government committees on national security, border affairs, national strategy and national reform. She remains an advisor on parliamentary committees and is also a member of The Border Consortium that oversees aid to refugees in the border camps.
‘Anonymous’ is a Myanmar scholar based in Asia whose research areas include Myanmar and Asia-Pacific studies, Myanmar foreign policy, Myanmar-China and Myanmar-Russia relations and Myanmar migrant issues in Thailand. The scholar will join us via Zoom and will remain unidentified to allow him to share frank insights without compromising his safety.
Moderator: May Wong is the Indochina bureau chief for The Straits Times. She’s an FCCT board member and has been a journalist for almost 30 years, covering Myanmar, Thailand and the region for almost 15 years. She conducted one-on-one interviews with both Aung Sun San Suu Kyi and ex-military chief Min Aung Hlaing when she was stationed in Myanmar.
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 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 will discuss his work 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, 1 September, 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, 1 September, 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.
"As a foreign correspondent, you're an observer"
Jonathan Head
Dateline Bangkok podcast
Watch the full video at this link.