November 2, 2025: Imagine a Japanese duo sells somtam in Thailand and the shop is jammed because it’s yummy.
Now, the reality. Two Thai men, “Jo” and “Dew”, have opened a ramen restaurant in Yokohama and Japanese have been flocking to the place, not because it’s a strange thing, but because what they serve are delicious.
The “Shindo Ramen” restaurant in Thailand is said to be one of the hardest to make reservations, and the opening a few days ago of the Japanese branch at a so-called ramen museum in Yokohama made fans and curious tasters wait for 45 minutes because of long queues. The reviews are very positive. It was so phenomenal, in fact, that it became a TV news highlight.
Some of the secrets? Fish and ouster sauces. It’s a blend of conventional ramen taste with “Asian flavours”, some reviewers said.
It’s seemingly not just a hype that will go away quickly. “Jo” and “Dew” have received endorsement from a Japanese “ramen guru”, and a Shindo ramen cooking team had gone far in a ramen cooking contest last year, becoming the first foreign crew to have almost made it in any ramen competition held in Japan.
Jo (Chawapol Sripipatpaibul) used to study in Japan. He loved and relied on cheap ramen due to some budget constraints. Coming back to Thailand, he opened the Thai Shindo restaurant and did it with a passion. Diehard customers made the business grow, and Dew was one of them.
(Jo is on the right and Dew on the left. All photos from Shindo Ramen facebook.)
“They know about ramen more than many Japanese,” was one of the compliments in Japan praising the duo.
Talks about the subtle difference in taste becoming a powerful trend in Japan sound a bit premature, although they have really begun. Hundreds of ramen restaurants have sprouted up in Thailand and many of them have wowed Japanese tourists. World-renowned brands like KFC or McDonald’s have been wondering why their Thai branches impressed American visitors with “better” tastes than those in the United States.
Foreigners love Thai foods for a reason. Now is probably a good time for a little expansion.
She said it when she was alive
November 1, 2025: Whom would you believe, men in power or a woman about to “kill herself”?
Virginia Giuffre was one of the most prominent victims of late Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes. Like him, she “killed herself”. Found dead in an Australian home in April at the age of 41, she said in her posthumous memoir as reported by CNN that she was brutally beaten and raped by an unidentified prime minister and that she feared she might “die a sex slave.”
“In my years with them (the racketeers), they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people. I was habitually used and humiliated – and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied,” Giuffre wrote of Epstein and his circle. “I believed that I might die a sex slave.”
Six months after her death earlier this year in Australia, Giuffre’s memoir “Nobody’s Girl” was published and it contained harrowing details of the abuse she allegedly suffered as a teenager, and her years attempting to get justice for herself and her fellow victims, CNN said.
All of the following details and quotes were from CNN which had gone through the memoir of a woman whose “suicide” was never suspicious in the eyes of the police.
According to the network, there was a significant discrepancy. In the US version, Giuffre claimed she was raped by a man whom she had “taken pains to describe in my legal filings only as a ‘well-known Prime Minister.’” In the UK version, the passages are almost identical but refer to the man as a “former minister.” It was not clear what caused this subtle difference.
While on the sex offender’s Caribbean island, Giuffre described how Epstein “trafficked me to a man who raped me more savagely than anyone had before.” She wrote she was 18 at the time.
She died at the age of 41, with the Australian police saying the “suicide” was never suspicious.
“He repeatedly choked me until I lost consciousness and took pleasure in seeing me fear for my life. Horrifically, the Prime Minister laughed when he hurt me and got more aroused when I begged him to stop,” she wrote as quoted by CNN.
“Afterward, I tearfully begged Epstein not to send me back to him,” Giuffre said. “I got down on my knees and pleaded with him. I don’t know if Epstein feared the man or if he owed him a favor, but he wouldn’t make any promises, saying coldly of the politician’s brutality, ‘You’ll get that sometimes.’”
Said CNN in April this year: “The memoir will intensify a transatlantic scandal over the proximity of the rich and powerful to Epstein, which has claimed political scalps in Britain and for months wracked Congress in the United States. Its publication will heap fresh scrutiny on Prince Andrew, the disgraced British royal accused by Giuffre of sexually assaulting her while she was a teenager. Andrew, who’s King Charles’ brother, vehemently denies the accusations against him.”
Her account was shocking, not least because the alleged incidents took place in what is always promoted as the most civilised part of the world with equal justice that spares nobody.
This week, “Prince Andrew” has lost his royal status, an incident considered by the media as one of the biggest Epstein ramifications, colossal in the Buckingham Palace’s history. He has kept denying Giuffre’s allegations directed at him, however.
Said CNN: Despite claiming never to have met her, Andrew reportedly paid millions to settle the civil case in 2022. Writing of that settlement, Giuffre said: “After casting doubt on my credibility for so long – Prince Andrew’s team had even gone so far as to try to hire internet trolls to hassle me – the Duke of York owed me a meaningful apology as well.”
According to CNN, a British paper alleged that Andrew in 2011 used a police officer assigned to him as a bodyguard to dig up dirt on Giuffre. The seriousness of the allegations prompted the London’s Metropolitan Police to say it was “actively looking into” the report.
Said CNN: “Another damaging report found that Andrew had kept up his friendship with Epstein two months after he insisted he had broken it off. In a disastrous 2019 BBC interview, in which Andrew’s attempt to clear his name backfired spectacularly, the prince insisted he had broken off his friendship with Epstein during a walk in New York’s Central Park in December 2010.”
Giuffre was persistent in her claims against the former prince. She alleged that, having been trafficked by Epstein, she was forced to have sex with Andrew on three occasions, including when she was 17.
In April this year, emergency workers found Giuffre unresponsive in her home near Perth. She was pronounced dead at the scene after first aid was unsuccessful.
Her death was not being treated as suspicious, police said. “She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking,” her family said in the statement.
“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors.”
In 2015, Giuffre, who had three children, founded Victims Refuse Silence, a U.S. non-profit organization dedicated to supporting survivors, according to Wikipedia.
(Photo by AFP)
Daily updates of, and opinions on, local and global events by Tulsathit Taptim
