I am sure you have read my article, Evernescent Kingdom, Everlasting Spirit: Seeking Langkasuka(edited by Alex Kerr of Bangkok Found and Lost Japan), available online for people to read. That article was written after my research on Langkasuka, in North Peninsula and South Thailand, after heated discussion with Late Nik Rashiddin, the woodcarver and Malay Classical Art thinker! I love having conversation with him about the old world, Nusantara (the archipelago).
I would like to continue my writing after that article, but when people stole the piece and made a book "Spirit of Wood", I became less motivated. However, I continued my own research to North of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar - Yangoon, Pego, Mandalap, Bagan, Indonesia, Philippines (except that I have not been to Mindanao and Palawan, but I collected few stuff from there). I wrote few popular writing pieces in Indonesia about my discovery on Majapahit and Sri Wijaya in local papers and magazines. But until now, I have not written anything on that subject since 1999. Having said that, I finally received my phd in 2006, having completed my thesis in 2004. Such as rules and regulations in our world that we have to be patience to receive what deserved.
Last year, 2009, I decided to go back to my own work, looking at Archaeology, combining with my dance, looking at "Lembah Bujang" sites that had been abandoned for many decades since independence. This time is to interpret the space through "feel"(rasa) and "soul"(jiwa) connection with the space. Now I am working on new dance theatre piece "Archaeology of Hidden Memory", hopefully it will be staged in US in the near future.
Recently also I found a Malay art piece, silver triangle to cover the young boys part "Caping" and I was told that they are from Laos, but they were also used in the Malay world, esp my part of country, Kelantan as Kelantan people are originally Mon-Khmer people, coming from the north, believed to be Yunan(South China) and Funan(the first Malay kingdom, older than Champa). Mon people are from north-western part of Peninsula Malaya
