Wednesday evening, at the Sa-Bai Thong restaurant on Odana Road, a distinguished-looking visitor from Thailand eased into a booth and smiled broadly as he was handed a copy of a newspaper story four decades old.
Pongsak Payakvichien is a legend in journalism in Thailand. When the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA) presented him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, they noted that he had “almost single-handedly brought about Thai journalism’s coming-of-age.”