Title: Same Same but Over the Edges
Year: 2000
Illustrator: Nikorn Studio
Volume: 2
Page: 32 (Vol.1)
Publisher: Navin Production Co., Ltd. (Vol. 2 unpublished)
Related Exhibition/Project: Same Same but Over the Edges

Centring around the Belgian city of Ghent, the story begins in 1983 at the studio of Jan De Vleeschauwer, who is enjoying life as an artist and art therapist at a local mental hospital. One of Jan’s patients gives him a mysterious map, but unable to read it he forgets all about it. Years pass when Jan and his buddy Hans decide to go backpacking around Asia and Australia, during which time they both fall in love with Thailand and decide to settle in Chiang Mai as teachers. Jan, an art lecturer, is discussing the work of Van Eyck, and the mystery that surrounds a missing piece of the famous Ghent Altarpiece, when student Navin comments he would like to find the lost masterpiece. Years go by, and Jan takes a Thai name and a Thai wife. One night in 2000, he dreams of the crazy patient who gave him the map and taking another look, he is surprised to find it written in Thai. The map leads him to an old hut in the middle of a paddy-field, where Jan finds what he believes is a reproduction of the famous missing altarpiece. He takes it to show Navin and his pal Kosit, who runs a gallery at a tourist night market, when a power cut puts them in darkness and a ghostly vision of the crazy patient appears. He tells them the painting is the lost original and it must be returned to the chapel in Ghent. The second volume begins with Navin and Kosit arriving in Belgium. A fight between a taxi driver and the two Thais, triggers a magic time travelling episode that hurls all three back to 1432, the year the Ghent Altarpiece was painted. They discover that Van Eyck has been kidnapped and cannot complete his great artwork, so all three help foil the kidnap plot and help Ghent get its legendary altarpiece.