The Red Chapels of Banteai Srei by Sachaverell Sitwell (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)

Take one well-born aging Englishman, with a classical education that has centered around Europe, throw him into Asia, and watch him flounder when he’s not in places that were once part of the British Empire. The intellectual consternation that engulfs this sort of gentleman should be amusing but his excellent education keeps that from happening. Instead pomposity takes over, with rare moments of enchantment that veer on the naive. 

For a prime example of this, try to read Sachaverell Sitwell’s The Red Chapels of Banteai Srei.  A member of England’s hereditary peerage and the grandson of an Earl, Sitwell went to Eton and Oxford and was first published when he was twenty-five. This volume of poetry launched a career of writing over fifty more books, almost all devoted to European art, music, and architecture. When he began to age, he turned his attention to other continents, venturing to Japan and Peru, but never deviating from his Eurocentric point of view.

The Red Chapels of Banteai Srei is a misleading title which desperately needed a follow-up subtitle along the lines of And Other Travels in Asia, since only one brief chapter is devoted to what is now spelled “Banteay Srei.” This is probably a mercy because Sitwell was ill at ease in that lovely place or anywhere else in the Angkor complex. That he devotes only five chapters to Cambodia is a relief but that’s almost enough to sink this book.

Sitwell starts off in a sprightly fashion by falling in love with Bangkok. His time there is brief and comfortable, with a room in the Oriental Hotel and trips to places that aren’t yet tourist cliches--The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, floating markets which are still plentiful and utilitarian in the early 1960s, a night at a Thai boxing match. There he concludes that muay thai is “more serious and less amusing than the Sumo wrestling in Japan” and worries that an injured boxer may never be able to fight again. He’s delighted by the broken crockery that ornaments temple chedis and is impressed by the air-con in a Chinese restaurant that had his wife begging for a towel to use as a shawl during dinner. It’s sweet to see him fall in love with Thailand’s capital, which he explores without comparisons or judgements. Those he saves for Cambodia, where he seems determined to denigrate the glories of Angkor.

Although Sitwell confesses he came to Angkor “after half a lifetime of anticipation,” the heat, “of a kind and degree never experienced before,” and the humidity which “was something excessive,” appears to have flattened his enthusiasm. Although he immediately claims “the approach to Angkor Wat is on a grander scale than anything in the living world” and is later awed by the Bayon’s face-towers, he swiftly begins to describe the “sham buildings” constructed by people who had no conception of how to build a room that offered space. He lapses into memories of blitzed London during World War I and begins to long for the “cooing of doves” and a “wood of bluebells.” If it weren’t for his frequent quotes of Zhou Daguan’s eyewitness accounts of Angkor, there would be no substance to his observations, which conclude with “this is a whole dead city…too big even for poetry.”

Things don’t improve vastly in Nepal, where Sitwell becomes obsessed with the sexual nature of temple paintings. He tears himself away from erotic art long enough to write a detailed description of “a living goddess in Katmandu,” a heavily made-up child of twelve, the sight of whom made him decide she was “wonderfully, and a little pruriently exciting.” Once again he wallows in comparisons to Greece, Italy, and Spain and it’s impossible not to wish for the ability to slap him.

India, since the Empire had left it twenty years before, is a sad disappointment to Sitwell, who mourns that hotel dining rooms no longer serve proper English meals and that Delhi’s “houses with pillared porticos and nice gardens” are no longer inhabited by British families. Except for the brilliant colors of women’s clothing, Delhi is a disappointment but he consoles himself with a visit to the Taj Mahal and the Pearl Mosque, which he manages to view without his customary litany of European comparisons. Jaipur’s gardens, however, “did credit to English seedsmen,” and the Italian lakes immediately come into play when he goes to Udaipur. At Bombay he’s thrilled to find streets with English names and statues of British luminaries which might prove to console him when he discovers the Caves of Ajanta “are now too far gone with age to give pleasure.”

At this point anyone who’s persisted in reading Sitwell’s observations would be justified in saying the same of him. It’s a vast relief when he goes to Ceylon and becomes enthralled with its beauty. Perhaps his lack of jaundiced criticisms are because in Columbo he’s able to have a cocktail. “After a sojourn in India the inventor of Singapore Slings deserves commendation.”

Sitwell, sadly, does not--in fact the only way that his book should be read is in the company of several Singapore Slings as anesthesia against pomposity. The reader is warned, as Sitwell’s Victorian forbears used to say--stock up on gin and limes before entering his realm of boring ethnocentricism.~Janet Brown

Strange Foods: Bush Meat, Bats, and Butterflies by Jerry Hopkins, photographs by Michael Freeman (Tuttle)

What we think is delicious and what we recoil from as disgusting is determined by our geography, history, and sheer good luck. Nothing points that out like one of the first photographs in the opening pages of Strange Foods. If you think the image of a baby calf on a plate, still in fetal form, is revolting, ask yourself how is that more quelling than a dish made with veal? Would you rather eat a calf that isn’t yet alive or one that’s knocked on the head when it’s a living, breathing, cute little baby? What’s the difference?

This question is posed again and again throughout this provocative book and Jerry Hopkins is the right man to pose it. When his youngest child was born at home, Hopkins refrigerated the expelled placenta, later turning it into a paté for guests at the christening party. Nobody died.

“No one is sure what the first humans ate,” Hopkins says, but it’s a sure thing that they wouldn’t have turned down a dish made of little pink baby mole rats that’s eaten in modern India. Probably the French during the Franco-Prussian War’s Siege of Paris wouldn’t have spurned that either back in 1871, when people flocked to stalls that sold dog and cat meat. Starvation breeds exotic tastes.

Horse meat has been a staple throughout human history, with U.S entrepreneurs in our present day buying wild horses to slaughter and sending their meat to Europe and Japan. Thirty years ago, Seattle’s famous public market had a stall selling steaks, roasts, and ground meat that came from mustangs in Montana.

Cows or horses? Both are livestock but only one is commonly raised for food. However in Mexico, when Columbus first showed up, the only domestic livestock raised for human consumption were turkeys and dogs. In the northeast of Thailand, in a distant province where life is rough, dog meat is a staple and, Hopkins reports, in the civilized modern city of Guangzhou dogs and cats wait to be bought, killed, and butchered on the spot—along with deer, pigeons, rabbits, and guinea pigs—”a take-away zoo.”

When mad cow disease emerged in Europe, suddenly kangaroo, ostrich, and zebra appeared on supermarket meat counters as “exotic meat.” Beefalo was a popular meat during a period of soaring U.S beef prices and in Alaska, consumers happily chow down on reindeer sausage, swallowing Rudolph and his colleagues without a qualm. Still, the thought of elephant meat on the menus of African restaurants makes many a Westerner turn pallid.

In the 1970s, muktuk was sold as a snack at an Alaskan state fair. Bits of the skin and blubber from a beluga whale, it was chewy and flavorless, clearly an acquired taste and to the Inuit of Alaska, almost sacramental. The Arctic offers little in the way of food and whale hunting is still one of the chief means of subsistence. This isn’t necessarily true of Japan, a highly developed country that consumes large amounts of whale meat. It’s indubitably more healthy than more conventional options. “Richer in protein, whale meat has fewer calories than beef or pork, and it is substantially lower in cholesterol.” Whales are rapidly increasing in number around the world, Hopkins reports, and opposition to whaling is decreasing. Who knows? If we can order shark steak in fine dining establishments, will whale be on the menu soon?

Hopkins made his home in Thailand where he lived until his death in 2018. Michael Freeman has spent most of his career in Southeast Asia. The two of them have encountered—and eaten— insects, silk worm larvae, bats, scorpions, and partially-formed chicken embryos still in the shell. They are proponents of a truth that prevails in their book: Anything can be delicious if it meets a kitchen with a clever cook. To back this up, recipes appear in almost every chapter to challenge the squeamish and entice gastronomic adventurers. Rootworm Beetle Dip, anyone? (I don’t know about you, but I’d rather eat that than the classic Scottish meal made from sheep’s stomach and lungs—haggis? No, thanks!)—Janet Brown

Read Me a Story! : Magic Mango and Many Other Stories from Asia and the Pacific by Various authors (Asian Cultural Centre for UNESCO)

Read Me A Story! is a collection of short stories that should be read aloud to young children. The book was compiled by the Asian Cultural Centre for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Twenty countries contributed the stories and illustrations to this book which was first published in 1991. 

The contributing countries include Papua New Guinea, India, Japan, Iran, Nepal, Mongolia, Australia, Vietnam, Republic of Korea, Laos, Myanmar, New Zealand, China, Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Bangladesh. Some countries have contributed more than one story.

Magic Mango is the lead story which originated in Papua New Guinea. It’s about a mango that could think and talk. It lived at the top of a mango tree and could see many things. It could see the village by the river, it could see the mountains a long way away, and it could even see the sea. It was the mango’s wish to see all of these places but the mango couldn’t leave the tree. However, one day a very strong wind blew it off the tree. It found itself on the ground and decided to run off and see the world. During its travels, it was chased by a pig, a little boy, two women, and a hungry hunter. They all wanted to eat the mango but the mango ran and sang “I’m a magic mango, You can’t cat me. I’m off to look at the world, you see.” You will have to read the story yourself to see if the mango was eaten or not.

One of the stories contributed by the country of India is Matsya, the Beautiful Fish. This story is an Indian version of Noah’s Ark. Matsya was a small and beautiful fish that lived in the ocean. However, a bigger fish thought that Matsya might be delicious to eat. Matsya managed to run away. Another day, a fish with sharp, pointy teeth also wanted to eat Matsya but he managed to escape again. Matsya swam and swam until he came to the edge of the ocean where he met a kind fisherman named Manu. Manu and his wife watched over Matsya until he became a large fish. It was Matsya who warned the fisherman and his wife of a disaster that was going to happen. He said there would be a big flood and that Manu and his wife should build a boathouse where they will be safe. If you’re a Christian, doesn’t that sound familiar?

The story contributed by the Philippines is titled The City Mouse and The Barrio Mouse. It’s a Filipino version of the original Aesop’s Fable The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Americans will know the story as The Country Mouse and the City Mouse. A thirteenth century priest, Odo of Cheriton, phrased the moral of the story as, “I’d rather gnaw a bean, than be gnawed by continual fear.”

The stories contributed by my adopted country of Japan include The Magic Drum and Topsy-Turvy Rabbit known in Japan as Fushigi na Taiko and Kenta Usagi. In the first story, a man named Gengoro had a magic drum. If he beat one side of the drum and chanted “Long be the nose, long be the nose!” the nose would grow. If he beat the other side of the drum and chanted, “Short be the nose, short be the nose!”, the nose would shorten. He used this magic to make people happy. However, one day he wanted to know how long a nose could grow. He beat his drum, saying, “Long be my nose, long be my nose!” until his nose reached the clouds. However, at the time in Heaven, carpenters were making a bridge over the Amanogawa (the Milky Way). His nose appeared right where a carpenter was fixing a railing on the bridge. Gengoro thought there was something wrong with his nose, so he beat the other side of the drum but instead of his nose shrinking, his body was going up into the heavens! What will happen to Gengoro.

Topsy-Turvy Rabbit was a little boy rabbit named Kenta who decided to play a game by doing and saying everything opposite of what he really means. I’m sure most children have played this game at home, annoying their parents and siblings. I know I have. Kenta’s father said that it looks like fun and said he’ll become a topsy-turvy rabbit too. He says, “Right, I’ll have Kenta Rabbit go to the office in my place. Father Rabbit will stay home and play all day.” So, with Father Rabbit’s reverse psychology, Kenta no longer decided to be a topsy-turvy rabbit. 

Every story will be sure to delight children and adults alike. Even if you have no children, all the stories should be read aloud. You may regain your sense of innocence from your childhood. ~Ernie Hoyt

Two Blankets, Three Sheets by Rodaan Al Galidi (World Editions)

According to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commision for Refugees), at the end of 2022, there are currently over 108.4 forcibly displaced people worldwide. 62.5 million are internally displaced, 35.3 million are refugees, 5.4 million are asylum seekers, and another 5.2 million people are in need of international protection. (www.unhc.org)

Rodaan Al Galidi was an asylum seeker. He left his family, his job, his native homeland of Iraq to escape joing Saddam Hussein’s army. He is currently a Dutch national. Two Blankets, Three Sheets is a fictional account of a man named Samir Karim whose story is based on Galadi’s life. Galadi states in his introduction that “the narrator is not me”. In this way, he says he “can still be the writer and not the main character”. 

Galadi introduces us to a world that most of us have probably never heard of or experienced. He spent nine years in an ASC (Asylum Seeker’s Center) and before he made the decision to apply for asylum in a European country, he had spent seven years wandering the world. Before buying his way to Amsterdam he spent three years in Southeast Asia just scraping by. His alter-ego, Samir Karim then takes up the story. 

Samir describes his three years of living in Southeast Asia “was like searching through the wall of your cell only to find another cell on the other side, and then scratching through the next wall and ending up in yet another cell”. He would save up enough money to buy nearly expired passports of various different nationalities. He was Dutch, German, Czech, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, British, French, and Swedish. 

He was on his second Dutch passport and wanted to end his odyssey without official documents. He was living in Thailand at that time. He also bought a fake driver’s license with the same name as the passport for fifty dollars on Soi San Road, and then bought a Dutch student I.D. for another fifty dollars. He had decided to request asylum once he reached Amsterdam. 

I think it would be hard for any one of us to imagine what it must have been like to cross borders using a forged passport. Samir Karim’s biggest fear (and Galidi’s as well) was being deported back to his home country of Iraq. With Saddam Hussein as president, he would surely be punished severely or worse yet, put to death, for not joining Saddam’s army. 

Once Samir reached Amsterdam, the first thing he did was tear up his fake passport and anything that would leave a trail to show where he came from. He still did not know how he was going to get out of the airport. He looked so anxious that when a policeman approached him and asked if he needed any assistance, to which he replied, “I am Iraqi”.

Thus, starts his nine year odyssey of living in the ASC. His story is not only Galidi’s story, it is also the story of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people also seeking asylum away from their home country. In Samir Karim’s words, Galidi is able to convey how the asylum seeker system works and how long the process can take. For some people, it may take a few weeks or months, for others, it may take years. 

It is much to the reader’s relief when Samir Karim receives his residence permit to live in the Netherlands. We can only imagine what went through Galidi’s mind when he was living in the asylum center. Galidi writes with humor and passion as he explains his plight and of those others he came in contact with during his confinement. 

I think it would be difficult for anyone to imagine what Galidi or the hundreds of thousands of other asylum seekers go through. All they want is to live a normal life. One safe from persecution and war. This book sheds light on an ongoing problem that most of the world may not even be aware of. 

Galidi also states in his introduction, “This book is fiction for the reader who cannot believe it. But for anyone open to it, it is nonfiction. Or no: let this book be nonfiction, so that the world I had to inhabit for all those years will be transformed from fiction into fact”. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit and Peril by Sarah Stodola (HarperCollins)

Blame it on the British. Stuck on their soggy little island with its chilly shoreline, bordered by a sea that could induce hypothermia if an intrepid adventurer immersed so much as a single toe into its frigid waves, once they learned that a beach could be pleasant, there was no stopping them. The south of France, the coast of Italy, even England’s sworn foe, Spain, were suddenly prime targets for English bodies yearning to be warm. Time spent on a beach became the fashion for cold and restless residents of northern countries until at last the words “vacation” and “beach” became almost synonymous, first only for the wealthy and then for the masses. Today there are over 7000 beach resorts on our planet, not including the ones that have fewer than ten rooms or aren’t directly on the beach.

When the invention of the air conditioner tamed the “soupy heat” of the tropics, new destinations opened up for the world’s sun-worshippers. First came the readers of Lonely Planet guides, followed by people with more money to spend and were reluctant to relinquish the comfort they were used to. Beach shacks were supplanted by more comfortable accommodations, built for the travelers who wanted to be “far from home while never having left.”  Local residents soon realized that their beaches yielded more money than any of their agricultural efforts and suddenly resorts studded coastlines all over the world.

Sarah Stodola, like many other tourists, became enthralled with the concept of a beach vacation when she went to Southeast Asia. Although she surveys seaside destinations from the Jersey Shore to Senegal, the bulk of her explorations take place in tropical Asia. This is where the idea of the resort ranges from rustic bungalows for surfers to entire islands that only the wealthy can afford, where the cheapest accommodations begin at $2,200 a night. 

People will pay for solitude. Some pay with the discomfort of discovering an undeveloped paradise while others yearn for “barefoot luxury,” “peace without challenges,” and a “frictionless experience.” Asia has both extremes and everything in between the two. It also holds the largest number of potential tourists. Before the advent of Covid, in 2018 150 million Chinese tourists traveled outside their borders, enriching the tourist industry with $255 billion dollars in 2019. China,” Stodola speculates, “has the power to remake the global tourism industry” with India as a close contender.

Chinese travelers are already changing the beaches of Vietnam, their “fourth-most-visited destination, after Thailand, Japan, and South Korea, with 4 million Chinese descending upon this small country in 2017. Most of them flock to Vietnam’s two thousand miles of coastline, where, a developer says, “you see a new resort opening every three months.” The perils of over-development have been slowed by Covid but the signs are clearly there. Dams have prevented the replenishment of beach sand while illegal sand mining takes place offshore with impunity. It’s a small indication of how the ravenous appetite for beach holidays are endangering the coastlines of the world.

An island in Malaysia points the way that disaster could be averted. One locally-run NGO is making recycling an island-wide practice. A machine that cost only $6000 takes empty beer bottles and turns them into sand. This is mixed with concrete and used in the island’s construction projects, eliminating the need to import expensive sand from outside the island and making illegal sand mining from the sea an irrelevant operation. With thousands of beer bottles emptied constantly by tourists, this is a vastly sustainable solution.

Others are less palatable and more difficult to bring into being. With a world full of paradise-seekers who are accustomed to jumping on planes to get what they want, how to stuff that genie back in the bottle by discouraging long-haul flights? Maybe by making beach holidays what they were at their very beginning, a privilege reserved for the wealthy.~Janet Brown

Red-Light Nights, Bangkok Daze : Chronicles of Sexuality Across Asia by William Sparrow (Monsoon Books)

No matter what your standards of morality are there is no denying one fact - sex sells! It’s also one of the biggest industries throughout Asia, especially Southeast Asia which is known for its sex tourism. In Red-Light Nights, Bangkok Daze, William Sparrow takes us on a journey through the underside of Asian countries, exploring their red light districts. 

Sparrow is the creator and writer and editor for his website AsianSexGazette.com. Simon Tearack, a Western journalist living in Thailand, who is also a contributor to Asian Sex Gazette (ASG) says “ASG shunned pornography and blazed a new trail: “sex journalism”, a rare attempt at honest, agenda-free coverage and analysis of actual news events linked to the sex trade and sex practices in general, on the world’s largest, most populous and most diverse continent.”

Sparrow visits the go-go bars and sex clubs in Bangkok, discusses enjo-kosai (compensated dating) and the age of consent in Japan, talks about pornography on the Internet in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, and even manages to get himself invited to Triad wedding. Sparrow also partakes in many sexual adventures, for research purposes of course, and writes about them as well. 

He admits that he had avoided going to see the sex shows in Bangkok for years because of what he unwittingly experienced when he walked into one of those types of establishments. He popped in, watched what was happening on stage, then immediately fled. To Sparrow, “there are just some things you don’t want to see being done with fruit or Ping-Pong balls. He also says, “I feel there is nothing sexy about the female vagina being used as a bottle opener.”

The chapter on Japan’s age of consent law is rather disturbing. Japan has one one of the lowest ages of consent at thirteen. However, Sparrow mentions that it is even younger in Metropolitan Tokyo, at twelve. I did my own research but could not find any information to back up his claim. However, I was informed by Japanese lawyer that twelve is indeed the age of consent in Metropolitan Tokyo, but there are all sorts of conditions that need to be met for it to be legal. 

As a longtime resident of Japan, I also want to inform other readers that the term kogyaru is not a contraction of enjo-kosai and gal (gyaru in Japanese) but refers to a fashion style. It’s a subculture where school-aged girls and young women dress in school uniforms and usually hike up the skirt so it’s very short. 

The articles are entertaining and very informative. Sparrow does his best in being objective about the sex practices of the various nations he visits. He also has a very understanding and forgiving Thai wife that lets him indulge in various “sexcapades” in pursuit of a story. I know for a fact that if I were to do the same things as Sparrow, my wife would not be understanding at all and I would be hit with a divorce form quicker than you can say “gomenasai”. ~Ernie Hoyt

This Way More Better : Stories and Photos from Asia's Back Roads by Karen J. Coates (ThingsAsian Press)

Karen J. Coates loves traveling. You may find this hard to believe but she’s been traveling since she was seven! It’s true. Coates tells us in her own words, “The journey began on the family room floor of a middle-class Midwestern home.” She continues, “There I sat on the green shag carpeting with the pages of National Geographic spread before me.” She tells herself, “I want to go there and there and there. I want to write that and that and that.” 

That is exactly what she does. First, she studies as a grad student in Hanoi, After graduating, she takes a job writing for a newspaper in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and she has been traveling ever since.  You can read her writing in the pages of  National Geographic, Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, the Wall Street Journal Asia and Fodor’s Travel Guide.

This Way More Better is a collection of her essays covering about a dozen years from 1998 to 2010. Coates and her photojournalist husband, Jerry Redfern, travel extensively throughout Southeast Asia. Their travels take them through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia  and the newly independent nation of East Timor.  She meets the people and shares their stories, their dreams, their desires, and their way of life. Accompanying many of the essays are black and white and color photos taken by Redfern. 

In 1999, in the Vietnamese border town of Sapa near China, Coates meets Shu, a ten-year-old Hmong girl who is also an innovative entrepreneur. She befriends Coates and her husband and becomes their guide. Conversations are made in broken English and by using gestures. Coates learns that Shu takes tourists on walks and sells the handmade crafts made by her parents. The American duo also make a trip into the forest to see firsthand the effects of the illegal logging industry which supports the villages and families of the Hmong people and other hilltribes. 

In Laos, they visit the famous Plain of Jars, a unique archeological site where over three-thousand jars or stone vessels were discovered. Some of the jars are very large, measuring over nine feet in height and weighing in the tons. They are also informed that the Plain of Jars is considered one of the most dangerous archaeological sites not because of the jars themselves but because of the massive amounts of unexploded ordnance, UXOs that are leftover from the Vietnam War. 

One of the most fascinating stories Coates writes about is Aunty Glen, an Australian woman, friends says runs a homestay in the jungle. The place is located in a small town called Pilok, Thailand, only a few short kilometers away from Myanmar. Coates has never met Aunty Glen but she is told, “She has an oven.” “She bakes cakes.” “They’re the best in Thailand.”. What better excuse does she need to make a visit

You will enjoy this small collection of stories about the people Coates and her husband meet and the places they visit. They meet Dr. Dan, a man who runs a clinic in Dili in East Timor. They are invited to the coronation of Cambodia’s newest king. They sip tea in northern Thailand.

In 2009, Coates receives an unexpected email The sender is none other than Shu, the ten year old Hmong girl, introduced in the first essay of the book. The story of their reunion is a highlight that will stick with you long after you’ve set the book down. 

Each story in this book is unique. Although the essays are not written chronologically, they do have a certain order that is unique to Coates. She sums it up best in her introduction when she says, “Books often offer a vacation from life. I hope, instead, this book takes you traveling.” Bon Voyage! ~Ernie Hoyt

Available from ThingsAsian Books

Romancing the East by Jerry Hopkins (Tuttle)

Jerry Hopkins is approaching the 40-book mark and for that alone we should all go to Bangkok and take him out on the town. His writing life has swept from rock-and-roll L.A. to Hawaii to Thailand, and his biography of Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive, has become a classic. If there's one writer who's fully qualified to examine the lives and work of other writers, it's the redoubtable Mr. Hopkins.

His latest book is subtitled A Literary Odyssey from the Heart of Darkness to the River Kwai, and it's a trip worth taking. Think of it as a series of conversations about almost every writer who has ever made Asia their subject matter--thirty-four writers in thirty-two essays. It's far too lively a discussion to be thought of as a survey course of literature about Asia--the opinions and insights found here are born from a barroom, not a classroom. And that is a very good thing indeed. 

Hopkins examines the lives, work, and settings of other authors in a way that makes you want to read the books he writes about and find out more information about their authors. Each essay is carefully and thoughtfully written by a man who obviously loves to read and who respects the writers whose books come into his life.

Not for him the cheap shot--he uses humor in his portrayals of writers but he is never snide. It's difficult to imagine that anyone could find something new to say about Anna Leonowens, the lady whose book is still banned in the Kingdom of Thailand, as well as the movies that were spawned by it, but Hopkins does. "...Anna Leonowens was the Victorian era's version of a "gonzo" journalist, a predecessor to Hunter Thompson, a writer with imagination and bravado who didn't let facts get in the way of a good story." Suddenly a picture of a hoop-skirted lady sitting beside Hunter in the backseat of a convertible with the top down, "just outside of Barstow when the drugs kicked in," is rooted in the imaginations of readers, and Anna and the King of Siam will never be the same.

"Elfish everything seems, for everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious," Hopkins quotes Lafcadio Hearn in 19th century Japan and then remarks, "It is as if the writer were describing a visit to Middle Earth, where hobbits lived." Hopkins is a master at hooking his readers with a well-turned description and then launching into a provocative literary discussion; his essay on Kipling alone, with literary criticism by Teddy Roosevelt included, is enough to bring a whole new wave of readers to Kim.

Hopkins is not, as he terms W. Somerset Maugham with a fair degree of asperity, "a predatory gossip." In his examination of Marguerite Duras, he tells about her sexagenarian habit of downing "up to nine liters of cheap Bordeaux a day" as a way of explaining her limited literary output at that time ("as little as one sentence a day.") And he all but cheers for her when she "sobers up in 1982 at a Paris hospital" and finishes the book that will make her famous, The Lover, when she is 68 years old.

Even when he could rightfully be vicious, when he writes about what he knows well that has been claimed by men who know it far less thoroughly, Jerry Hopkins is kind, fair-minded, and insightful. Michel Houellebecq and John Burdett are followers of a time-honored tradition, come to Thailand, find the sex industry, and write about it. "Their novels placed in Thailand," Hopkins says, "...were among the better crafted of the lot, but none of the others exceeded them in grisly exploitation, creating a Thailand that was not only licentious, but also ridiculous." He goes on to back up this assessment by letting the writers' books prove it for him, which they accomplish masterfully.

"For those who enjoy sleeping with literary ghosts," Hopkins provides locations where these august shades might still be hanging around. Although by no means a guidebook, tucking away a copy of Romancing the East in the bottom of a carry-on could be one of the happiest decisions that a traveler to Asia will make. Take it on a plane with you; give it to a friend; find Jerry Hopkins and buy him a beer. ~Janet Brown

The Man with a Golden Mind by Tom Vater (Crime Wave Press)

I stayed up much too late last night, motionless on my sofa, racing my way through The Man with the Golden Mind. This morning I feel a bit groggy, still caught in Laos with one of the most attractive characters in crime fiction, Maier.

First introduced in The Cambodian Book of the Dead, Maier is a German journalist turned private detective, a man who knows Southeast Asia well. In his mid-forties, he’s “tired but not finished,” with a hard-earned reputation as an “Asia expert,” and a man who allows little to escape his green-eyed stare. Hired by beautiful Julia Rendell to discover who killed her father in rural Laos twenty-five years earlier, Maier immediately finds the job will be far from easy when his client is kidnapped soon after she retains him.

In Laos, he bumps up against past history and a dazzling panoply of international obstructions, from the well-preserved karaoke-singing Mr. Mookie, whose passion for bar-girls covers a coldblooded interior, to the Teacher, a one-legged ex-CIA  agent, crazed but still deadly, who heads the Free State of Mind in the middle of the Laos jungle. Then there’s Kanitha, who says she’s a journalist but has the mind and heart of a true killer.

As he travels through northern Laos, searching for his client and the answers she has hired him to uncover, Maier discovers strange links to a mystery of his own, as well as unexploded ordnance and hints of a lost file from the days of the American War—one that could blow the lid off modern-day alliances. When a former associate, “a gay Russian hit man,” suddenly shows up in the mix, Maier is drawn deep into a morass of nation against nation, where individual lives are valueless.

Tom Vater is a master of plot and character, which puts The Man with the Golden Mind at the top of my list of memorable crime fiction. But what keeps me reading everything this man writes is his stunning sense of place.  Bangkok, he says, is “a metropolis of ten million people who never talked to each other but smiled and smiled and smiled.” The mercilessly-bombed Plain of Jars is “a giant’s golf course” and a crisp description of “the last frontier for the Lonely Planet set” is precise, satirical, and right on target. And then there’s Maier, a man who uses only his surname—and when Vater finally explains why, readers can only sympathize.

Addiction is a pitiable state to live in. I know. I face a long, miserable withdrawal period before I spend another night with one of Tom Vater’s books, gulping down the chapters and savoring the journey that this writer always provides. Kathmandu, Cambodia, Laos…I can’t wait to see where we go next…~Janet Brown

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay (Ballantine Books)

From Seattle to Shanghai was a long journey in 1925, especially for an unaccompanied woman. But Irene Blum travels in a world of art trafficking on a mammoth scale. For her the globe is studded with treasures to be bought and sold, the crown jewels of the deposed Russian tsar, a ring that was the Empress Cixi's prized possession, paintings fit for the collection of a Rockefeller, and most of all, the newly discovered glories of Cambodia's Angkor Wat.

"A woman with a calling, now that is a thing of beauty," is how one of Irene's oldest friends describes her, but Irene's calling has turned to an obsession, a means of revenge. Passed over for a coveted position at the museum she has made into a showcase for Asian art in favor of a man with little experience, Irene is out to find a key to the forgotten history of the Khmer Empire, something that nobody else knows about--a set of copper scrolls hidden in the farthest reaches of Cambodia. With these in her possession, Irene will have a place in any museum she chooses and a secure spot in the only world that matters to her.

Irene's mentor, a man who has fostered her interest in Khmer art, has sent her to Shanghai to enlist the assistance of Simone Merlin, a woman who grew up among the Angkorean temples and knows them as few others do. Now married to a man who is devoted to Communist revolution, Simone is reluctant to return to the world she knew and loved, especially since her husband is both possessive and violent.

So begins a story of adventure and mystery, one that is neither predictable nor ordinary. The plot twists alone would make this an intriguing novel but Kim Fay has skillfully added well-researched history, intertwining the story of a vanished empire with the lives of her characters without making one false or stilted move.

Above all, what makes this book outstanding is its wealth of sensory details. Fay's plot takes readers to Saigon, to Angkor Wat, into the Cambodian jungle, but her descriptions give the heat, the light, the color, the smells of these places. This is a writer who clearly knows and loves Southeast Asia, with a gift that makes the region tangible on the page.

Fay does the same for the people in her novel. Even incidental characters take on a fully-fleshed presence, as much as as the eccentric adventurers who form a fragile and almost incompatible relationship as they are drawn together by different motives to reach the same goal. Paying them the compliment of a slightly ambiguous ending, she allows them life beyond their adventure's end, letting them move on without a tidy and conventional conclusion, ensuring that they won't be easily forgotten.

The Map of Lost Memories introduces a new voice to historical fiction, a talented and skillful writer who is a woman to watch. While waiting for Kim Fay’s next novel, readers can explore her travel writing in Communion: A Culinary Journey through Vietnam, and in the To Asia With Love series that she created and edited for ThingsAsian Press.--Janet Brown

Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers by Ruth Padel (Walker)

When the man she has loved for five years inexplicably bows out of her life, Ruth Padel takes her badly bruised heart on a long journey. Traveling from the Indian subcontinent to Siberia to Southeast Asia, she immerses herself in the world of tigers, exploring their habitat, their habits, and their tenuous grip on survival.

Padel begins her quest with a literary love of tigers, a few facts, and a longing to learn more about an animal that is often seen through a veil of mythology and misconception. In her first journey to a tiger forest in Kerala, she sees no trace of the creatures that she seeks, but she leaves with the understanding that tigers are an essential part of Asia's environment. Tigers survive only in healthy forests, and these forests, Padel says, "hold Asia together." It says in the Mahabharata (5th century BCE), "The tiger perishes without the forest and the forest perishes without its tigers." This truth resonates with Padel in the twenty-first century and is the underlying theme of her travel through countries that are the homes of wild tigers.

TigersinRedWeather

Wherever she goes, Padel finds forests that are for sale, that become diminished as the worldwide hunger for logs increases. The animals and people living among the trees become adversaries, competitors for shrinking territory: tigers kill livestock when natural prey dwindles and people safeguard their property by killing tigers. The argument of how to balance the needs of both groups divides people within nations and within families, including Padel and her own brother.

Tigers also fall prey to the myths and legends that surround them. Their bones, flesh, blood and skin are all valuable commodities in the global marketplace, sold to people who hope to gain a portion of the tiger's strength or beauty. Tiger balm, Padel points out, is a substance based on camphor and eucalyptus that can be safely used by the most fervent environmentalist, but its universal appeal is based "on what people want." In Nepal she is told, "Real tiger balm... cures arthritis, joints, knees, rheumatism. It is here, for those who know."

People are not always the enemies of tigers, and Padel's narrative is filled with stories of men and women who respect (and work to preserve) the natural world. Debby, a British environmental adviser in Indonesia who is "kept sane through black humour and a taste for lunacy"; Yevgeny, a Siberian tiger biologist who writes poetry but has "never dared write one about a tiger"; Ullas in Bangalore, a writer and tiger conservationist whose work "is a beacon" to some and has led others to set fire to his office; and the dukun, the Sumatran shaman, who gives Padel a "guardian spirit-tiger" as a protector—these are only a few who illuminate and give hope in this book.

A poet and a scholar, this descendant of Charles Darwin employs both of these disciplines to enchant and inform her readers. She places facts and images side by side as skillfully as she blends her personal memories with her observations of the tigers' world, a world that, she convincingly argues, must be saved in order to preserve our own. The book ends with a generous collection of poems that Padel has quoted throughout her travels, the names of people who helped her along her way, and the addresses of organizations that accept financial contributions to support the protection of wild tigers.~by Janet Brown (published originally by Waterbridge Review)

Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell (Square Fish)

Vassar Spore is a sixteen year old over-achiever who has her life planned out for the next ten years.  She will take AP and AAP (Advanced Advanced Placement) classes over the summer and is determined to be valedictorian of her high school class.  She has no doubts about being accepted and graduating from the college which bears her name, and she intends to win the Pulitzer Prize.

vassar

However, one calm evening Vassar receives an envelope postmarked from Malaysia—sent by the grandmother she’s never met – Gertrude.  Inside is a note that says “Happy Birthday, kiddo! Ta da!  One all-expense paid vacation backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos –with ME!” Along with the note is another envelope.that contains a round-trip ticket to Singapore.  Of course, Vassar decides, there is no way she has time to accept this present, not with her meticulously planned life.

But after Vassar’s parents receive a collect call from Grandma Gertrude, for some reason they allow their daughter go to Southeast Asia.  The small fragments of their conversation with Gertrude that Vassar is able to overhear contains words like “Bubble…birth…too young…rubber ball…dying…egg”.

No idiot, Vassar realizes that Grandma Gertrude has somehow blackmailed her parents into agreeing to the trip that will put such a big clink into her Life Goals.  But now she has more than enough reason to go – to find out what Gertrude’s Big Secret is.

With only two weeks to plan for her odyssey, Vassar and her parents pack whatever they think is essential to her safety and well being--which turns out to be ten fully loaded bags of luggage.  Setting off with her PTP (Portable Travel Planner) and her entourage of baggage, Vassar finds herself on an airplane to Singapore.  Having never before done anything without intensive planning, Vassar is full of anxiety as she sets foot in her first foreign country. Her anxiety intensifies as there is no Grandma Gertrude to meet her and a stranger has been sent to drive her to Malaysia.

When Vassar finally meets her grandmother, she is told to rest because they will leave for Cambodia the following morning.  She tries in vain to find out what the Big Secret is from her grandmother, who finally agrees to give her clues that will help her solve the mystery on her own.

And thus begins Vassar’s adventure.  She will go to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, walk the streets of Phnom Penh, trek through the jungles of Laos, and learn what it means to really live life – all without a plan.  The only thing Vassar knows is that she will never be the same again.

At the end of this debut novel for young adults there is a short interview with the author. It’s here where you will find that almost eighty percent of Vassar’s adventures and situations were experienced by the author. In fact, after reading this book, you may want to take the next flight to Southeast Asia yourself.--Ernie Hoyt

Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (Artisan)

Travel is a bottomless pit of addiction, airline tickets are expensive, and carbon footprints are becoming an overriding concern for many who used to hop on a plane without a qualm. Faced with these incontrovertible facts while feeling the distinct symptoms of what in some parts of the world is called "cabin fever," what is a wanderlust-plagued and housebound creature to do? Pick up a cookbook, of course--but not just any cookbook.

For desperate times like these, it's essential to turn to Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, the husband and wife who have spent more than twenty years roaming the world with their two children, their cameras, their culinary curiosity and their spirit of adventure. They choose a spot and move in, exploring it through its food--eating, making friends with cooks, and then learning from them. These are not slash-and-burn adventurers; they are pioneer practitioners of Slow Travel and when they leave a place, they take with them far more than recipes. Any cookbook that comes from Alford and Duguid is a finely distilled mixture of stories and photographs that brings an entire world to their readers, rather than a simple collection of exotic dishes and how to prepare them. To open any of their books is to embark on an adventure that is almost as satisfying as making a real-life journey, and to feast upon words and images that are every bit as seductive and as satisfying as the food that they describe.

Anyone who turns the first page of Hot Sour Salty Sweet is immediately carried off on a journey along the Mekong river, swept through China's province of Yunnan, into Burma's Shan State, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, ending in Vietnam, where the river meets the sea. While following the river, Duguid and Alford find " a shared approach to food, as well as a common palate" among the people of these widely divergent cultures. The countries of the Mekong are tied together by a common thread. "Food is for fun, for joy."

Food is celebrated in these pages, and through this festive approach toward nutritional fuel is a celebration of the places and people who produce it. Although there is no recipe for fish heads and fat, Jeffrey Alford's story of being the only man in a group of several hundred Chinese women who spent the day rhythmically chanting in a dry riverbed, stopping at midday to picnic on a fish head and a chunk of fat washed down with tea, leaves an unforgettable image and questions that inevitably lead to cultural exploration. If readers want to know how the fish heads were prepared, or what kind of fat was eaten, that particular journey of discovery is left for them to pursue. What Alford makes clear is the welcoming and generous hospitality that allowed him to be part of something that otherwise would never be part of his experience, which is what every traveler yearns for.

That same generosity permeates every part of this food odyssey. Noodles are photographed only after the photographer has spent hours watching soaked rice being ground between two millstones by hand, to turn to flour, then a wet dough, then squeezed through holes in a bag into boiling water to become "beautiful white coils." The fish in a photograph was probably caught between the palms of two agile hands in a pond, and the smiling child who is embracing a chicken will doubtless eat it with equal happiness soon. Duguid and Alford's own children are awakened early one morning in Northern Laos by a water buffalo peering at them through the door of their hotel room, in a town where they will later breakfast on freshly made noodles at a market stall--and then a recipe is given to bring the flavor and fragrance of a Laos breakfast to a table somewhere on the other side of the world.

This is a cookbook that may never be used in a kitchen. It's the kind of book that captures readers for hours and then sends them away from their sheltering walls, ravenous and eager to explore their corner of the world for its own particular sights and scents and explosions of taste.

Asian Godfathers by Joe Studwell (Atlantic Monthly Press)

You can't judge a book by its cover, or in this case by its title either. Anyone who neglects to keep that tired old truism in mind when buying Joe Studwell's latest is in for a very big surprise. This book is not a rollicking romp through the Asian underworld, or the sort of glossy, glitzy true crime extravaganza that poses as investigative journalism. After all, Mr. Studwell writes for the Economist, not for Vanity Fair, and he admits that his title "is more than a little tongue-in-cheek."

Tycoons is the correct term for these "colourful, obscenely rich and interesting people" who dominate the economic turf of Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. Governments come and go, underworld figures rise and are deposed, but the tycoons continue to flourish. Not even the economic meltdown of the late 90s significantly diminished their fortunes. Instead many of them became even more wealthy during that financial bloodbath.

Immigration and colonialism were the groundwork from which these fortunes came. The large influx of Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and Indians provided a hungry and willing labor force for colonial powers, becoming "economic entrepreneurs" while the local aristocracy were used to govern the native population, becoming "political entrepreneurs." Long after the disappearance of colonialism, these divisions still remain in place.

Mr. Studwell makes it clear that the wealth of the tycoons is based upon monopolies, cartels and perhaps most of all, a hardworking and frugal labor force who are encouraged, if not forced, to use saving accounts. Banks in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, with their huge pool of "excessive savers," are ready sources of investment capital and "money makes more money."

Putting much of the blame for the Asian financial crisis upon the tycoons and their freewheeling financial practices, this book bristles with fierce economic facts that will deter many a casual reader. Those who persist will be horrified by the rapidity with which a region's economic structure can be reduced to rubble, and may wonder not if, but when their own financial security will be devoured by shortsighted greed.

In the midst of all of the history and the economic gloom and the politics that are straightforwardly corrupt, the tycoons, the "godfathers" prevail through the book with the same resilience and charm that sustain them in life. Chin Sophonpanich, the Thai creator of one of Southeast Asia's leading banks, is remembered by another financial leader as "absolutely charming-he had about six mistresses." Li Ka-shing, number ten on the 2006 Forbes list of the world's richest men, responded to the kidnaping of his son by withdrawing one billion Hong Kong dollars, which was so huge a sum that the kidnapper couldn't fit it all into his car and had to make two trips to carry it away. An unnamed tycoon, whose son was sent a box of chocolates by a business rival, told his offspring to feed a piece to his dog, and if that wasn't fatal, "try one on his wife."

Although Mr. Studwell concludes with the confession that he used the "godfathers" as a "structural sleight" to convey a larger history, ultimately they take possession of his book with the same ease and expertise that they would absorb any encroachment on their territory. And why not? It all belongs to them.