Almost Home : The Asian Search of a Geographic Trollop by Janet Brown (ThingsAsian Press)

Back in 1995, Janet Brown left her home and family and went to live in Bangkok, Thailand. She fell in love with the country and decided that was where she was going to spend the remainder of her life. However, blood-ties were stronger than the love of a new country and she found herself moving back and forth between the States and Thailand during the six years she called Bangkok her home. Bangkok “puzzled, infuriated, delighted, and engaged me as no other spot had ever before.”

Between the years 2001 and 2008, Janet lived in the U.S. but lived her life as she did when living in Bangkok. “I cooked jasmine rice and noodles with Thai chili peppers and fish sauce. I listened to Thai music, I rented Thai DVDs, I read the Thai-English newspapers on my computer.” If she had enough money to go on vacation, she would go to Thailand. 

Almost Home is Janet’s continual search for where she can settle down, with Bangkok at the top of the list. Now at sixty, she “packed two suitcases and came home, to a city where I knew I’d remain for the rest of my life.”  Unfortunately, Janet says the Bangkok she came back to wasn’t the same. The times have changed and so has her city. The political situation was making living in Bangkok a dangerous prospect. Perhaps it was time to search for a new home. 

In Hong Kong, Janet found a place she would return to again and again- - Chungking Mansions in Kowloon. The place is a community in and of itself. It also has a bad reputation for being dangerous and full of drugs, but for Janet, she took to the mansions like a duck takes to water. Still, it wasn’t some place she would think of as a permanent home. 

Beijing was “beyond any easy pigeonholing of ancient traditions contrasted with modern luxury. It was a place that took everything that had happened within it for the past three thousand years and jammed it all together to make a hybrid city, huge and impossible to duplicate anywhere else.”  

However, Beijing didn’t quite have the hold on Janet as Bangkok does and she finds herself returning to her old haunting grounds. On her return to Bangkok, the political situation hadn’t improved and this time, there was a series of bombings. She knew she had to get away and took a short trip to Penang in Malaysia. Penang was quite a contrast from Bangkok and Janet found it to her liking….so she moved there.

Unfortunately, Penang was not as idyllic as Janet first imagined as she had to contend with bedbugs, listen to a cacophony of music and worst yet, being asked a series of personal questions in English where it got to the point of annoyance. After two months, Janet, who thought she could make her home anywhere, realized she made a big mistake and took the next train back to Thailand. 

Does Janet eventually find her home? Janet has traveled and lived in different countries in Asia, but something more than countries and newfound friends draws her to what she really considers home….and that would be living near her children who are now grown men. Janet says, “Although I’ve found my anchor among the people whom I love more than anybody in the world, wherever I am, I’m always almost home.” ~Ernie Hoyt

What Could Be Saved by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz (Simon & Schuster, forthcoming, January 2021)

Cushioned by affluence in a city that they don’t understand, safe in Bangkok during the turbulence of the Vietnam War, the Preston family lives in a world of secrets and lies. The five of them rest securely in their comfort zones until the day the only son, a boy of eight, sinks below Bangkok’s surface in an inexplicable and unsolvable disappearance.

His parents and his two sisters return to Washington D.C. without him, back to the privileged lives that family wealth has provided, each one broken by Philip’s disappearance in ways none of them will acknowledge. The father dies, the mother embarks upon a journey toward dementia, her memories “swallowed, ingested, made null,” as thoroughly as her son had been. Bea, the oldest sister takes refuge in perfection. Laura, the youngest of the three children, escapes into a series of Ghost Paintings that have taken over her art. Then an email arrives. Forty-seven years after he vanished, Philip has resurfaced, the eight-year-old boy now a stranger in his fifties.

“It’s always a problem sending a man to a hot climate. You’ll never know what you’ll get back.” Words spoken to Philip’s mother by the man who will become her lover echo ominously when Laura gets on a plane to bring her brother home.

Written with slow and tender skill, a terrible story comes gradually into light, with secrets emerging like fragments of a jigsaw puzzle. “We were trained not to ask,” Bea says to her sister and a woman who had been their father’s colleague in espionage admits that in “our line of work...we don’t tell much. It’s part of the training.” “We’ve kept far too many secrets,” Laura replies, while left with a  whole new one all her own, one that’s “capable only of destruction, that needed to be kept.”

A photograph of a Vietnamese boy is used in propaganda that Philip’s father creates as a weapon of war, naively believing that misinformation passed on to Hanoi couldn’t endanger a boy in Thailand. Caught in their separate liaisons, neither parent remembers that Philip waits alone on a street that’s far beyond the expat bubble, a child who becomes prey in an act of revenge that’s every family’s nightmare. 

Floating in a river of darkness that’s eased by drugs, his body cared for only so it can be torn and hurt by nightly visitors, Philip becomes another person, divorced from his past. Once he’s too old to be valuable to his captors, he falls into yet another life, one that demands honesty and clarity, “like bits in a kaleidescope, falling randomly...into a new disorder and a new beauty,” one that has been denied to his sheltered sisters. 

O’Halloran Schwartz is a master of subtle horror, with an eye for beauty, a gift of gentle satire, and a disdain for subterfuge. In a time when readers most need hope, she extends it in a story that transcends a happy ending. When Philip concludes, “What’s happy? What’s an ending?” his words hold solace, not cynicism, in a novel that promises to be a literary highlight of 2021.~Janet Brown

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

When his girlfriend gets a teaching job in the north of Thailand, author and fictional protagonist of Fieldwork, Mischa Berlinski, decides to tag along and make his living by writing freelance articles for various English language publications. Mischa was in Bangkok working on a story for a Singaporean arts magazine about an up-and-coming Thai sculptor. He meets his friend Josh O’Connor, who has been living in Thailand for the past ten years. 

Josh’s stories are so incredibly intriguing that Mischa always calls him when he is in Bangkok. Tonight would be no exception. They meet for food and drinks at an outdoor food booth that specializes in fish. During the meal, Josh tells Mischa he needs someone “who really knows the up-country” and begins to tell a typical Josh story.  

“A Josh O’Connor story is like a giant cruise ship leaving the port, and when you make a dinner date with Josh O’Connor, you know in advance that you are going to set sail”. Josh goes into his story about receiving a call from Wim, a functionary at the Dutch embassy who tells him about a woman who called and wants someone to inform her wayward niece that her uncle has died and has left her a small inheritance. The only thing is, the woman’s niece is in prison for murder.

Josh meets Martiya in prison but is met with an unexpected vehemence. Martiya believes Josh is just another missionary that wants her to accept the Lord Jesus. Once the misunderstanding is resolved, Josh informs her of her inheritance and asks if there is anything else he can do. Martiya is not interested in the money or bribing her way out of prison. The only things she asks for are pencils and papers so she can complete a paper she’s writing about life in a Thai prison. A simple request Josh grants her. The inheritance is to be given to charity to help and support the hill tribes of Thailand.

A year after talking with Martiya, Josh unexpectedly receives a package from the prison. Enclosed were two sets of manuscripts that Martiya wrote in prison with a request that they be properly typed and to submit them for publication. Josh calls the prison to talk to Martiya in person, only to be informed that she is dead. “She ate a ball of opium and killed herself”. Josh says it could be a great story, for someone who lives up North as he doesn’t have the time to pursue the story any further. What else could Mischa do but take up the story from there.

Berlinski weaves an interesting story that was inspired as he was writing a historical account of the conversion of the Lisu people of northern Thailand to Christianity. The Dyalo do not exist in real life but come to life in Fieldwork. Berlinski had interviewed a number of missionaries in Thailand which adds to the realism of Martiya’s encounters with them. The fictional Mischa takes up the story and does his research to find out more about Martiya van der Leun and how she ends up in prison. Who did she kill? Why did she kill the person? Why did she kill herself? The deeper Mischa delves into the story, the mystery slowly comes to light. 

If you weren’t interested in anthropology before reading Fieldwork, you may find yourself digging through other nonfiction titles related to the hundreds of tribes and people that you never knew existed! ~Ernie Hoyt

Siam: or The Woman Who Shot a Man by Lily Tuck (Overlook Press)

Claire flies to Thailand on her wedding night, a naive New Englander of twenty-five, in love with the dashing Army officer whom she’s just married.  “The plane never caught up with the sun” but even so, when it lands in Bangkok, “it was bright day,” and Claire is surprised that she and James have lost their first day of marriage somewhere above the International Dateline.

This is only the first of many things that surprise her in her new home. Her questions are unending and she meets only one person who seems as though he would give her the answers she wants, the American Silk King who’s created a luxurious life for himself in a puzzling city. At one of his famous dinner parties, Jim Thompson leads Claire through his drawing room filled with art, antiques, and vases of fragrant blossoms. He takes the time to explain the meaning behind his precious objects before Claire has formed her questions and promises to show her more of his collection when he returns from a trip to Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands. But he never comes back;  the mystery of his disappearance preoccupies the Thai press and completely occupies Claire’s attention.

This serves to distract her from the other mysteries in her life: what takes her husband on his weekly trips to a secret airbase on the Thai border and keeps him there for days, what relationship exists between her cook, maid, and houseboy, who are the people who inexplicably show up in her kitchen, and did she really see a horse in the jungle that constitutes her back garden? Her trips to the nearest market make her “afraid that she will lose herself among the mangoes,” and her tall blonde visibility makes her wish that she were small, dark, and graceful instead.

Taking refuge in Thai language lessons and in books about the country’s history only partially distracts her from everything around her that seems unknowable. It’s what became of Jim Thompson that becomes an obsession for Claire, a mystery that seems potentially solvable, yet while she searches for puzzle pieces that might fit together, life insists on throwing fresh conundrums at her. Why does James insist that she learn to shoot a pistol? Why does the pretty wife of James’s “useful friend” Siri demand that James teach her how to swim and is she flirting with Claire’s husband?  Is James flirting back?

As her life becomes more enigmatic, Claire begins to mistrust what she sees. Nothing seems solid. Objects, and people too, disappear for no reason. The more Thai she learns, the less she understands and her position in the world around her becomes more tenuous. Then one night she knows she hears the sound of sharp blades slicing through the window screens not far from her bedroom and in an instant her life implodes.

In her compact and surrealistic novel, Lily Tuck explores what it’s like for an American woman to be immersed in a world of savage contrasts: opulence and poverty, immediate gratification and complete incomprehension. Claire’s shadowed world is formed by curiosity and ignorance, fear and clumsy attempts at bridging cultural divides. Her paranoia will be recognized by any woman who has plunged into a new country with no preparation and little support, and every last one of them, if they’re honest, will admit to having shared a small portion of Claire’s terror and madness.~Janet Brown

Tone Deaf in Bangkok and Other Places by Janet Brown (ThingsAsian Press)

Can you imagine leaving everything you know behind? Your job? Your friends? Your family? That’s exactly what author Janet Brown does as she leaves her long time job of selling books in one of Seattle’s most popular bookstores and says goodbye to her two adult sons and moves to a country she is not overly familiar with and where she cannot speak a word of the language. 

In 1995, when the opportunity arose, Janet moved to Bangkok, Thailand in Southeast Asia to teach English. Every two years, she would go back to Seattle and spend some time with the people she loves. On her last trip, she makes a major life decision and says, “I’m carefully planning my final journey to Bangkok, where I plan to remain until the day I die.” 

Tone Deaf in Bangkok is a collection of her experiences of living abroad and traveling to other nearby destinations and is filled with beautiful, full-color pictures taken by freelance writer and photographer Nana Chen. She shares with us her difficulties in learning the Thai language, navigating the city by using local transport, finding a place to live, and falling in love with a man two years younger than her oldest son. 

Expats living in foreign countries are often asked the question “Why do you like living in your adopted home?”. Janet responds to this question by saying, “I babble something vague and incoherent about the light, the food, the people, the climate, and the lack of earthquakes.” If people ask her to go a little deeper than that, she responds with a variety of answers - “the beauty and ugliness that co-exist side by side, the warmth and humor behind the omnipresent masks of smiles, the irrepressibly free spirit of the city that is often regulated, but never with any lasting success.” 

There are many things Janet learns from experience. At a noodle shop as she reaches for the salt on the table, her friend and Thai mentor says, “Careful. That’s not what you think it is.” He hands her some fish sauce and takes away the bottle of sugar she was about to use on her noodles. She learns that black is the color of death and that she will soon need to replace her wardrobe. 

She discovers that women are expected to dress conservatively and do not smoke in public, an idea she finds ridiculous as an American. She was once asked if she was a “tomboy” and answers “I guess so” only to discover later that “tomboy” is a Thai euphemism for lesbian and that smoking in public is what prostitutes do. 

There is no mistaking the love-hate relationship Janet has with Bangkok. It entices her as much as it infuriates her. She takes us on a journey where we can smell the life of the city. Every one of her adventures will make you cringe or bend over with laughter. Janet will make you want to visit Bangkok and other parts of Southeast Asia. You will want to see for yourself what constantly draws her back and what makes her want to stay. Perhaps she will inspire you to become an expat. ~Ernie Hoyt

Available from ThingsAsian Books

A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat (Candlewick Press)

Three children roam the city streets of Chattana, on their own but linked together in a way none of them completely understand. Pong and Somkit were born to prisoners which has left both boys marked for life. Nok, the daughter of the prison warden who lost his position after Pong escaped for freedom, is intent upon capturing the fugitive and restoring her father’s lost honor. 

Chattana is a city of brilliant light, surrounded by absolute darkness. Years ago a fire destroyed the city and now all flame is forbidden. The city’s blazing light comes from the power of one man, the Governor, who carries illumination in his fingertips. Under his touch, bulbs flare into globes of colored brightness and only he can decide what areas will receive this gift. 

However he, Pong, and Ampai, a mysterious woman activist who is “a stirrer of hearts,” have one thing in common. All three wear identical bracelets given to them by the abbot of a monastery, who himself carried the gift of light. Their vastly different lives intersect when Ampai plans a protest march against the Governor’s absolute and crushing power with Somkit and Pong promising to help her. The two of them scavenge for the material needed for the protest and as they wander the city, Nok hunts relentlessly for the boy who destroyed her father’s career.

Where did the Governor obtain his ability to brighten the world?  What is the secret behind the scars on Nok’s arm, ones that could only have been inflicted by a forbidden fire?  What is the secret behind Pong’s talent for hearing sounds that nobody else can hear? These questions give this story mysteries that will entice even the most reluctant reader and will make it a splendid read-aloud choice for teachers and parents.

A Wish in the Dark is an intricate and resonant story with plot twists and political parallels that take it beyond the realm of the 8-12 age range that its publisher has assigned to it. While young readers will fall captive to the book’s fantasy and adventure, their parents will recognize the Governor who has turned the City of Wonders to the City of Rules, the City of Order, and who wants to raise taxes to build a “youth reform center.” As Chattana is thronged with people from the farthest corners of the countryside to march peacefully across the city’s bridge, memories of Selma, Hong Kong, and Bangkok come to mind and this story takes on a deeper dimension.

Thai-American Christina Soontornvat has drawn upon Thai culture and history, mixing them with the classic theme of Les Miserables. Within that framework she has placed unforgettable characters who battle against injustice in a novel that will speak to everyone from the age of eight up to eighty. No matter how old or how young its readers may be, they will all be heartened by its message of hope and persistence as they too find themselves wishing in the dark.~Janet Brown

Leaving Thailand: A Memoir by Steve Rosse

Back in the early ‘90s. Steve Rosse had it all. He lived in an island paradise in the south of Thailand, he had his choice of women who were attractive and acquiescent. His job as a public relations manager for an upscale resort ensured that he would eat well, drink well, and meet everyone in the world, from royalty to scalawags. As a columnist for one of Thailand’s two leading English-language newspapers, his name was widely known and his face appeared on Bangkok billboards. He had conquered the hurdles that cause most foreigners to lose sleep and gain ulcers—an extendable visa and a work permit.  With a life so idyllic, what could go wrong?

The answer to this question, Rosse tells readers in his honest, funny, and self-deprecating memoir, is summed up in one word. Everything.

In a gradual descent, he loses the woman who could have been the love of his life, marries another who becomes the scourge of it, and takes an ill-advised publicity photo that shows the Crown Prince of Denmark in close proximity to a pack of Marlboros. The fact that the Marlboros belong to Rosse’s boss and not the prince means nothing. Suddenly Rosse has no job, two children, and a wife who may be loathsome but is certainly pragmatic. Her suggestion that they move to the States removes Rosse from a place he loves to an existence in Iowa and puts him into a permanent state of culture shock and longing that he’s never recovered from.

Fortunately he has never lost his skill with words or his sense of humor. “Listen,” he says, in his opening sentence. “Let me tell you a story.” While in real life, those words would make most people run for the nearest exit, here they’re an irresistible invitation to another world. Rosse is a natural-born storyteller and Leaving Thailand is a remarkable collection of stories, some of them heartbreaking, some of them bawdy, all of them captivating.

From his welcome to Thailand, which involves an act of petty larceny after a night of serious drinking, an act of carnal knowledge with someone of dubious gender, and an act of extended bliss that leaves Rosse with a somewhat humiliating virus, right up to a poignant essay on his retirement plans that feature a house on a bluff near a temple and a massage parlor, he doesn’t miss a beat. There’s no self-pity here and no disrespect for anyone he meets, including his former wife. He tells about bar girls he has known in the Biblical sense while honoring them in some whole other sense and writes tender essays about his son that are sweet but never mawkish. He puts himself in the heart and mind of a Thai-born cafeteria lady who’s made a home in a cold country and breaks the heart of anyone who reads about his Burmese maid whose life he may have ruined with a few careless words. 

There are many books written by white men about their lives in Thailand. Leaving Thailand roams through much of their territory, expands it, and claims it. And as for its author, as he reveals himself? Let’s give him the last word on who he is--”Not bad. Not good. Just...thus.”~Janet Brown

Tour Bangkok Legacies by Eric Lim (available at Amazon in paperback and on Kindle)

With all the information that’s available online, who needs a guidebook? Looking for a hotel, a good restaurant, sightseeing attractions? It’s all on the Internet. But what if you’re a traveler who wants to see the heart of a place, the spots that go beyond the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China?

You have a choice. You can wander on your own, absorbing the life around you in neighborhoods not mentioned in the big fat guidebooks or you can turn to another sort of travel guide, one that takes you to places never mentioned by the big books.

Eric Lim is an urban explorer who’s found parts of Bangkok that many of its inhabitants don’t know. Bypassing the crowds of tourists whose phones are busily sending posts to Instagram, Tour Bangkok Legacies makes its mission clear right from the start: “...we won’t be going down Yaowarat Road; almost everyone visiting Bangkok’s Chinatown has done it.”

This sets the guidebook’s tone. Lim’s passion is history and he has spent over a decade tracking down the places in Bangkok where its history hasn’t been packaged and commodified. He gives just enough background detail to add an essential dimension to what’s being seen, and he provides careful directions on how to get there. From temples to street markets, from quirky museums to the homes of artists and craftsmen, Eric Lim reveals a side of Bangkok that’s irresistible and almost invisible to the casual traveler--or the clueless resident.

Carving this confusing city into coherent sections, Lim includes the stories behind the life that swirls around the visitor along with essential information--where to stop and have something to eat. Within the wild confusion of Chinatown, he points out an old shophouse that serves traditional porridge, and explains exactly what should to be added to it for the best flavor. Hungry for seafood? He tells how to reach Bangkok’s five-kilometer mangrove forest that is the city’s only seafront and the name of a restaurant perched on a pier that’s only accessible by boat. He recommends relaxing at a floral museum, where tea and local desserts are served on the terrace or in the garden; having lunch in an artist’s house by the side of a canal, where vendors sell food from their boats; or eating at one of the city’s floating markets while watching a Thai boxing match..

Lim doesn’t ignore the universal yearning to shop but he believes in going straight to the source: where to buy paintings from the artist, where to find the makers of bamboo flutes, khon masks, Thai bronzeware, and silk by going to the communities that these craftspeople live in.

Best of all, Lim tells how to get to these places on local transportation: buses, passenger pickup trucks, the subway, skytrain, and, the supreme choice, the boats that travel the Chao Phraya. Yes, these options take time but they’re frequently faster than a taxi in Bangkok’s traffic-clogged streets--and for people-watching, they can’t be beat.

For an unforgettable journey, dust off your passport, pack your suitcase, pick up Tour Bangkok Legacies, and get ready to explore a secret city. ~Janet Brown

Buy on Amazon

The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth by Veeraporn Nitiprapha (River Books)

Once upon a time two sisters lived in a house of infidelity and bitter silence. Chalika, the oldest, could remember when the house was filled with the noises of daily living but her sister, Chareeya, was born into quietness and only knew a world of sound when she went outdoors. In this loveless home, the two sisters depended on each other for support and affection, but they differed in the other forms of solace that they turned to. Chalika escaped into novels while Chareeya took refuge in nature.

When the girls were still young, their father died and their mother soon followed him with the same spiteful possessiveness she’d bestowed on him when he was alive. Orphaned, the sisters were joined by their uncle, who broke the silence of their home by filling it with European classical music.

Long before this, while out walking with Chalika, Chareeya had seen a little boy, sitting all by himself. Pierced by his loneliness, she decided to take him home with her. When Chalika told her it was impossible to adopt the boy as if he were a stray dog, she forgot all about this solitary child. When she was older, Chareeya dove into the river that flowed past her home, certain she’d find an undiscovered city beneath its surface. That same boy saw her disappear, thought she was drowning, and came to her rescue. Although Chareeya was furious that he ruined her exploration, her uncle, in gratitude, welcomed Pran into the family and gave the boy a home.

The children all grew up searching for love: Chalika in romance novels, Pran in Chareeya, and Chareeya in a passing stranger who ran away with her.

Years later, in a nightclub, Pran saw a girl who looked familiar, one who recognized him immediately. Happily reunited with the man she thought of as her brother, Chareeya took him home to a refuge that she had made delightful with music and flowers. Enchanted, Pran fell back in love with the girl who only cared about men who didn’t love her.

Returning to his childhood home, Pran took comfort in Chalika’s affection, but his true passion refused to go away. Tied together but following separate pathways, Chalika, Chareeya, and Pran drifted toward unavoidable tragedy.

This novel carries the familiar conventions of fairy tales into the realm of myths and legends. With the languid, seductive pace of a tropical afternoon, its story is folded into intricate shapes, skillfully introducing characters who are given unforgettable life; describing flavorful meals that readers can taste while devouring the words that convey them; evoking the essence of grief with the truth, “Forgetting is hard, but in the end, anyone can forget.”

Veeraporn Nitiprapha’s style is subtle and lyrical, reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez but steeped in a delicate sensibility that is completely Thai. Winner of the 2018 Southeast Asian Writers Award, her novel, in a graceful and seamless English translation, introduces Western readers to the gleaming radiance and magic realism of Thai literature at its best. ~Janet Brown

Thailand's Best Street Food by Chawadee Nualkhair (Tuttle)

All over the world people are looking for street food, except perhaps for the people who grew up eating it. They’re often looking for more “sophistication” in their dining choices, which range from McDonalds to sous vide, depending on their income levels. They’re replaced by travelers, whose eagerness to find street food is exceeded only by their ignorance. Where? What? When? (And sometimes)—Why?
 

Several years ago, Chawadee Nualkhair brought light to the darkness for Bangkok visitors when she wrote Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, which is now out of print but still relevant if you can find one on alibris or at a used bookstore. (I suggest Dasa Books and Coffee in Bangkok.) In its wake, she brings Thailand’s Best Street Food to eaters whose ambition surpasses their local knowledge—or for Thai residents who are overwhelmed by their culinary choices.

It may seem hubristic to the point of madness to narrow Thailand’s street food choices to a scant 160 pages, but that isn’t what Ms. Nualkhair is doing. She has written a sort of eater’s primer, giving a springboard of information that will launch the reader’s own journey of discovery—or, with any luck at all, her own series of street food guides to the regions she introduces in her latest book.

She begins with questions: Is street food dying out? What is a street food stall? How did she make her selections for this book? The question and answer that I loved best in her first book is absent here: How do you determine the hygiene of a particular vendor? Nualkhair’s advice is look carefully at the jars that hold condiments; if they aren’t clean, walk away.

A visual glossary to different kinds of noodles with accompanying ingredients and broth, fried noodles, rice dishes, appetizers and snacks, desserts, and beverages, with names in both English and Thai is almost worth the price of the book. Don’t want ice in your drink? Point to the Thai script for it and shake your head vigorously with a dramatic rendition of “Nononono." The only thing missing is the Thai script for “Where is the toilet?” which just might come in handy.

Otherwise the reader is covered, beyond a doubt. There are maps to each culinary destination; there are names and addresses of the food stalls both in English and in Thai, there are wonderful and tempting photographs (that certainly deserve more space than they have been given), and every so often there is a recipe—Elvis Suki’s Grilled Scallops, anyone? Adventurous eaters are even told which stalls have restrooms and which do not provide bathroom tissue.

The choices range from north to south, with the greatest concentration given to Bangkok. But every region is given careful attention—think quality over quantity, along with information that will help in conducting further independent study.

Really, what more does anyone need? On my next trip to Thailand, this book is going along too.~Janet Brown

Bangkok's Top Fifty Street Food Stalls by Chawadee Nualkhair (Wordplay)

I'll never forget how amazed I was when I first arrived in Bangkok and a friend took me for my first meal. We sat by the side of a road on teetering chairs with friendly dogs waiting to see what we ordered and ate some of the best food I'd ever had in my life.

But I was lucky. I had a friend who lived here who helped initiate me into the wonderful world of street stalls. Even now, sixteen years later, when I go to a new neighborhood in Bangkok, I'm overwhelmed by the food choices and sometimes by the looks of the unfamiliar food carts. I know the food is going to be terrific but where to start and how much will selective blindness play in my decision?

I am a huge fan of eating on the street. Not only is it more fun than a food court, the food is usually fresher, since few food stalls have access to refrigeration. but I often wonder--if I hadn't been guided by a friend early on, would I have ventured into the joys of street food? How do travelers who have only a few days in Bangkok become immersed in this part of Thai culture?

The answer is easy now--they buy this book. Chawadee Nualkhair has made food pilgrimages to neighborhoods that travelers often frequent and has found places she loves there. In a city with "300,000 to 500,000 food stalls," she has narrowed the choices down to a manageable number, with dishes ranging from fish maw soup in Chinatown to samosas in the Sikh neighborhood, from mussel omelets to pork satay--and yes-- phad thai and papaya salad too. She offers a comprehensive glossary of Thai desserts and beverages (butterfly pea juice anyone?) with a dictionary of useful phrases like "Where is the bathroom?" written both in English transliteration and in Thai. (Essential for those of us who find tonal languages daunting.)

Perhaps the saddest part of this book today is her description of Soi 38 on Sukhumvit Road, which was once Bangkok's most convenient "food stall market", offering a splendid variety of choices as evening approaches and the night air turns cool(er). Providing food for the hungry from six at night until three the next morning, this is now gone in the name of progress

Yet there are also sections of this book that still thrive and will keep even those jaded Old Bangkok Hands happy as well, with food in the Hualamphong area and Chinatown--and maps to make the discovery process painless.

The perfect size to tuck into my bag, this book is my new best friend-read it and eat! Its wonderful photographs are sure to jump-start your appetite--and that's a good thing. If you're here for a week, you're going to want to try all 50 of Chawadee's choices. (Just be prepared to eat seven meals a day--and eight on Sunday!)~Janet Brown

Mindfulness and Murder by Nick Wilgus (Crime Wave Press)

What! A mystery set in Bangkok without a bar-girl to be seen, in which the detective is completely Thai and a Buddhist monk to boot? Yes, that's right--Father Ananda is a man who observes all of the 227 precepts that are demanded of Theravada monks, which means no alcohol, no nicotine, no joys of the flesh--not even coffee passes his lips. He's a far cry from most of the crime-solvers in Bangkok--but then authors write about what they know and author Nick Wilgus clearly knows more about Bangkok than what can be seen from a bar stool.

When a body is found inside a large water jar in one of the temple's bathrooms, eyes gouged out, skin embellished with cigarette burns, and a large yellow candle jammed into its mouth, Father Ananda is one of the first to know. Before taking his vows, he was a police officer, a man all too familiar with the smell of death, and his abbot charges him with the task of finding who the murderer might be, working with the police from the privileged position of a monastic insider.

The dead body is that of Noi, one of the temple boys, street kids who find food and shelter on sacred ground. Like many of them, this boy has a past filled with drugs, violence, and sexual abuse. Father Ananda soon discovers that Noi had been part of a drug-trafficking ring within the temple--one that may involve the monks themselves. When one of the monks disappears, leaving a hidden cache of drugs behind, Father Ananda is certain that some of his monastic brothers are not who they pretend to be.

Mindfulness and Murder introduces one of the most intriguing detectives since Hercules Poirot and "his little grey cells." Father Ananda is a complex character who became a monk after his wife and son were slaughtered in an act of underworld retaliation. He carries his grief and anger deep below his Buddhist practice and the ancient prayers he has memorized; he wrestles with the memory of physical affection and his innately Thai appreciation of good food. He brusquely rejects the tender respect shown by Jak, the boy who helps him with tasks of daily living in return for the teaching that a senior monk provides. On the outside, he is an observant monk; on the inside Father Ananda is an emotional minefield.

And he is an analytical detective, well aware of the criminal mind and the world it thrives in. While set in the quiet serenity of a Buddhist temple, Father Ananda presents readers with a knowledgeable view of a Bangkok rarely shown in fiction--its street life, its food stalls, its hidden neighborhoods--all within the framework of a mystery that serves up a macabre surprise in a coffin and a murderous cobra.

Previously published in Thailand, Mindfulness and Murder introduces a series of Father Ananda mysteries, and was made into a critically acclaimed movie that promptly went on the international film festival circuit and now can be seen on Netflix. Weighing in at just a whisper over 200 pages, this mystery packs more excitement and background information than any of its bloated counterparts. Forget John Burdett--Nick Wilgus is Our Man in Bangkok (even if he has moved to the U.S.)~Janet Brown

Bizarre Thailand by Jim Algie (Marshall Cavendish)

When I bought books for an overnight train ride recently, one of them I’d already read,  I was living in Bangkok when Jim Algie’s Bizarre Thailand came out; it was in my personal library until I gave away excess baggage weight when I returned to the states. But I enjoy owning books written by friends so I bought a replacement copy. Halfway through my 22-hour trip, I opened it and found a whole new book waiting for me.

When I  still lived in Thailand, I was entertained by the glimpses into the bizarre and the grotesque that Jim provided, but the details of the book I ignored because they were all around me, every day. When I first read the small descriptions and insights that Jim provides, I shrugged. Yeah, yeah, right, let’s get on with it. But now I live in Seattle, returning to Bangkok once a year, and what delighted me most about Bizarre Thailand on my second reading is how well the book conveys the special quality of ordinary life in the Kingdom.

Where else but Thailand would a government coup be announced on TV with the words, “We have taken control of the city. Apologies for the inconvenience”? Or would the decision to replace gunfire executions of prisoners with death by lethal injection be celebrated at one of Bangkok’s grimmest prisons with performing pop stars, dancing ladyboys and the release of “more than 300 balloons to symbolize the spirits” of executed prisoners in the past? Or would gifts of toys, candy, and flowers be left for dead foetuses on display in glass jars at a grisly medical museum exhibit?

One of the people I like best in Bangkok is wonderfully profiled in the book’s fifth chapter, along with the information of where old CIA “spooks” hang out and where to hear Peter Driscoll and the Cruisers play British rockabilly (terrific musicians, by the way.) 

Close to Bangkok’s neon and noise is a quiet community where people go out in boats after dark to view thousands of fireflies flashing in the night—far from bizarre Thailand. In a nearby province, tourists are taken for overnight hikes in the jungle by seasoned troops, and farther down the road, a dude ranch waits to indulge the Inner Cowboy that lurks within many. 

Thailand’s deeply rooted respect for the supernatural is brought to light with anecdotes of a former Prime Minister making offerings to the God of Darkness, and the author’s girlfriend approaching a fertility shrine with trepidation, certain that she would become pregnant as a result. And the longstanding rivalry between Cambodia and Thailand is made clear through the prejudices of that same girlfriend, whose personality is so strong that at times she threatens to take over the book. (Throughout Bizarre Thailand, Jim persistently shows the face of Thai women as smart, strong people—whether they are the country’s leading forensic expert, a transgender Thai boxing champion, or the founder of Empower, a group that educates sex workers.)

Where to find vegetarian food during Buddhist Lent (look for the yellow flags on street vendors’ carts), where to have your fortune told (take a translator), where to gain merit by buying a coffin for a destitute corpse (Wat Hualamphong), where to have a drink in Chiang Mai at a place where your money is going to help the female staff have regular days off, sick leave, and Social Security (the Can Do Bar)—these are some of the details that underpin the stories of the eccentric and sometimes sinister people who are unveiled in Bizarre Thailand. And these details are the ones that will enrich your stay in the Kingdom, whether you’re there for a week or for the rest of your life. Thank you, Jim Algie.~Janet Brown

On the Night Joey Ramone Died by Jim Algie

Rock and roll is a country all of its own. It has territories everywhere in the world, each with its own flavor but all governed by the hard-driving rhythm and hard-living life of the founding rockers. Wherever travelers find themselves, they’re certain to find a bass guitar, a drum kit, and a lead who fills a room with words that may be indecipherable but who clearly conveys hot sex.

Rock legends usually die young and the official cause that’s written on the death certificate is almost always drugs. Robbie Robertson of The Band sees it differently and he is a man who would know. His belief is that it’s not the drugs, it’s not the music, it’s “the road.” Like baseball or ballet, rock and roll takes athleticism and stamina, but with a schedule more demanding than many other disciplines. Its musicians never go offstage. Their lives are ruled by the realm that they’ve chosen. In that way they are very similar to priests and the government that most closely corresponds to rock and roll is the Vatican. After those comparisons are made, all bets are off. Priests usually achieve longevity but in rock and roll, there are few Mick Jaggers.

Thailand is a perfect outpost for rock and roll. The freewheeling lifestyle has been perfected over centuries of diligent practice, the women are beautiful, the alcohol is cheap and deadly, and the climate is ideal for growing poppies. When soldiers showed up during the Vietnam War, they came bearing their own soundtrack and near secret air bases along the Mekong river, kids who were raised on the wild twanging sounds of Thai country music grabbed onto rock and roll and never let go.

Fifty years later it’s still there. And the kids who became its first inhabitants? There are the survivors like Lam Morrison and the ones who died, who are legion, and then there’s the leading character in the new novel by Bangkok writer, Jim Algie, On the Night Joey Ramone Died.

Lek produces albums for syrup-voiced boys whose looks outweigh their talent. His musical heroes are “dying of diseases instead of overdoses” and, as he remarks to a contemporary, “...fifty seems young.” Lek himself rankles under the criticism of his ex-wife who told him “You’re not a punk or a rebel anymore….You’re a businessman in a leather jacket and torn jeans.” His drugs now are cigarettes and coffee, which may kill him but distinctly lack cachet, and his teen-age son Dee Dee is blatantly unimpressed. It would be the perfect Woody Allen scenario, but this is rock and roll and Lek is still “crazy after all these years.” After all, he uses Barbie and Hello Kitty dolls as target practice to let off steam.

Then his son’s English conversation teacher walks through the door, a small blonde Norwegian girl who dresses like Jim Morrison’s girlfriend, swears like a rock star, once lived down the street from Alice Cooper, and is a death metal fan. She’s smart, funny, and dark as hell--and she likes Lek.

Suddenly middle-age doesn’t look so bad,  now that he’s got a cute chick, lines of coke, and lots of booze in the mix. Lek begins writing songs again. But who’s the girl who has come into his life and what lies at the end of this new road?

“Write about what you know,” is the leading cliche of English 101, along with “Show, don’t tell.” Jim Algie knows more about rock and roll, Bangkok, and the enticement of a killer lifestyle than many, and he shows every corner with talent that is almost cinematic. Lek’s nightmare world is one that Martin Scorsese would commit homicide to have, revealed with wit and undertones of Chet Baker, a blood-red place in the ninth circle of hell where Pol Pot links arms with Cannibal Corpse and Death comes out the winner.

Put this one on the shelf with Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me and Beautiful Losers, drink a toast to Janis, Jimi, and the Lizard King, and hope like hell that Jim Algie is working on that next novel. “There’s more to the picture,” and he’s the guy who knows enough to show it all.~Janet Brown

Opium Fiend by Steven Martin (Villard Books)

Perhaps the first sign of incipient addiction is the habit of collecting. Steven Martin provides a story all too familiar to many of us, receiving little packets of coins in the mail when he was a boy, until the day he was threatened with legal collection for unpaid packets. His father returned his entire collection but the damage was done. Martin’s life was dominated by the need to corner the market in objects he loved—and in Thailand, he learned to love opium pipes.

The paraphernalia of the opium user is arcane and lovely, the lamps, the pipes, the scrapers, the boxes, the beds. Martin arrived in Southeast Asia early enough to make the obligatory and occasional pilgrimage to opium dens in Laos, where he became entranced by the objects used in them. His urge to collect something unique and beautiful was fulfilled by the trappings of the opium smoker, and while collecting these things, he became an obsessive expert on the subject.

A large portion of Martin’s book is devoted to the history of opium use in China and the United States, with a wealth of photographs. His collection becomes so exhaustive and valuable that he bequeaths it to the University of Idaho.

Then what has been a dispassionate examination of the art of opium smoking becomes deeply personal. With his life given over to the appreciation of the trappings of opium, Martin meets a collector who smokes in a way that honors the implements and the ritual of the drug. As an aesthete, Martin falls in love with both the ceremony and the sharpened contemplation that comes with opium.

The progression of his addiction and of his altered relationship with the world in general makes compelling reading—and his account of detoxification at Thailand’s famous Wat Tham Krabok, where addicts are subjected to a racking regimen of emetics, is worth a book in itself.

Martin makes a convincing case for high-quality opium, chandu, the liquid essence of the drug. As long as he sticks to that, he functions, he claims, at peak performance. However on a trip to Europe, he is introduced to the dross, the scrapings of the pipe residue, and his experience becomes a ravenous one—harrowing and expensive.

The world of the expatriate in Thailand is very small and Martin comes into the orbit of an American woman who takes over his story, an act that usually occurred to anyone who encountered Roxanna Brown. A tiny woman with a history in Southeast Asia that novels are made of, Brown was a connoisseur of chandu, which she used regularly and judiciously. Martin is horrified by the Spartan paucity of her opium accessories and they strike a deal. He gives her the implements befitting the drug she uses and she supplies him with the drug—for a fee. But Brown is horrified when she learns that Martin smokes between twenty and thirty pipes a day; she smokes no more than six or eight. The rest of the time she resorts to the efficiency of micro-doses—one drop on the tongue is the equivalent to five pipes.

But Martin is a slave to the ritual, his “nightly black mass,” and he succumbs to “nostalgia for the pipe.” But even in Thailand, opium is wickedly expensive. When he and Brown join economic forces to buy a bottle of chandu, his share of the purchase comes to four thousand dollars, or 120,000 baht. Even for a well-paid expat, that would be two months salary, and neither Martin nor Brown fall into that economic category. When Martin begins to sell items of his collection to pay for his opium, his original addiction wins over the hunger for opium and he goes to Wat Tham Krabok, which cures for nothing—but only once..

For Brown, things do not end that well. Eating opium puts a terrible strain on the digestive system, which is “frozen into hibernation by the drug.” When she makes a trip to the states, she is arrested and accused of electronic fraud, allowing her signature to be used for falsified appraisals of Southeast Asian art, a subject upon which she is an expert. A woman with Thai nationality as well as being a U.S. citizen, Roxanna Brown is considered a flight risk and is thrown into an immigration detention center in Seattle. She dies in her cell in agony from a perforated ulcer, an offshoot, Martin says, of opium eating.

On the night of her death, Steven Martin was in Bangkok, “weightlessly suspended as though floating in a warm sea.” Opium had reclaimed him after detox; whether it still dominates his life is perhaps another story, another book.~Janet Brown

In Laos and Siam by Marthe Bassene (White Lotus)

It's easy for us 21st century travelers to believe that the practice of adventure travel began with the creation of Lonely Planet, which encouraged anyone with a little extra cash to grab a backpack and a guidebook and set off on the road less traveled. Yet our modern adventures look rather pallid and tame when compared to the travels and travails of Marthe Bassene, a flower of the French colonial system in Vietnam, who went with her husband to visit Laos and Siam in 1909, a journey that at that time was a three-month excursion up the Mekong and into the jungle.

There were no roads, only the trails followed by trade caravans, and Mme. Bassene anticipates "difficulties...and some dangers." Crossing the rapids of the Mekong, with its whirlpools, submerged rocks, sandbars that could hold a vessel captive for months, and its gorges with "walls of rock eighty to a hundred meters high" was a daunting experience in a small steamboat, and one that passengers quickly learn to confront with sang-froid. ("Shut up," is the captain's response to Marthe Bassene's initial cry of fright.)

Her week-long trip from Laos into Siam is equally arduous, riding horseback along a mountainous, rocky trail through the jungle, soaked to the bone by rainstorms, and sapped by "the humid, tropical heat that knocks down all courage." Wearing her husband's clothes because her own are thoroughly saturated, riding barefoot because her shoes are dripping wet, Marthe dreams of sleeping on a bed with sheets, indoors, as she reposes on a camp bed near a bonfire that blazes all night to frighten away tigers.

Throughout her travels, Marthe's observations remain crisp and descriptive. The fragrance of Laos impresses her from her first day and follows her through the country, "a subtle and delicate perfume" that, she decides, "is simply the scent of Laos." Arriving in Vientiane, she finds traces of a ruined city that reminds her of Angkor Wat. Sacked by the Siamese in the previous century, the remains of the temples are shrouded by the roots of trees, covered by vines and brambles, and looted by Europeans as well as the Siamese conquerors. "The time is not far," Marthe observes, "when the Laotian gods will be everywhere, except in Laos."

In the kingdom of Luang-Prabang, she meets King Sisavong, a monarch with a French education and an "ironic smile", who tells her "that he often regrets having left Paris." His hospitality opens the city to Mme. Bassene, and allows her a comprehensive view of life in the palace and on the streets of Luang-Prabang. Visiting the markets, she reveals the beginning of globalization and its effects, as she discovers "poor-quality stuff...with English and German factory labels." Falling in love with the city, she decides it's "the refuge of the last dreamers."

When she arrives in Siam, Marthe finds herself a precursor of the bedraggled backpackers of the future, but as a Frenchwoman, she's well aware of the "distorted version of French elegance" that she presents. "My vagabond-like get-up," she remarks mournfully, "shamed me." As a Frenchwoman, she is also disconcerted by the independent, uncolonized Thai spirit; when forbidden to use a cabin on the upper deck of a boat because she is a woman, she threatens to complain to the governor of Phitsanuloke. "The governor governs the city, I govern my boat," she is decisively told by the Siamese captain, whom she characterizes as a "stubborn mule."

Given the imperial tenor of her time, and the length and difficulty of her journey, it's surprising that Marthe Bassene indulged in so little petulance and national chauvinism. It's equally surprising how easy travel has become in the past hundred years. In 2008, to replicate the trip that Marthe did in 1909 would be the height of masochism--if not completely impossible. But wouldn't it be fun--or at least interesting--to try?

Dream of a Thousand Lives by Karen Connelly (Seal Press)

When Karen Connelly was seventeen and entering her last year of high school, she was whisked from northern Canada to the north of Thailand as a Rotary exchange student. Plunged into total cultural immersion in the small farming community of Denchai, she is instantly faced with a new alphabet with over seventy characters, a five-toned language, and the difficulty of fitting her independent, privacy-loving, poet's spirit into a highly protective culture.

Blessed with humor, adaptability, and a compulsion to keep a journal about her new life, she has carefully chronicled a lovely account of the transformation that experiencing another country can bring.

She learns to live in a world in which solitude is an upsetting anomaly, where ghosts are an accepted part of the psychic landscape, and where the sight of her "own pale arms" in her dark bedroom becomes amazing to her. Without "the words for the questions," much of what she sees at the beginning of her Thai life are mysteries that await explanations. And after three months, she is in love with Thailand, knowing that the country that she can never own a part of "already owns part of me."

Her book is written in Thai time, with long, seamless expanses of quiet observation that are punctuated by small adventures and the joy of daily living. A trip to Bangkok plunges her into unexpected culture shock when she stays in the comfort of a typical Western home after living for months in rural simplicity. Back in Denchai, Karen is plunged into comic episodes: the day that she competes in a village beauty contest, the night that she is turned out of her bedroom to accommodate a pair of newlyweds, and the wildly exuberant holiday of Songkran, the Thai New Year, when the entire kingdom is drenched in riotously hurled cold water.

As she prepares to return to Canada, she mourns, "I should have been awake constantly. I should have learned more." But few visitors have been so awake in Thailand, and even fewer have shared the country as poetically and generously as Karen Connelly has.

Seven years after her year in Denchai, Karen became the youngest winner of Canada's prestigious Governor-General Award for Touch the Dragon, which was published in the United States under the title Dream of a Thousand Lives. Fifteen years after it was published, her book remains a beacon and a benchmark for those who live in Thailand and hope to explain a small portion of the country to people who have not yet had the opportunity to experience it for themselves.

Bangkok Blondes by The Bangkok Women's Writers Group (Bangkok Book House)

Sporting heavily bleached hair extensions that were once silky, black strands on a Thai girl's head, learning how to rid an apartment of its resident ghost, finding a future husband at a market stall, eating lunch on Christmas Day with murderers and drug dealers--welcome to the world of the Bangkok Blondes.

They're not exclusively blondes, these articulate women who live in Bangkok, and they are definitely not the chick-lit purveyors that the title and cover of this anthology might imply. They are writers who give a multi-faceted and unstereotypical view of a city that they all know well.

For decades, books about Bangkok have been dominated by the perspective of the Barstool Buddhists, those old Bangkok hands who, to a man, have suffered at the soft and gentle hands of Thai girls and have lived to tell, and retell, the tale. (Notable exceptions to this school of writing are Colin Cotterill and Jim Eckardt, authors who have gone beyond the bar scene with praiseworthy literary results.) For a woman's take on Thailand's capital city, readers could choose either Carol Hollinger's classic Mai Pen Rai (Means Never Mind) or Karen Connelly's classic Touch the Dragon (published in the U.S. as Dream of a Thousand Lives). And that was all she wrote--until the Bangkok Women's Writers Group came along.

A collection of personal essays and fiction with a smattering of poetry, Bangkok Blondes provides an honest, idiosyncratic view of the eastern hemisphere's City of Angels. Jess Tansutat, the volume's sole Thai contributor says in her outstanding essay, The Butterfly Game, "For me, the "city of angels" seems to have just too many angels." She handles the difficulty of dating in Bangkok with objectivity, wisdom, and humor, and then the book moves on--no whining, no sniveling--to other facets of Bangkok life.

Pursuing fitness, braving the language barrier in a hair salon, working as an extra on a television commercial, making it past cultural hurdles with Thai boyfriends are stories that are fun to read but aren't unexpected topics. Examining Thai culture while driving in a city that has taken the traffic jam to an art form, playing the Bangkok version of Russian Roulette by riding side-saddle on the back of a motorcycle taxi, living with a statue of the Buddha that's taken on a disconcerting life of its own, undergoing colonic therapy, braving the wild confusion of Romanized Thai and English that has been thoroughly reinvented: these are all things that could only be written by people with open minds and hearts who have willingly submitted to another culture, and that make this collection one to seek out and read.

The pure joy of a book like Bangkok Blondes is discovering new voices. The frustration of it is longing for more from particular voices--Martha Scherzer, Chloe Trindall, Jess Tansutat, Zoe Popham are all writers who should be working on their very own books. But this is only one opinion. Every reader of Bangkok Blondes will discover her own favorite writer--like a box of good chocolates, this book has a wide variety of choices and something for every taste.

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.