Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
I have just come to the end of an extended stay in India. I have been living in an old crumbling palace, the infamous and incredible Z Hotel in Puri, Orissa, facing the Bay of Bengal, hanging with my co-conspirator Aroon Thaewchatturat.
Puri, once a hippy haven for Japanese drop-outs, is now an all but forgotten [...]
I was just trawling through my archives and found this story - City of Fakes - from 2006, about Cambodia`s refusal to enforce international copyright laws. Of course, Cambodia is known to be a country where everything is for sale, if only one puts the right amount of dollars on the table. One glorious consequence [...]
While I was in Cambodia last week, I noticed that my 2006 non-fiction title Beyond the Pancake Trench is still available as a photocopied bootleg in several outlets around the country.
My very own work, pirated by nefarious greedy people, does not sell nearly as well as the multitude of Lonely Planet titles that are available [...]
The Khao San Road, one of the world’s greatest and most fascinating tourist ghettos, is coming of age.
Last week the first MacDonald’s outlet opened inside one of the guesthouse complexes on the strip. Legendary hippy hangout, subject of a Hollywood blockbuster and barely more than 300 metres long, the Khao San Road offers a stop-over [...]