Southeast Asia category: 1948 books

In this insightful travelogue, American war veteran Phil Karber takes you on a journey down the roads, rivers and rails of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. He writes insightfully about the political effect of the Vietnam War on the people and places, adding a whole new perspective on the regions history and...

This extraordinary book is an intimate portrait of Thailand’s ladyboys: the men who have chosen to become women. Funny, passionate, angry and provocative, Ladyboys is a no-holds-barred look at the secret lives of Thailand’s transsexual men.  The book offers intimate details of the lives that...

Angels of Pattaya offers an insightful collection of interviews with a number of prostitutes working in Thailand. The women are given a rare opportunity to tell their story in their own words. The women reveal how they became involved in the business, their hopes for the future and what they...

In this follow-up to his chart-topping "Bali Raw", Malcolm Scott strips off the island’s sunny veneer to reveal its dark and dirty underbelly, taking the reader where no tourist guide ever will. Take a walk through the night streets of Kuta Beach to meet its wild and willing hookers, its dolled-up...

For a century now, Bali has been the subject of a beautiful mythology created by movies and music, but there are few factual accounts of its transformation from besieged peasant colony to booming tourist mecca.It’s a tale begging to be told: a story of survival in the face of genocide, natural...

Prowling the seedy red-light districts, the underground club circuit and the house parties of wealthy Indonesian society, Moammar Emka offers a unique glimpse into the underbelly of modern, urban Jakarta. This is the book that took Indonesia by storm. Moammar Emka is Jakarta’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw; this is "“Sex and the City”" Indonesian-style!

A Vietnamese Bicycle Days by a stunning new voice in American letters. Andrew X. Pham dreamed of becoming a writer. Born in Vietnam and raised in California, he held technical jobs at United Airlines-and always carried a letter of resignation in his briefcase. His father had been a POW of the...

In the fall of 1992, James Sullivan travels to Vietnam to bicycle from Saigon to Hanoi. He has just finished graduate school and has an assignment to write a magazine story about a country that is still subject to a U.S. trade embargo. But in Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam, the planned three-month...

"Wanna stand in the face of a charging elephant, get hit by a motorcycle, eat giant water bugs, blowtorch your mouth on some of the hottest chili peppers on earth, then go watch a sex change operation? Of course you don't, but, happily, Jerry Hopkins has done all that and more—lots more—in...

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & Northern Thailand is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Tempt your tastebuds with pho noodle soup in Vietnam,...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go on holiday and never go back? Alex and his wife Chrissy decided that if they were going to change their lives they had better do it before their 2 small children got too old and too settled. They gave up good jobs, put their house on the market, said...

“I walked out the door, a bit dazed. I had ten dollars and two not-quite diamonds, and it was summer in Siam.” John Borthwick’s first day in Thailand seemed far from auspicious — but it has been uphill from then on. Dropping him in the middle of everything from three-day tribal weddings, elephant...

In 1942 a ship carrying 500 escapees from Japanese-occupied Singapore set sail for Ceylon. Halfway to safety she was torpedoed and sank. Only one lifeboat was launched—a lifeboat built to carry twenty-eight but to which 135 souls now looked to for salvation. For twenty-six days, cannibalism, murder, heroism, and self-sacrifice drifted with her. There were only four survivors.

It is 1948 and the British in Malaya are struggling to put down a Communist uprising and deal with rising nationalism in the colony. Chinese girl Suyin falls in love with a British police officer and is able to see both sides of the war but she sympathizes more with the Communist guerrillas and is critical...