North by North East Recommends 2005:

Planning a journey? Wanting to read up on Southeast Asia? North by North East heartily recommends these titles as an addition to any home library.

Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture by Philip Cornwel-Smith and John Goss (photography)

A pioneering celebration of Thai pop and folk culture. Very Thai delves beyond the traditional icons to reveal the everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle. Through colourful text and 500 quirky photos, explore the country's alternative sights, from truck art and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and drinks in bags. The Siamese blend of finesse with fun resounds through home and street, bar and spa, fashion and music. See how ancient ideas infuse modern trends, whether cute or occult, underground or on TV. And discover how imports got customised into the tuk-tuk, the poodle bush and neo-classical shophouses. You'll never look at Thailand the same way again. Essential for anyone navigating Thai life, these affectionate, thoroughly researched insights bypass the orientalism that pervades most views of Asia to present Thai cultures as it has never been shown before.

Beginning with an unusual Burmese monk who keeps a cell phone in his robes and negotiates with Thai border police regarding arms smuggled to the insurgent army fighting Burma's military regime, Marshall recounts his adventures in Burma over a five-year period, inspired by the diaries of late-19th-century Scottish adventurer Sir George Scott (The Burman). Scott furthered the interests of the British colonials (aka the trouser people) by mapping and photographing remote areas of Burma. As Marshall follows in Scott's footsteps, he provides an informed history and his own observations of a country where most people "have never known true peace or true freedom." Burma is ruled by a brutal military dictatorship, and its democracy movement is symbolized by the house arrest in Rangoon of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. Marshall retraces Scott's steps from Rangoon to Mandalay in 1880, when the despotic rule of King Thibaw, a reign that mirrors current political conditions, was coming to an end. All of the author's adventures will hold readers' interest, but his difficult journeys to tribal villages of the Shan Plateau, through drug-trafficking territory where head-hunting only ended in the 1970s, are particularly enthralling. Although Marshall's sardonic humor may not appeal to all, this is a valuable firsthand look at areas and living conditions in a country relatively unknown in the West. Avid readers of travel literature will love it.

Peter Robinson had tried to find meaning in his businesses, his material possessions and his relationships but nothing made him feel complete. At the relatively late age of forty, Peter went on a package holiday to Thailand and there, unexpectedly, became fascinated by the feeling of tranquil purpose he found in even the most humble working monasteries. On his return to England he became determined to find out more, and this journey of discovery led to him to his ordination as a Buddhist monk five years later. At his ordination he was given the chaya or religious name of Phra Peter Pannapadipo - light, or lamp, of wisdom. But it was after the ceremony took place that the real metamorphosis occurred. With gentle humour and compassion Phra Peter Paddapadipo writes of his transition from agnostic Westerner to Buddhist monk and the rewards and pitfalls for the Westerner who chooses to follow this path.

Burma, where George Orwell worked as an officer in the imperial police force, is currently ruled by one of the oldest and most brutal military dictatorships in the world. Emma Larkin presents a side to the country that the regime does not want revealed: a hidden world that can be found only in whispered conversations, covered books and the potent rumours wafting like vapours through the country's teashops. Starting in the former royal city of Mandalay, she travelled through the moody delta regions on the edge of the Bay of Bengal, to the mildewed splendour of the old port town Moulmein, and ending her journey in the mountains of the far north, in the forgotten town Orwell used as the setting for Burmese Days. Visiting the places where Orwell lived and meeting the people who live there today, Emma Larkin gives a vivid and moving portrait of a people for whom reading is resistance.

The Vietnam War continues to play itself out in fiction, autobiography, and history books, but no American author has captured the experiences of the Vietnamese themselves--and caught their voices--more tellingly than Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. The 15 stories collected here, all written in the first person, blend Vietnamese folklore, the terrible, lingering memories of war, American pop culture and family drama. Butler's literary ventriloquism, as he mines the experiences of a people with a great literary tradition of their own, is uncanny; but his talents as a writer of universal truths is what makes this a collection for the ages.

The real life stories of the novice monks featured in Little Angels reflects the lives of many youths in rural Thailand who are trapped in the vicious circle of poverty, broken homes, illiteracy and drug abuse. When all else fails, Buddhism becomes their last resort: providing them with physical shelter and spiritual refuge. It heals their childhood traumas and gives them a moral framework for living and a better outlook on life. Each individual story, heartrending as it may be, subtly shows what Phra Peter sees and wishes others to appreciate.

A literary travel guide with selected routes, this book offers work from a selection of authors, who write about the most beautiful, yet poorest region of the country: Isan. Paired with the view of European travelers a living picture develops, fascinatingly and attractively at the same time. A literary journey of discovery through this often overlooked area. Sadly, the book is only in German at this time.