Profile | Why the first Lonely Planet Thailand travel guide author fell in love with the country and its culture

[webfact]

Joe Cummings, the author of the first Lonely Planet Thailand travel guide, in front of the oldest guesthouse on Bangkok’s Khao San Road. Photo: Ian Taylor

 

by Thomas Bird

+ Joe Cummings, a veteran travel writer, musician and long-time Thailand resident, first visited in 1977 with the Peace Corps, but it wasn’t what he expected

+ He mastered the Thai language, has acted in movies, and wrote the score to 2019’s The Cave, about the rescue of 12 boys from a cave in Chiang Rai province

 

My father, Will Joe Cummings, enlisted in the marines during World War II and served in the Asia-Pacific theatre. He met my mother, Mary Curtis, in Germany right after the war and they married in 1950.

Her father had been a commanding officer in Berlin, so I suppose you could say I’m a second-generation army brat. My father stayed on in the military and I was born in 1952 in New Orleans.

Nomadic youth

Until the age of 30 I never lived anywhere for more than three years. I can’t even remember how many places I lived in as a child, California, Kentucky, Texas.

 

When I was 10, the whole family was shipped off to France. I didn’t want to go. It wasn’t like I had a lot of friends in the United States because we moved so much, but I guess I worried that I wouldn’t know how to function there.

 

Full story: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3215583/why-first-lonely-planet-thailand-travel-guide-author-fell-love-country-and-its-culture

 

-- © Copyright South China Morning Post 2023-04-10

 

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[streetlite]

Excellent

[damian]

What an interesting story.

 

What an accomplished guy. 

[roquefort]

A life well lived. Congratulations sir.

[3NUMBAS]

i still have his early versions very slim compared with bulky tomes nowadays

[AgMech Cowboy]

17 hours ago, webfact said:

author of the first Lonely Planet Thailand travel guide

Darn, I thought that author died in a motorcycle accident near Nana (ref. Private Dancer, by Stephen Leather) ????  (terrible book, actually, IMO. I still haven't finished it.)
Glad to know you're better than the guy in that book. ???? 

[Damrongsak]

Very interesting.  Joe has done well.  We were in the same Peace Corps group (58).  I didn't see Joe much after we did the language training as I was all the way up in Loei. 

 

Pic is the day we arrived at Don Mueang airport mid-March 1977. Joe is toward the right side wearing dark sunglasses.

 

 

 

[Darksidedude]

7 hours ago, 3NUMBAS said:

i still have his early versions very slim compared with bulky tomes nowadays

LP guides were the best source of reference before the internet age, i swore by them and were very helpful and always had one for the country's i was travelling to.

 

Travellers these days do not know how easy it is to travel compared to pre internet, personally i think the excitement of the unknown has been removed from travellers, i actually believe this myself and sadly would not ever buy another LP guide again, im actually surprised they print books in this day and age.

 

 

[freedomnow]

Great.

I used to thumb through Lonely Planet books in local library when getting to Asia seemed like an impossible pipe dream.

[ChipButty]

I've still a couple of copies sitting on the bookshelf above where I'm sitting right right now, back 20 odd years ago it seemed the best thing to have when I first entered Thailand,