Bangkok Hard Time By Jon Cole

[Ulysses G.]

I've gotten pretty bored with books about Thailand as many of the authors are amateurish with no talent and most are written about the same few subjects that have been done to death and I have been reading them for many years.

Bangkok Hard Time by Jon Cole is yet another one about doing time in prison in LOS, but the writer tells a darn good story and is a decent writer as well. The book is sort of a combination of Mr. Nice and the Damage Done - a memoir about a drug addicted heroin smuggler who gets busted and what happens to him in jail.

He grew up as a youthful expat in Bangkok and the stories about what it was like back then and how he eventually gets into the drug scene is probably the best part of the book, but the prison stuff is quite interesting too. Anyway, if you enjoy this kind of stuff, it is one of the better ones.

[Semper]

Do you have it in stock?

[Ulysses G.]

Sorry, not at the monment.

[Ijustwannateach]

Hey, now, UG, that gives me an idea- your thread piqued my curiousity, so I have a higher chance maybe of reading that book now than I did before. Why don't you make a regular thing of this somewhere and put up a book review now and again on a regular thread or something like that? (slightly off topic but related, I think)

[theblether]

Moonshine in the Morning was written by my friend Andrea MacNicoll, and is a available on amazon.

Andrea lived in Pai for 12 years and the book is a fictional tale of mountain life, very enjoyable and the opposite of the I was in prison in Thailand crap

[Ulysses G.]

Hey, now, UG, that gives me an idea- your thread piqued my curiousity, so I have a higher chance maybe of reading that book now than I did before. Why don't you make a regular thing of this somewhere and put up a book review now and again on a regular thread or something like that? (slightly off topic but related, I think)

That is a good idea, but I usually tend to read books that no one else is very interested in that pass through my hands and strike my fancy somehow - I only read popular books every now and then. The reason that I pointed this one out is it is about Thailand and much better than most of them.

[roamer]

Do you have it in stock?

Kindle edition $9.

[NanLaew]

Moonshine in the Morning was written by my friend Andrea MacNicoll, and is a available on amazon.

Andrea lived in Pai for 12 years and the book is a fictional tale of mountain life, very enjoyable and the opposite of the I was in prison in Thailand crap

Found the Thai jailbird crap book on amazon but struck out on the Thai hippy overstay crap book on amazon.

Get it sorted!

[endure]

I've just read (over the past couple of months) all of Burdett's Detective Sonchai books. I enjoyed the first one (Bangkok 8?) very much but they got weirder and weirder (and much more patronising) as they went along. One book that I can read over and over is 'Touch the Dragon' by Karen Connelly. I bet her name caused lots of grief in Thailand

[flying]

Hey, now, UG, that gives me an idea- your thread piqued my curiousity, so I have a higher chance maybe of reading that book now than I did before. Why don't you make a regular thing of this somewhere and put up a book review now and again on a regular thread or something like that? (slightly off topic but related, I think)

That is a nice idea & one I would enjoy reading.

[Ulysses G.]

One book that I can read over and over is 'Touch the Dragon' by Karen Connelly.

That is one of my favorites too. She did a novel on Burma more recently that looked pretty good. I'm sure that I will get around to it one day.

[NanLaew]

One book that I can read over and over is 'Touch the Dragon' by Karen Connelly.

That is one of my favorites too. She did a novel on Burma more recently that looked pretty good. I'm sure that I will get around to it one day.

I found her Burmese Lessons: A true love story on amazon but didn't see Touch the Dragon. There's The Lizard Cage that has a 5-star rating though. Any good?

Agree that Burdett's Bangkok 8 had me hooked but I have long put off getting another one as my reading gets ADD attacks a couple or three times a year.

[edwinclapham]

Off topic I know, but I found Stalking the Elephant Kings a very good read

"Twenty years after the Indochina wars, Christopher Kremmer visited Laos--at the crossroads of change in Southeast Asia.

He started his journey in the tranquility of Luang Prabang, once the royal capital. But despite its ancient culture and stately airs, the town--like Laos itself--is a place of secrets, mysteries and nagging questions. Setting off in search of the lost royal family, a 600-year-old dynasty consumed by the violent troubles of the 1960s and 1970s, the author reveals a small land-locked corner of Asia struggling to come to terms with the legacies of the American war and Asian communism. This is travel with a mission and it takes the author deep into Laos--to the bomb craters and enigmatic stone containers of the Plain of Jars, the brooding caves and limestone peaks of Houaphan near the Lao border with Vietnam, and the southern provinces bordering Cambodia."

Bamboo Palace: Discovering the Lost Dynasty of Laos

by

Christopher Kremmer

Also

Twilight over Burma, My Life as a Shan Princess

A memoir (though told in the third person) of Inge Sargent, an Austrian who in 1953 married Sao Kya Seng, the princely leader of Shan, an ethnic enclave in the hill country of northeastern Burma. She immersed herself in Burmese culture, and lived together with her husband and daughters at the palace in Hsipaw until he was executed in a military coup in 1962. A fascinating story.

[baboon]

Hey, now, UG, that gives me an idea- your thread piqued my curiousity, so I have a higher chance maybe of reading that book now than I did before.  Why don't you make a regular thing of this somewhere and put up a book review now and again on a regular thread or something like that? (slightly off topic but related, I think)

That is a good idea, but I usually tend to read books that no one else is very interested in that pass through my hands and strike my fancy somehow - I only read popular books every now and then. The reason that I pointed this one out is it is about Thailand and much better than most of them.

All the more reason for the thread. Widen horizons and all that...

[edwinclapham]

One book that I can read over and over is 'Touch the Dragon' by Karen Connelly.

That is one of my favorites too. She did a novel on Burma more recently that looked pretty good. I'm sure that I will get around to it one day.

I found her Burmese Lessons: A true love story on amazon but didn't see Touch the Dragon. There's The Lizard Cage that has a 5-star rating though. Any good?

Agree that Burdett's Bangkok 8 had me hooked but I have long put off getting another one as my reading gets ADD attacks a couple or three times a year.

Just read Burmese Lessons on e book thro your recommendation and found it to be excellent, so thank you for that one.

Cambodia Calling by Richard Heinzl was also an excellent read.

[giddyup]

Read "Burmese Days" by George Orwell for an insight into how things were under British rule.

[lovelaos]

Tragic Mountains by Jane Hamilton-Merrit is worth a read for anyone interested in the plight of the Hmong in Indochina.

[zzaa09]

Off topic I know, but I found Stalking the Elephant Kings a very good read

"Twenty years after the Indochina wars, Christopher Kremmer visited Laos--at the crossroads of change in Southeast Asia.

He started his journey in the tranquility of Luang Prabang, once the royal capital. But despite its ancient culture and stately airs, the town--like Laos itself--is a place of secrets, mysteries and nagging questions. Setting off in search of the lost royal family, a 600-year-old dynasty consumed by the violent troubles of the 1960s and 1970s, the author reveals a small land-locked corner of Asia struggling to come to terms with the legacies of the American war and Asian communism. This is travel with a mission and it takes the author deep into Laos--to the bomb craters and enigmatic stone containers of the Plain of Jars, the brooding caves and limestone peaks of Houaphan near the Lao border with Vietnam, and the southern provinces bordering Cambodia."

Bamboo Palace: Discovering the Lost Dynasty of Laos

by

Christopher Kremmer

Also

Twilight over Burma, My Life as a Shan Princess

A memoir (though told in the third person) of Inge Sargent, an Austrian who in 1953 married Sao Kya Seng, the princely leader of Shan, an ethnic enclave in the hill country of northeastern Burma. She immersed herself in Burmese culture, and lived together with her husband and daughters at the palace in Hsipaw until he was executed in a military coup in 1962. A fascinating story.

Indeed, as the best material and the most stimulating tend to be historically or biograhpically lent..

Even more so, are the tomes that aspire to be controversial - even censored.

The ever-popular pulp fiction that passes for literature extends the usual array of predictibility and stereotype.

Pablum.