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Summary: THE BANGKOK POST, Berni Cooper
Review: "Some of the stories are the stuff of which movies are made."
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Summary: THE STRAITS SUNDAY TIMES, S. Tsering Bhalia
Review: "Stephens has the same feudal hold on Asian post-colonial
mythology as...Maugham had on the subject of forlorn district
magistrates."
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Summary: ASSOCIATED PRESS, BANGKOK
Review: "Stephens is in fact a very gifted, infinitely curious and highly disciplined writer."
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Summary: NATION REVIEW, BY SANDY BARRON
Review: Romantic Asia is alive and well in these pen-portraits of foreigners who come to live in the story-book East. It's not surprising that as a young boy on a western Pennsylvania Farm, Harold Stephens turned to the stirring prose of Joseph Conrad. It is unusual that half a century later, he's just as boyishly obsessed with adventurers and romantics. The Westerners in this book - artists, hotel managers, media and business people - are long-time residents of Asia, most of them here so long that they no longer belong to wherever it was that they came from, and no longer want to. They are at home in the role of outsider. These are not the kind to whine . . . they appear to be have been too busy to be cantankerous or bored, what with marrying royalty, smuggling lovers out of Laos, motorcar racing across wild frontiers, running billion-baht businesses, sailing the world and all. We meet John Everingham, the Australian photographer who was one of the early breed of "war journalists" in the region and who became famous for falling in love with Kao, a Laotian woman, and swimming her across the Mekong to free her from the Pathet Lao. That adventure was later the subject of an execrable Hollywood movie starring Michael Landon and Moira Chen . . . Everingham's current successful career as a photographer and publisher is less surprising than the story of Hans Hoefer, a German backpacker who published a guide to Bali in 1970 and went on to become the multi-millionaire publisher of the Apa guides . . . Bill Heinecke, who grew up in Bangkok and was a youthful racing car and aeroplane freak, made his first million by the age of 21 in the cleaning business. Today his many different businesses gross about US$60 million a year and he's into diving with sharks in his spare time . . . Other subjects include the former soldier Dutchman Hans Snel, who became an Indonesian citizen and an artist on Bali; three Western women who married various high-borns in Nepal before it was on the tourist map, and three general managers of top hotels, including Kurt Wachtveitl of The Oriental. The book is full of chumminess and good cheer. Stephens' obsession is old-style adventure, and his subjects, painted in a racy, journalistic style, appear as romantic heros and heroines. In its own mild way, the collection, with its easy assumpt.ion of the centuries-old European image of Asia as exotic, strange, and fabulous, belongs to a well-trodden tradition . . . Foreigners are encouraged again to see Asia as a place of dreams, a vast canvas on which to paint your fantasies and watch them become reality
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Summary: Fascinating, but quickly tiresome
Review: I've been a reader of Stephens' work for some time, and enjoyed reading about the successes of various expats throughout the region. The reason this gets 3 stars is because every tale is about an expat who ends up having an almost 'storybook' adventure and, like all storybooks, lives happily ever after amongst their riches or in their castles. While a few of these stories sprinkled throughout the book would have added some vibrant color, an entire book of tales such as these was a bit much. I expected and would have appreciated the book to feature primarily regular-joe-type expats who are somewhat successful in Asia, yet still somehow have achieved successes that aren't out of reach of the average person with enough ambition.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, but quickly tiresome
Review: I've been a reader of Stephens' work for some time, and enjoyed reading about the successes of various expats throughout the region. The reason this gets 3 stars is because every tale is about an expat who ends up having an almost 'storybook' adventure and, like all storybooks, lives happily ever after amongst their riches or in their castles. While a few of these stories sprinkled throughout the book would have added some vibrant color, an entire book of tales such as these was a bit much. I expected and would have appreciated the book to feature primarily regular-joe-type expats who are somewhat successful in Asia, yet still somehow have achieved successes that aren't out of reach of the average person with enough ambition.
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Summary: A fascinating and factual book about adventurous people
Review: In this book, Stephens introduces the reader to some of the fascinating expatriate men and women he has come to know over the years. The stories are biographies of action photographers, artists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, sailors, environmentalists, and others, and are as varied and alluring as Southeast Asia itself. A word of caution: those who are dissatisfied with their present lives or occupations may be influenced by these characters and run off to distant lands seeking adventure or their own fortune
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Summary: Interesting for world and arm-chair travelers alike
Review: This book tells how people not only dream of different lives, but live them. You too can share their joys as well as their misadventures. Visit with them and enjoy the tales of the famous and not so famous visitors they have intertained. How can you make a living when you had nothing to start with. This not a "how to" book but shows what can be done when you set your mind and heart to the task. Mostly the characters have raised above the crowd in their likes, desires, and true life experiences. Reviewed by Dave and Connie Pryor.
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