Walking to Singapore : A Year Off the Beaten Path in Southeast Asia

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Summary: Great travel guide and travel essays on Southeast Asia!
Review: Southeast Asia is a world filled with mystery and intrigue, and one that doesn't give up its secrets easily--as the author and his wife soon found out! Walking To Singapore is an often hilarious, but always informative look at the daily lives and disparate cultures of the region, and provides insight into the history of the region, the best (and most bizarre) foods, even religious temple etiquette. The book celebrates the beauty of Southeast Asia: swimming with sea turtles in Malaysia, seeing the sunrise from the rim of a smoking volcano, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and watching wild orangutans waking at sunrise in Borneo. The author's adventures also take them to some of the most magnificent historical and archaeological wonders of the world such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Burma's city of 4,000 temples at Bagan, and the magnificent Buddhist and Hindu monuments of Borobudor in Indonesia. Helpful as a guide to budget travel in Southeast Asia--for about $10 per day!--Walking To Singapore also recounts some of the difficulties and downright danger that await--from an all night journey along the Road to Mandalay in Burma, to leeches in Sumatra, to grenade attacks in Phnom Penh!

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Summary: Extremely funny, informative book!
Review: This book is hilarious!...and informative. The travel essays tell how it really is to travel in some of these incredibly remote, but incredibly wonderful parts of SE Asia. Unlike most travel guides that merely descibe the points of interest, without honestly telling how difficult it can be to get there--without doing it the "tour group way"--this book tells how YOU can do it on your own...but gives some advice to ease the trip as well as to caution the traveler. Every chapter also provides tons of information on the history and politics, etc. of the region, too. But what I like most is that the author encourages everyone to give independent travel a try. And by traveling as the author and his wife did, anyone can do it on a shoestring budget. Personally, I would RATHER eat and do as the locals do; the author shows that it's not only possible but very cheap and a lot of fun!