Rating: 
Summary: the best taste of expats on the road
Review: It gives an informative view on the dark hearts of insanity that lived and existed in Cambodia during the late 90's. Soon after putting this book down I upped and flew to Cambodia to see who these foreign residents were. There aren't as many guns on the streets, and prostitution has been put in check (a little bit), but you can still feel the streets seething with its rawness that this book perfectly captures. If you are ever caught by the life and times of insane foreign nationals and you want a glimpse at just how "up river" this world can get, this is your book... Like a true Marlow chronicaling his journey for the world-
Rating:
Summary: A trip into the surreal...
Review: the author takes a high moral tone about his subjects because their behaviour is abusive and they exploit the poor people of Cambodia. He says he thinks it is wrong. But then he describes in some detail the way he does exactly the same things as the people he is condemning. It just seems like he must judge his own behaviour by different rules than he judges others and I just don't get that. His subjects call it 'shagging', but he calls it 'research'.Even when he is returning from a trip to a brothel area where he has paid a bonded labour sex worker to perform sex acts on him (page 108) he carries on taking this kind of weird high moral tone as if he should be judged differently from those he is so keen to condemn. "Have I used , in the fullest sense of the word, a young girl forced by poverty or worse to submit to my sexual whims? Or have I helped some family of subsistence farmers somewhere in Southern Vietnam make it through the month?". That is on page 110 near the top of the page. I wonder if he asked the poor teenage girl? I wonder what her name is. I wonder what she was thinking as she was forced to perform sexual acts on the author. I wonder if she would see a difference between being forced to perform these acts on the author and being forced to perform the same acts on one of the subjects of the author's scorn. I don't think so. It is so depressing to read a book where the writer has so completely missed the point and may have caused real suffering in his wake.
| 
