Bangkok Days - Couverture souple

Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons: a night of love, a stay in a luxury hotel, or simply to disappear for a while. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry, and then stays when he finds he can live off just a few dollars a day.

Osborne's Bangkok is a vibrant, instinctual city full of contradictions. He wanders the streets, dining on insects, trawling through forgotten neighbourhoods, decayed temples and sleazy bars. He takes us to a feverish place where a strange blend of ancient Buddhism, modern technology and new sexual mores has created a brand new modernity little indebted to the West.

Far more than a travel book, Bangkok Days explores both a little-known, extraordinary city and the lives of a handful of doomed ex-patriates living there, 'as vivid a set of liars and losers as was ever invented by Graham Greene'. ( The New York Times)

'The potency of his writing emanates from his ability to channel reporting, history and an intense sense of atmosphere through his introspections. He is a first-rate observer and analyst... Any Westerner curious to take a decadent Oriental trip with a writer you can trust to keep you turning the pages should pick up a copy' The New York Times

He uses language with great skill, and the sounds and smells of Bangkok are wonderfully evoked. Osborne's writing conveys a genuine love for the city and an appreciation of its ethos of easygoing tolerance. Library Journal.

Praise for The Naked Tourist by Lawrence Osborne:
'Thailand inspires such enthralled romanticism that it also invites great cynicism, and it is a feat to acknowledge all its complexities and graces, as Osborne does, without ever quite surrendering to them' Los Angeles Times

"Thailand inspires such enthralled romanticism that it also invites great cynicism and it is a feat to acknowledge all its complexities and graces, as Osborne does, without ever quite surrendering to them" (Pico Iyer Los Angeles Times)

"He is a first-rate observer and analyst... Any Westerner curious to take a decadent Oriental trip with a writer you can trust to keep you turning the pages should pick up a copy" (New York Times)

"He vividly sketches the characters he meets: a man with a degree in air-conditioning, one with an air of "upper-class twittery"... Osborne's travelogue is, however, memorably touching" (Anita Sethi Independent on Sunday)

"With a brief stint as a gigolo, insights into the Buddhist interpretation of transgender 'kathoeys', and several friendships with various wayward desolates, Osborne maintains a lively note to proceedings throughout... this book has an underlying sense of warmth and genuine fondness for its subject matter" (Real Travel Magazine)

"He uses language with great skill, and the sounds and smells of Bangkok are wonderfully evoked. Osborne's writing conveys a geniune love for the city" (Library Journal)