Lands of Charm and Cruelty: Travels in Southeast Asia

This is a fascinating book covering lands and peoples that get little notice in the West. Stan Sesser does not give us a touristy travelogue, but heavy-duty investigative reporting into the darker sides of these little known countries of Southeast Asia. His five long essays in this book cover Singapore, a bizarre construct of communist capitalism; Laos, a country that remains friendly and resilient even after a few centuries of being used violently as a pawn by larger empires; Cambodia, a land of strange politics where the genocidal Khmer Rouge have been welcomed as possible saviors into the modern regime; Burma, a potentially prosperous nation managed with horrific incompetence by paranoid and xenophobic hardliners; and finally Borneo (specifically the portion of that island controlled by Malaysia), which offers a chilling lesson in environmental devastation. It would have been nice to see similar coverage of Vietnam and Thailand, but there are only so many places Sesser can cover so strongly in one book. Sesser's main theme in his coverage is indeed charm vs. cruelty, as in these nations he has encountered some of the friendliest peoples and cultures in the world, which are being oppressed by the world's harshest regimes. While there have been many political developments since this book was written, especially in Cambodia, Sesser still offers many valuable lessons in the histories and social dynamics of these nations. Instead of a happy tourist diary of scenery and monuments, we get both the light and the dark of Southeast Asia in the most informative and enlightening ways.

Sesser's book was extremely helpful to me while I was living in the Far EAst in the late 90's. His essay on Singapore - discussing "the fear that even the best-educated Singaporeans live under" in their own country, accorded very well with my own observations. This book makes a wonderful corrective to the memoirs of Singapore's leader, Harry Lee Kuan Yew, and a great companion to Christopher Lingle's Singapore's Authoritarin Capitalism, Ian Buruma's essay, "The Nanny State of Asia" (in his book, The Missionary and the Libertine) and Francis Seow's A Prisoner in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore (...).The other essays include a distressing one on the destruction of the rainforests of Borneo by Malaysian government officials in Sarawk - local officials use their five year appointments to loot the place, the fear of poverty in them overriding any environmental concerns, which (sadly, sadly) seemed a very western - ie, foreign - concern after reading this.The Burma chapter is perhaps the most sobering of all - here the whole sad history of Burma's ruthless, inept, corrupt post-independence rule is laid out for the reader; Burma was ironically far more prosperous under British rule, when it known as "the rice bowl of Asia" (ie, it exported rice to the region) than under so-called independance. How very sad. Sesser's book is very informative and will be of great interest to anyone planning to vist/live in the region, or simply visit from the armchair.

Stan Sesser adds a great deal to the dialogue on S.E. Asian issues and experiences with this book. His first hand experiences and excellent research is evident in this well written and thought out book. What a shame it is out of print!

I enjoyed the book especially the first chapter on Singapore. Other chapters does not seem to be as interesting as the first one.