Lawrence Osborne

Tourists come to Bankok for many reasons - a sex change operation, a night with two prostitutes dressed as nuns, a stay in a luxury hotel.  When Lawrence Osborne visits Bangkok, he finds that he can live there on a few dollars a day and decides to stay.

Osborne's is a visceral experience of Bangkok, whether he's wandering the canals that fill the old city; dining at the No Hands Restaurant, where his waitress feeds him like a baby; or launching his own notably unsuccessful career as a gigolo.  A quide without inhibitions, Osborne takes us to a feverish place where a strange blend of ancient Buddhist practice and new sexual mores has created a version of modernity only superficially indebted to the West.  BANGKOK DAYS is a love letter to the city that revived Osborne's faith in adventure and in the world.

"[Osborne] grabs th e bull by the horns ... Through the most surreal environments (the fabricated islands of Dubai, the nedical resorts of Thailant) he is fully, intelligents, insightful and honest."  Max Watman, The New York Times Book Review

"A biting, highly amusing ... inquiry into travel and its discontents." William Grimes, The New York Times

A seasoned travel writer, weary of the homogenization of tourist attraction, sets out to find the last untouched spot, where he can get naked. Heading to Papua by way of the Middle East and Asia, Osborne takes his time in each locale — drinking too much, getting pampered on the cheap, and constantly fighting a paranoid "neocolonial dread." This book is devoted to the psyche of the traveler. It explores why we wander, what we learn, and how traveling to the ends of the earth can be less terrifying than arriving at the end of wonderment.

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