Asian inspiration
June 27th, 2008 by Justin Richards in News
Is it shameless self-promotion if you still feel a little ashamed for doing it? Of course not. So, with a little bit of shame, I’d like to direct you to a book that a friend and I self-published this spring.
Photographer Mike Patterson and I traveled through Thailand, Laos and southern China last fall. We eschewed tour groups, “trekking” trips, and all things insular. Our livin’ was mean, ugly and stupid.
Between his photos and my writing, we kept a carefully composed blog. When we got back, Mike transformed it into a book. He downloaded the book-making software from Blurb.com, then uploaded our product to the site, where an unlimited number of paperback copies can now be ordered.
I know that lots of 20-somethings travel through southeast Asia, but we did that shit right. It was the only real adventure I’ve ever had and I’ve dreamt about it every night since. The book is full of danger and sex and ecstasies both high and low.
Check out the blog (any heading on this post is a good place to start) if you want to gauge your interest in the print product. Mike is an excellent photographer, and the book has even better photos that are missing from the blog. Other travel books are boring.
Here are a couple excerpts:
“We sat down in the front row and a couple of working girls, their parts barely covered, sat beside us and tried to siphon away our money. The room was small, and the rest of the crowd was mostly European. About forty percent of it was female. On stage, a woman lay on her back, puffing excitedly on a cigarette with her vagina. I never saw her face.”
– from Pat Pong show, Bangkok
“At this point I had one of those instants where I pulled back and observed this as a self-contained moment. Here I was on a cold mountainside in the middle of the night, a hundred miles from any city and much farther from anyone from my own civilization. A baby from some Chinese minority tribe, his face covered with filth and crust, was swaying back and forth before me in some sort of trance, singing this chant. The lightbulbs strung across the room kept dimming and brightening on their own. I wondered what it would have been like to get a vision of this moment two years ago to the day, when I was in class or at work or on a date or something.”
– from “We’re not dead“
“I followed the man into the building. Dark, withered women hunched behind crumbling doorways, watching me with nervous eyes. One of them crept toward me. “Would you like to see my room?” she said vacantly. Some sort of cream-colored ooze showed between the scattered follicles on her scalp.
After missing the doorknob a few times, the young man inserted his key and opened the door to a vacant room. Facing me was the open bathroom. I determined this after my eyes identified a cracked toilet amid all the rubble. I looked to the rest of the room. There were no windows, even though we were at the building’s edge. Insects moved on the unmade bed.”
– from “Alone“
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