Southeast Asia

The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong

Edward Gargan

The Mekong runs nearly 3,000 miles from the Tibetan plateau to the delta of southern Vietnam, the one thread that ties Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam together. Gargan traveled its length for a year, and his portrait of the people who live along its banks is vivid, clear-eyed, and generous.

Guide to the Temples of Angkor

David Raezer and Jennifer Raezer

Profiles of 23 of Angkor's most significant temples, illustrated with nearly 200 photographs, make this the most useful companion to Cambodia's great World Heritage site. Read it before you go to understand what the Khmer kings built, then keep it close for the early mornings among the ruins.

The Tale of Kiều

Nguyen Du, translated by Huynh Sanh Thong

Composed in Nôm script in the early nineteenth century, this long narrative poem has stood for two hundred years as the supreme masterpiece of Vietnamese literature. Nguyen Du recasts a Chinese tale as the story of a young woman's sacrifice, one that generations of Vietnamese have committed to memory and read as a mirror of their country's turbulent politics.

The Quiet American

Graham Greene

Set in Saigon in the early 1950s, Greene's novel follows a weary English correspondent and an earnest young American operative as France's colonial war gives way to American involvement. Published a decade before American troops arrived in force, it reads now as a remarkably prescient portrait of good intentions gone astray.

The Tunnels of Cu Chi

Tom Mangold and John Penycate

Beneath the countryside northwest of Saigon, Viet Cong guerrillas dug some 200 miles of tunnels and hidden chambers, and specially trained American soldiers known as tunnel rats went down after them. Mangold and Penycate reconstruct that underground war in close, often harrowing detail, essential grounding before a visit to the preserved tunnels outside Ho Chi Minh City.

Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir

John McCain

Shot down over Hanoi in 1967, naval aviator John McCain spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including time in Hỏa Lò Prison, the jail American captives called the Hanoi Hilton. Recognized as the son of a senior admiral, he refused an offer of early release, and his memoir is a testament to endurance and to the family tradition that shaped him.

The Sympathizer: A Novel

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Nguyen's novel is narrated by a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who flees to Los Angeles after the fall of Saigon while secretly reporting to his communist handlers. It is sharp, darkly funny, and tells the war from a Vietnamese vantage point that most American readers have never been offered.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Loung Ung

Loung Ung was five years old, one of seven children of a government official, when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in April 1975 and drove her family into the countryside. Her memoir of the years that followed is harrowing and deeply moving, and it gives a child's voice to a history Cambodia is still coming to terms with.

The Lost Executioner: The Story of Comrade Duch and the Khmer Rouge

Nic Dunlop

Dunlop sets out to understand how Comrade Duch, a former schoolteacher from a poor Cambodian province, became commandant of Tuol Sleng, the Phnom Penh prison known as S-21. His years of searching ended with finding Duch alive, and the result is a sober inquiry into how ordinary people become instruments of atrocity.

To Cambodia with Love

Edited by Andy Brouwer and Kim Fay

More than fifty writers share the places, meals, and encounters that made Cambodia matter to them, and each essay is paired with a practical fact file so readers can follow in their footsteps. It is part travel memoir, part insider's guidebook, and entirely worth packing.

The King Never Smiles

Paul M. Handley

Handley traces the long reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, from a Western upbringing to a place in his people's eyes as something close to a living Buddha, and examines the political power behind that gentle public image. The book is banned in Thailand under the country's strict laws protecting the monarchy, so read it at home and leave it off the packing list.

Sightseeing

Rattawut Lapcharoensap

These seven stories are set in contemporary Thailand and portray a country far removed from its exoticized stereotypes. Lapcharoensap writes about ordinary lives with humor and real tenderness, a fine introduction to the Thailand that lives beyond the resorts.

Lemongrass, Ginger and Mint Vietnamese Cookbook

Linh Nguyen

Vietnam is home to one of the world's great cuisines, bright with fresh herbs and built on balance rather than heat. Nguyen offers authentic recipes for the dishes travelers remember most, from pho and spring rolls to banh mi and rice porridge.

Hot Thai Kitchen

Pailin Chongchitnant

Chongchitnant grew up in southern Thailand, surrounded by freshly shredded coconut and soups fragrant with lemongrass, before training at Le Cordon Bleu and building a devoted following on YouTube. This book gathers her audience's favorite recipes and explains the reasoning behind Thai flavor, a fitting way to carry the trip into your own kitchen.